Mr. Speaker, I can only conclude that I now understand why the hon. member is no longer an accountant, because to suggest that Canadians who buy RRSPs pay no taxes on them is simply not true. Tax is delayed, but as soon as they take the money out of course they have to pay taxes. That is unlike the companies that are bringing dividends home through a very elaborate scheme, a scheme that does not meet with the approval of auditors general in this country who are obligated to look at whether Canada and Canadian taxpayers are being well served. It is unlike those individuals who are bringing the dividends home and paying nothing on them in terms of Canadian taxes. Canadians who have RRSPs will pay tax to the government as soon as they start to take the money out.
The member asked the question of whether people should not be allowed to be in office just because they are successful businessmen. That is not the case at all. But I think that those who are trying to misuse our system certainly should not be in office, especially those who simply cannot relate to the average voter out there, to the average person who has to earn a paycheque and sees the government taking bigger and bigger amounts out of that paycheque every month.
In fact, in 1997 when I was campaigning I just happened to be in a heavy duty equipment shop. A person there told me that his take home pay was less then than it had been 10 years before. I said that I did not think so, and he said that it was and he showed me his pay stub.
That is what is happening. Our standard of living has declined under the government, under a series of governments for 30 years. Our productivity is now only 80% of that of the United States, our major trading partner.
The member talked about companies that are deriving their incomes from off shore. I would suggest that most of that is not off shore, it is from the continent. Eighty-seven per cent of our trade is with the United States and it does account for a very big part of our GDP. I do not discount that. But these same companies are only 80% as efficient in terms of productivity.
The industry committee over a number of years has done a series of studies. One of the main culprits time after time is the high level of government taxation in Canada, because government is 11% bigger in Canada than it is in the United States. The same Liberal government over there will argue that it is health care, but health care accounts for about 2% of that 11%. A lot of the rest of it is wasteful spending, and being in areas of business it should not be, and high degrees of regulation. That comes up time after time.
Who was in office during all this time? The same party of the member who asked the question, the same party to which he belongs. I suggest that the Liberals are the biggest part of the problem. When the former finance minister who now aspires to be the prime minister cannot understand or relate to what Canadians are paying in taxes because essentially he does not have to pay any, it seems to me that there is a big problem.