Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Regina--Lumsden--Lake Centre.
It is a pleasure for me to rise today as the finance critic for the Canadian Alliance to take part in the supply day motion put forward by our party.
This is a very important issue for us. We know there is a need for infrastructure spending, infrastructure projects, especially in the municipalities. A lot of that takes place in major cities across the country. We know there is deteriorating infrastructure, whether it be water and sewer projects or highways.
My colleague from Saskatchewan knows the highway system in his province needs a lot of work, and it is difficult for a rural province to maintain that infrastructure. Therefore there is a need for funding to do just that.
A case has been well made for the fact that we have a deteriorating infrastructure across Canada. As I said earlier, when we think infrastructure, we think of primary infrastructure needs such as water and sewer, roads, airports, the type of thing that would enable municipalities to build upon. We do not think of infrastructure in terms of the cultural aspect such as bocce courts or recreation to that extent. There needs to be some basic infrastructure spending.
How can that be achieved by the municipalities that really do not have a source of revenue? After all, in terms of jurisdiction they are a creation of the provinces, and the provinces could certainly direct more money to them, but in many cases there is a pretty heavy load on them already. There is a ready source available for this and that is why we have identified the excise tax on gasoline.
This past year, excise tax on gasoline raised over $4.7 billion. Some people might think this is a tax on gasoline and therefore all that money goes back into the highway system or into the roads system across the country. That simply is not true. In fact only $190 million of that goes back at all. The rest goes into general revenue and essentially is a cash cow for the government.
Members of the Canadian Alliance think there is a need to establish some kind of formula that would allow our municipalities to participate, but we are respective of the jurisdictional nature of this. We do not want the federal government bypassing the provinces and sending it directly to them.
The member for Kitchener Centre spoke about how great the infrastructure program was, which was introduced by the Liberal government in 1994 after being out of office for 10 years. The difficulty with that type of infrastructure program was it was political in nature. The Liberals took advantage of the situation. We noticed that ridings represented by Liberal members received a lot more money than any other ridings across the country, and yet there was a huge need all across Canada. As I pointed out, my riding of Peace River received approximately one-third as much money as the riding in Winnipeg which was represented by the minister of foreign affairs at the time, Lloyd Axworthy. That was pretty consistent across the board.
We have to move away from this formula of picking winners and losers depending on who one voted for in an election. We need to establish some kind of formula that will allow municipalities with deteriorating infrastructures to have some kind of dedicated source of revenue.
There is currently 10¢ a litre excise tax on fuel and it raises about $4.7 billion. That tax room should be given up by the federal government and given over to the provinces. Then the provinces can dedicate that money to infrastructure to the municipalities. If the provinces had already have paid for that need, they would realize it as a gain or would not have to exercise that tax themselves in their jurisdiction. They would have that choice. It is a source of revenue that could be dedicated to the provinces and then ultimately to the municipalities if the government had enough courage to do so.
What do I mean when I say “enough courage to do so”? I mean that the federal government would have to forgo $4.7 billion in revenue. I think we need to explain where that comes from. That comes out of revenue which this year will be about $180 billion.
We have seen in the budget introduced on February 18 that the Liberal government likes to spend. To be exact, it is on a spending spree like we have not seen since the Trudeau days. We think part of it is that the Prime Minister wants to leave and buy himself a legacy, much the way a person would buy oneself some kind of degree from some university down in the deep south, where if enough money is paid they will give out a piece of paper. It seems to me, by the way, that a person who has to buy himself a legacy after 40 years has not been doing very much.
In my view I think the government has a lot of room to forgo that $4.7 billion. Some of that money might come from the Solicitor General's department. I think the gun registry program would be a good place for us to look for it. As well, the Minister of Finance has given a directive to all departments to look for ways that they can go through a program review to cut a billion dollars in expenditures. We think there is a lot more to be cut.
In fact, I would look to the Solicitor General's department. The overrun on the gun registry has been almost a billion dollars in itself and is probably approaching $2 billion. There is a good place to start.
It means that the federal government has to live with $4.7 billion less than it is currently living with. We realize that is a tough time for people who like to tax and to spend other people's money, but I do not think it would be that difficult. I think a program review is the right way to go. We believe that a lot more money than that can be realized just from cutting waste and inefficient spending and changing priorities for government spending. Let me talk about a few of them.
In the waste department, we have seen the scandals at HRDC and the billion dollars that seem to be lost there. We know that the advertising contract scandal continues to bubble. In fact it is raised almost daily in the House of Commons.