Mr. Speaker, in addressing this transportation issue, there is an observation that I want to make. The government calls itself Liberal, but quite often when we peel back liberalism, what we have is a new form of socialism. I know that the member from P.E.I. would like that kind of talk. It means more government, more central planning, more spending, more bureaucracy, more interference in the economy, and more interference in the day-to-day lives of Canadians. That is the Liberal way more often than not.
The transportation sector is a good sector to look at when we look at the Liberal way. Anything that the Liberal government puts its hands on, it seems to turn it to rock. The airline industry in this country is in a shambles with the government's interference and the way it dealt with that area. Air Canada, the one airline that the government has been most active in getting involved with and helping out, is an absolute disaster.
I hear Liberals on the other side of the House talk as if, when they spend money, it is free money. That is a totally false concept. There are independent economists who have looked at government spending and in this country estimate that the cost to the private sector for every dollar extracted by the Liberal government is $2 in economic output. We lose two dollars for every dollar the government collects. We had better get some real value when the government spends money because I do not see it.
There is a cost of working this money through the bureaucracy, from the CCRA right through the bureaucracy, until it gets out the other end. Some people have estimated that 34ยข out of every tax dollar is absorbed in that system alone too. So this is no minor issue.
VIA Rail receives a huge subsidy from the government, a half a million dollars a day. It is competing against private sector bus lines and small short line rails throughout the system. It is also competing against this troubled airline industry. I have small air services in my riding in Prince Albert and I have talked to these individuals. This Liberal way has been absolutely disastrous for them. The $24 air security tax has been a killer. The Nav Canada burdens that are being imposed on these individuals are just killing those businesses and driving them out of business. This is the Liberal way. It likes to crowd out healthy, promising businesses and replace them with government-run systems.
I want to make it clear that commuter service in this country works fairly well where we have high density populations with all of the arguments about environmental concerns, deficiency, and viability. We do not need the government to do this. This is happening without the government. A confused commuter service, with this bloated VIA Rail, is really off the mark.
Obviously one of the solutions of this VIA Rail thing would be to do what the government once did. I believe it was Mr. Young, when he was the minister, who took the bull by horns with CN. CN was an albatross for this country because we were constantly subsidizing it and it provided lousy service. It had been in and out of taxpayers' pockets for years. He privatized CN and turned into probably the most successful rail system in North America, or probably the world. It was a shining example of the private sector. It provided better service and a better network than the government owned operation.
It still bothers me that the government is subsidizing an inefficient service that people are not choosing to use, except for the odd person who wants to take a holiday at the expense of everybody else at a huge subsidy.
There are lots of other ways to travel across this great country besides rail but we have to subsidize it because members on that side have some warm and fuzzy feeling about the railroad. They have probably read Pierre Berton's book The Last Spike and think that because it is VIA Rail the government has to stay in there and hold the thing together.
VIA Rail only serves a very small fraction of the country. People who travel across the country use motor vehicles, the buses and the airlines. It is a big country but VIA Rail only serves a small slice of it. At a half a million dollars a day we have to really wonder on a cost benefit analysis why we do not wake up to the fact that the plug should be pulled on this service. We should use that money for much more important things such as improving the infrastructure of our roads and highways across the country.
Even the gas tax motion that we debated earlier ties in with this. The government's priorities on spending and using tax dollars and so on in so many areas is an absolute disaster. It is really unfortunate. On random polls, the Liberals seem to have 40% to 50% of the people's vote. I wish a lot of people would wake up and realize what the government's policies are doing to our economy and the future of this nation.
Nine million dollars is a small matter. However, I want to emphasize that we elected 301 members of Parliament. The people entrusted us with the job. Those folks on the committee studied and looked hard at VIA Rail and came up with a proposal that would reduce the spending by $9 million and what happened? The elected elite dictatorship bureaucracy that runs this place walked in and found ways to override what that committee decided to do.
Government would be much better served to listen to what the committee members are suggesting and recommending. We would get better public policy and better government. But there are those in that elite element in government who believe they have to have control, and that it has to be centralized control. They have to plan everything. They are going to find the ways to waste our taxpayers' dollars and regulate us into the ground. They just do not want to let that go.
It is really dangerous if they see some Liberal backbenchers on the committees get a little bit of insight on positive ways of developing good policy. It bothers them that the door might open a bit and the whole system might come crumbling down upon them, which would really be good if it happened.
I congratulate the member from the Kootenays. I listened to his speech and I know what he has had to say on transportation issues and the VIA Rail. He is right on the mark. I wish some of my Liberal friends would spend more time listening to common sense like that instead of looking down and reading their notes and papers, or whatever it is that they do.