Mr. Speaker, it is good to speak to this issue because it is very important. My colleague who spoke previously laid out some glaring problems with the tax system in the country. The system is double tracked. There is one set of taxation rules for mom and pop and the people who get up every day and work hard for a living and there is another set of taxation rules for corporations and people who can manipulate all the systems at their disposal to avoid paying tax. The only place that a working person can put some money away to avoid paying tax is into an RRSP and the tax is not forgiven, it is deferred. When that money is taken out the tax is payable.
This summer has been one which I will never forget, nor will many people in our country forget. Out west we have had drought, forest fires, grasshopper infestations and smoke in the air. Some days when getting out of bed one would just wonder what one was doing. BSE affected the country from coast to coast and is still an ongoing issue that the government has not solved. Our border is still closed to beef, to cattle. It goes on and on.
One of the groups affected this summer by the whole BSE issue is the trucking industry. When this thing hit there were 1,000 cattle liners in western Canada working every day moving cattle around. Since this has happened, the vast majority of trucks have been parked. One of the things we asked for immediately after this happened was that the government forgive the tax on fuel for the truckers so they could at least save that amount of money, but no way.
The billions of dollars that the government takes in taxes out of the pockets of hardworking truck drivers and everyone else in the country who drives a vehicle go into general revenue and get lost. The country's roads, highways and infrastructure are falling apart. The people who are paying the tax through gas taxes have to drive on those highways to make their living and it is appalling. It is breaking them. It is costing in maintenance. It is hard on gas mileage. For a government that thinks it is green to the core, it is absolutely unbelievable that it would not do something to improve the infrastructure program so that people who are trying to make a living can do that on the infrastructure that is available.
Let us look at income tax. Why is the government not reducing income tax for people who are trying to make a living and put food on the table? Let us look at our payroll tax. Let us look at almost $50 billion in overtaxation that goes into the general revenue of the government through payroll deductions through the EI program. It has been suggested by the Auditor General that that reserve could be a fraction of what it is and still handle any downturn in the economy, but no.
The government promised to get rid of the GST, but it is rolling in it. Also it put GST on top of the gasoline tax, which is a tax on a tax. It just goes on, and the spending goes on. It is unbelievable that the government can go on.
My colleague mentioned productivity. No wonder productivity is down. Who wants to get up and go to work for half of the year to pay the government its tax bill? How are we going to buy homes and vehicles? How are people who are trying to raise and educate their children going to get by when half of what they earn goes to the government to feed an over-blossomed government that does not deal with the issues at hand?
Perhaps some Canadians may go to a financial adviser who will tell them to borrow some money and invest it so they can deduct the interest payments. That is a great idea. It is a wonderful idea that allows Canadians to invest a bit of money back into the country.
However, a corporation dealing with a Barbados subsidiary can borrow the money and get the tax break on the interest, but it is invested in Barbados, in a low tax jurisdiction. Then the earnings that come back from the investment in Barbados can go into a U.S. subsidiary and come back into Canada tax free. It is not good enough that one can borrow the money and get a deduction on the interest, one can go through this double dipping process, which I think is more like money laundering, and get another benefit. Where are our priorities? Where are the government's priorities?
We have tax treaties with I believe it is 79 countries. I suppose there are some that are reasonable. In 1972 there were 16 and now there are 79. The ones that have been structured specifically for the benefit of people in a position of power are wrong. People who are in a position to make decisions and make laws which come back to benefit them in any way, we all know that this is wrong. It is a conflict of interest and it should not be allowed to happen.
Let us encourage corporations, Canadians, everybody to invest in Canada. If this country had a tax regime that allowed people or businesses to keep a few bucks, they would invest it in their businesses. They would hire another person; they would get somebody working on research and development. Unlike some other parties that would tax corporations into oblivion and put everybody out on the street at soup kitchens, if we had a reasonable tax regime that allowed strong reinvestment back into the country, it would bode well for all.
Let us look at some of the tax treaties to get specific on what we are dealing with today and the motion that the Bloc has brought forward. Bloc members claim that tax treaties should facilitate information sharing and mitigate or eliminate double taxation. If they do that, what they are doing is doubling income on the other side. We have tax treaties with 79 countries.
Dividends received by Canadian corporations from foreign affiliates in treaty countries are exempt from tax at the corporate level to avoid double taxation. When that rule was put in place, it allowed money to come back from these offshore investments into Canada at a lower tax rate. The dividends received by Canadian corporations from foreign affiliates resident in non-treaty countries qualify for a credit with the underlying foreign taxes on income out of which a dividend is paid.
We can see when tax havens are created with these special countries it is creating a huge advantage for the industries or companies that deal with them. When the Canadian parent corporation declares dividends to its owners, they pay personal income taxes on the dividends although at a reduced rate because of the dividend tax credit.
It is set up in such a way that we see this double dipping idea. Money can be borrowed, invested in a country, create income there and bring it back through the back door and pay a lower tax on it. At the same time hardworking Canadians are getting whipped through the EI system. It makes me wonder what priorities the government has.
I have to go back a few years and my colleague alluded to this when he proposed that there could be $100 billion tax cut in Canada. That perked people's ears up. That is a lot of money. How could that be done? We showed how we could do that over a number of years. Lo and behold a few years later because it became such a popular idea, the government across the way thought it could do it as well. But the Liberals were going to do it in a vastly different way.
Taxes have continued to remain high, some of the highest in the world. We would have done it through cutting a little of the wasteful spending and there are quite a few places as is becoming more apparent every day. A lot of money is being spent on things in this country that I do not think taxpayers appreciate very much. It gets into the billions of dollars in some cases.
It gets into advertising contracts that were issued and a percentage of the contract was paid to the person who delivered the cheque. Are there not enough people working in government who could do that without having an outside firm make a percentage of every cheque that is delivered?
People hear about this and then they have to get up every morning and work hard, and in a lot of cases both mom and dad have to work just to get by. The country's cattle industry is on its knees and these things continue to go on. Canadians are fed up with what they are seeing and the only way they are going to have change is to change the government, in the next six or seven months. We are going to give them some options in the next three months which will make it pretty clear who the government should be instead of that bunch over there.