Mr. Speaker, I have to tell the member opposite that it is not four years from the last election already, but I see he does want an election.
This has already been enacted by a Liberal government in British Columbia, which understands that the next election should not be called just in the interests of the Prime Minister and his party but in the interests of all Canadians.
We need to closely evaluate the fairness and efficiency of our electoral system and compare it with more modern preferential and proportional systems that are used in other advanced countries.
I want to thank both the leader of the Bloc Québécois and the leader of the New Democratic Party for working with us on a series of changes to our Standing Orders, which we believe will make the House more effective and more democratic. These were not advanced to favour our partisan interests or to stymie the government but to make this minority Parliament work. I have said that if I were Prime Minister, I would sustain and live by these rules.
The fundamental responsibility in this area lies with the government. I have to say in the area of democratic reform we are so far not impressed. It is simply not true, for example, that we were consulted in any meaningful way about the contents of yesterday's Speech from the Throne. It is certainly not true that any input was sought. I, on the other hand, worked closely with my opposition colleagues to find common ground for our response, and I would have engaged in these consultations myself were I prime minister in a minority Parliament.
Let me address one last subject and that is public finances and accountability. We all realize that the throne speech is not a budget speech but we are all very concerned about the orgy of costly promises that the government indulged in during the last election campaign and has now continued in the Speech from the Throne. According to the figures, if one believes the figures in the Liberals' 2004 election platform, its recent promises have already exceeded the amount available to fund new initiatives between now and 2009-10. In fact, at the conclusion of the recent health summit the Prime Minister doubled his entire health care promises overnight.
There is virtually nothing in the throne speech about tax relief. All Canadians, individuals and businesses, are paying too much tax compared to our major competitors. We need tax cuts across the board on investment, on consumption, on high marginal earners, on everyone. However, in the Liberal tax and spend world, the tax burden does fall far too heavily on lower and modest income Canadians and their families. Surely all parties in the House could agree that we should begin, with all the surpluses the government has had, with some tax cuts for those who are in the lowest income brackets.
Not only in the campaign, not only in the throne speech, has the government been blind to the crushing tax burden it has placed on hardworking Canadians; it has compounded that over the past decade by shamelessly diverting employment insurance premiums to its general revenues. This has been a $50 billion theft of revenues from workers and businesses to general revenue that frankly has been used to fund not just the programs but also the scandals of the government. This must stop and it must never be allowed to happen again. What we believe we need--