The minister is urging me to do that so I will. I want to explain why the Conservative Party is very much opposed to Bill C-67.
Bill C-67 is indicative of a government that is out of gas and out of ideas. When the minister raised the fact that Canada is facing a productivity crisis, he brings in legislation that economist after economist has criticized as being absolutely antithetical to the idea of solving our productivity challenge. I want to explain what I mean by talking a little bit about the particulars of the legislation.
Bill C-67 would take unanticipated surpluses and divide them into three. One-third would go toward paying down the debt, one-third toward a tax rebate and one-third toward increased spending. Let me tell the House why that is unbelievably simplistic when we are facing this great productivity challenge. It is wrong for a number of reasons.
The government has used its ability to manage the size of the surplus a number of times to get around the normal parliamentary scrutiny that should be brought to government spending when we are talking about spending billions of dollars.
Since 1997, so-called unanticipated surpluses have amounted to about $90 billion. Independent forecasters knew these surpluses were coming. It is the finance department that claimed it did not know these surpluses were mounting. As a result Canadians have had no input on where the money should go.
What happens is that very often at the end of the year the government would go on a year-end spending spree. Sometimes the money would go to important things but a lot of times it would go to things of questionable value. I can think of one year, on the last day of the budget year, when the former prime minister bought two Challenger jets for his own travel at the same time that the Canadian military was looking for all kinds of equipment to move our troops around.
It is a dangerous when we have a government that manages the numbers so it can lowball expectations about surpluses and then use those surpluses at the end of the year for its own ends. We are concerned about that.
As members will know, at the end of last year Parliament's own independent forecasters projected a surplus of over $6 billion but the government engaged in a bunch of accounting tricks at the end of the year to reduce that surplus down to $1.6 billion.
When the government maintains the ability to manage the size of the surplus by introducing a bill to divide the surplus into equal parts, where Canadians think they will get a rebate at the end of the year, it is not going to happen because the government can eliminate the surplus if it suits its ends, which is what happened last year. We had a surplus at the end of the year of only $1.6 billion, which means there would be nothing to divide up. Canadians would see no tax relief, no debt repayment and no increased spending.
As long as the government maintains the ability to spend more than it said it would spend and manipulates the size of the surplus, having a bill that divides the surplus up is meaningless.
However it goes beyond that. We have other criticisms beyond that. One of the great criticisms that has been levelled against the government is the fact that it has not taken any steps to enhance our productivity. I touched on this a minute ago. The problem with Bill C-67 is that if one-third of the surplus were given back to Canadians in the form of a rebate, it would not do anything to enhance productivity.
One of the great arguments for tax relief is that lowering particular types of taxes provides an incentive for taxpayers to engage in certain types of behaviour. If taxes are lowered on investments, then people invest more, which, obviously, is something that enhances productivity. If personal income taxes are lowered, then people tend to produce more because they are not so heavily punished when they earn more money.
Economists have argued, and they are absolutely right, that instead of providing this one-third formula the government should just lower taxes for middle class Canadians. I know the government always pleads poverty but we have seen spending go up 52% since 1999. Money has gone to public service, Liberal friends and to David Dingwall. We have seen it go to the NDP.