Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Cumberland—Colchester.
The Canadian Alliance motion states that Canada's infrastructure needs should be met with stable funding. Of course we can all agree that Canada's infrastructure needs should be met with stable funding, but the motion goes on to call upon the federal government to reduce its own tax on gasoline in return for negotiating a deal with the provinces, where each province would then introduce a new tax to fund its own infrastructure needs. On that particular point, I think I am safe in saying that we profoundly disagree with the motion. We think it would be complicated. It would be a convoluted way to get moneys to fund infrastructure in Canada.
One of the main problems with the motion has to do with dedicated taxes. Simply put, I believe that dedicated taxes are not the Canadian way. In our system tax revenues from all sources go into one pot and the government allocates expenditures on its priorities from that one big communal pot. Dedicated taxes are often used in the United States. Such taxes are useful when they are used probably to fund a specific project.
However, our national infrastructure requirements are varied and they are ongoing as well. Older infrastructure needs to be replaced or upgraded. New and more modern infrastructure has to be constantly built. That situation requires an ongoing commitment to maintaining and building infrastructure. It is something that should be met, we are of the firm opinion, with leadership from the federal government and cost shared funding from the federal treasury, not dedicated taxes.
A number of years ago we in Newfoundland and Labrador had a cottage hospital tax to help fund health care in rural areas of Newfoundland and Labrador in the early days after we came into Confederation. That tax was still around, believe it or not, when I served in the provincial government back in the 1980s.
That dedicated tax was used to fund part of the health care system in Newfoundland and Labrador, the old cottage hospital. That dedicated tax was still around back in the 1980s. Dedicated taxes have a tendency to stay around, to hang on forever and to grow and grow regardless of whether or not they are currently serving the purpose for which they were implemented.
As I said a moment ago, there are very big infrastructure needs in this nation, projects of a size and scope that demand federal involvement at the financial level, at the federal-provincial agreement level. Some very big projects have happened in the nation. The fixed link between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick was a very big project. I do not know if a project like that could be funded without some kind of federal-provincial agreement, not a dedicated tax.
Passing the taxation power down to the provinces and expecting the provinces, each with its own agenda and priorities, to build something of a national nature is doomed to failure. More important, from the point of view of the House, it is an abdication of our responsibilities in nation building and is the main reason that we would not support this motion.
We have always had very good success with federal-provincial agreements. All it takes is more agreements and a greater commitment by the federal government to fund these agreements between the two levels of government.
The motion brings into contrast some of the main differences in philosophy between our party and other parties in the House. One sometimes gets the impression that the Alliance in this particular case believes that government is the main problem and is not part of the solution. We believe that government at the federal level has to be part of the solution. In this motion it readily gives up its national responsibilities in favour of devolving taxing and spending powers to the provinces.
Our party, on the other hand, recognizes that most Canadians do not look upon their government as the enemy, that they expect their government to play a role in making their communities and their country a better place in which to live. Canadians want their federal government to play a leadership role through cooperative agreements. Federal-provincial agreements have worked very well in the past.
The Alliance motion does not lead; it passes the buck. Better put, it passes the power to raise and to spend the buck. If we had the kind of system that the motion encourages, as I said, small provinces like Prince Edward Island or Newfoundland and Labrador would not have the capability to fund the larger projects like the fixed link in Prince Edward Island.
Canadians these days are feeling the effect of our country existing in a leadership vacuum. We need leadership in building our infrastructure. We need leadership in building the health care system. SARS and the mad cow crises have shown just how absent federal leadership has been in our country. We need leadership in maintaining and developing our national transportation and our municipal infrastructure needs.
Canadians today can sense the drift in the focus of their national government. They need leadership like never before in this very troubled world of ours. Yet what is the official opposition response? Its response is to let the provinces handle it.
Instead of embracing the challenges of rebuilding our national infrastructure system, I think what we are looking at in the motion is a way of passing the buck on to the provinces. This should not mean that the federal government should be going it alone. The federal government has to work in partnership with the provinces and the municipalities to rebuild our national infrastructure. That is not an easy task in the kind of diverse federal nation that we have. Then again, leadership in Canada has never been easy. If there are serious imbalances in the taxing and spending powers of our national, provincial and municipal governments, this is something we should look at globally in concert with the provinces. Shifting around responsibility on a tax by tax basis is only a recipe for trouble and confusion.
I do not believe we should be passing the buck in this regard. We need to be taking the bull by the horns and getting on with the job of making Canada a beacon in an often dark world.
I believe we can achieve our municipal infrastructure objectives much better with the use of federal-provincial agreements than we can by dedicated taxes.