Mr. Speaker, the member has given me enough grist for another 20 minute speech and I probably will not have that much time.
With respect to taxes, many people in my riding and in other parts of the country have said that they are totally willing to pay taxes and so am I. We were relatively poor when I was a young fellow growing up on a farm in Saskatchewan. My dad always said it was a privilege to pay taxes because it showed we were earning some money, which was sort of a rare thing. He was happy to pay taxes.
The problem has become that we pay taxes at exorbitant levels, higher than most of the G-7 countries, on our income. The government takes a slice of all of our incomes. Then with the money that we have left it takes another slice. For example, and I have mentioned this many times, when we buy fuel for our cars and calculate the amount of taxation as a fraction of the amount of money that is actually attributed to purchasing the product, the taxation rate is around 100%. That is ridiculous. We pay as much tax as for the product.
The same is true for airline tickets. Someone could buy a ticket worth $79 for a short haul somewhere. By the time the Nav Canada fees and rent on the airport are paid, which is buying back an airport that is already paid for, as well as the totally miscalculated security tax, and all these things are added up, in many cases air travellers end up paying between 100% and 120% of taxes with money they have already paid income tax on. That is what I am talking about.
I am talking about excessive and unfair taxation. I will not change my message on that. That is what drove me to become a member of Parliament way back in 1993. It was one of the prime motivators. I am not going to stop on that.
For the member to misrepresent what I say as advocating no taxes at all is unfair because we all value these programs. I think of health care. I think of the fact that in Canada people who reach retirement age actually get a minimum of income directly from their pensions, which is a return on the taxes we pay over the years. That is a wonderful part of our country. There is no way I would advocate reducing or relieving that.
As a matter of fact, when I talk to seniors I hear over and over again that they are having an increasing amount of trouble making ends meet. Instead of taxing them to death over and over and taxing poor people with excessive EI premiums, $5 billion a year more than it needs, I think it is time the Liberals started acting responsibly to the people in our society who are in need. It is time the government stopped taxing them to death. Let them keep some of their money so they can pay their bills, which are increasingly on the rise.