Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to add to the excellent comments of my colleague from Windsor West. He does bring to us a perspective from the urban areas of the country.
This motion has been brought forth by the Alliance. I know the comment has been made that we welcome the Alliance into the infrastructure debate, into ensuring that there is more funding in infrastructure. Where we disagree with the Alliance is on its approach to doing it. We have seen what has happened with a number of suggestions from the Alliance about cutting taxes. Over the years what we have seen is that Alliance wants the cut in taxes but it also wants the cut in service. It wants to see a privatization model put in place for everything, so that if a buck cannot be made off something it is not worth doing. That is the impression it has given over the last number of years. We heard it in the health care debate and I get the same impression here.
In my own mind and from what I hear from people in my riding and throughout the country, I think Canadians want a vision for Canada. They do not want a vision for Toronto. They do not want a vision for Ottawa. They do not want a vision for a small community in Manitoba or Saskatchewan, or a vision just for Campbell River, B.C., or for Cornerbrook, Newfoundland. They want a vision for Canada. They want a country that is unified, with support for each other and with programs where all Canadians benefit from us working together as a nation.
Quite frankly, to suggest that a small municipality, by being able to tax what few citizens it has, is going to be able to support the infrastructure it might need just is not going to work. It is not going to work, to say nothing of the fact that we all benefit from infrastructure as we travel and work throughout the country.
This motion is not going to improve the situation in Canada. There is no question, absolutely no question, that this Liberal government needs to be taken to task for the fact that it has had so many cuts and so little input of tax dollars given back to the provinces and municipalities, such that we are in a serious situation as far as infrastructure in the country is concerned. There is no question that this is an issue, but that is what we should be dealing with.
When we reach the point where the infrastructure is to the level it should be, maybe we should look at cutting taxes altogether at that point, but right now I believe Canadians want to see those tax dollars going back into infrastructure. We will get no disagreement there. Of the gas taxes that the federal government is collecting, very little is going back to the provinces and municipalities, very little, and that is unconscionable.
The former finance minister now presents himself as the saviour of the nation. It is kind of like saving us from him, because quite frankly he put in place the situation we have. He set it in motion, to literally strip the country in a slash and burn kind of approach: “Let us destroy it and then I will go out there and save the nation”. The bottom line is that he was the architect of what we see. Quite frankly, I do not put great faith in that former finance minister, should he become leader of the governing party, to do anything different. He increased the gas taxes. Did we see any additional dollars go back into infrastructure?
And let us not look at just the last year or so, because now I think the government sees that an election is coming up and it has to put a little more money back in. Let us look at what was there before and consider that period of time when there should have been increases to address the problem. We have not even caught up. What we need to see as a nation, and what I believe the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has said is needed, is very assured, stable funding within the infrastructure program, working with the provinces and municipalities to ensure that the infrastructure is being dealt with on a regular basis. I believe the figure suggested at this point in time is an amount of about $2.5 billion over the course of 10 years so that we can see absolutely major infrastructure improvements throughout the nation.
What I have heard from communities, from people within the provinces, is that the infrastructure programs, when in place, have worked. There seems to be a working relationship between the municipalities and the provinces and the federal government to improve the infrastructure, but the funding has to be there. As well, there have to be some resources for the municipalities that do not have their share up front. They do not mind paying, but they do not have their share up front. There needs to be some kind of system or loan process in place with low to no interest so the municipalities can cover it. They do not want something for nothing. I have not heard anyone say that they want it for nothing, that they do not want to pay. I have never heard that from the municipalities I have met with.
However, they do want an opportunity to access some dollars at low to no interest because they do not have huge tax bases. I am talking about a number of smaller municipalities and towns throughout the country. They want that opportunity so they can improve their infrastructure. They do not want to be in a situation where their water and sewage systems are creating health problems. We saw the situation in Walkerton where there were problems with the water systems and the water supply. Those types of situations are happening throughout the country, although maybe not to that degree. They are happening in the first nations communities, which also need to be able to access infrastructure dollars so they can improve infrastructure in first nations communities as well.
I know the Alliance members would want to give the impression that their motion is trying to improve things for people throughout the country, but when I looked at it this morning--and I am sure we all get together as caucuses, discuss the motions and whether we can support them or not--I thought that the first sentence was not so bad, but then one realizes that it is going to reduce it and leave it up to the provinces to put in place a tax system. Excuse me, but as someone from Saskatchewan and Manitoba, I have seen the last couple of governments really make some strides to improve their provinces after they had Tory governments in place that literally stripped the provinces of everything, much like the finance minister did previously here in Ottawa.
We have governments that now are trying to improve that situation and are putting their tax dollars back, but I can tell members that is not what I am hearing from people in B.C. right now and that is not what we hear from people in Ontario. There are serious issues around the concern that the dollars will not go to where they should be going.
Recently I read about the concerns of people in B.C. who are being pressured into privatizing their roads. It is a major infrastructure development where B.C. want to have a toll road so that, much like a situation in New Brunswick, it can give some company so much money to continually maintain and fix the roads. They will make literally millions over the course of time just because there is a need to have some dollars put in there right now to fix the road. The suggestion was that as individuals people do not mind paying a bit of a toll to pave the road right then and there. That is what someone said, but under no circumstances should someone be profiting from infrastructure that should be there for the entire population to use.
That goes back to my comment that provinces and municipalities need to be able to access some dollars at low to no interest and then pay for those things. That is where the federal government comes in: to give back to the provinces and the municipalities the tax dollars they are paying in. Quite frankly, throughout the nation the one that has not held up its end of the bargain for the most part has been the Liberal government. For a decade now, it has not put the dollars back into infrastructure that it knows needs to be there, yet we have seen continuous wastage of taxpayers' dollars. Now we have people starting to feel that maybe they just should not pay taxes if the government is not doing anything with them anyway, or if it is not doing what it said it was going to do.
That plays into the hands of the Alliance members. Quite frankly, in a good many instances I get the impression that they do not think any services should be there as public services, that if some private company or an individual cannot make a buck from it, it should not be there for the service of the nation. New Democrats do not feel that way and quite frankly I am comfortable and confident that most Canadians do not feel that way. They are not going to accept that kind of an attitude throughout the nation.
I am from western Canada. I am from Manitoba but I grew up in Saskatchewan and there we know that the smaller provinces have to work together. We know that we put back into the tax base of the nation, but we also know that we need the support of the nation. Maybe we see it a little differently from those who come from major centres and figure they have all these tax dollars around them. They forget that they are getting the resource tax dollars from the smaller areas of the country, from those smaller communities.
I am out of time and there is so much more to say. I hope I have another opportunity.