Mr. Speaker, what the member has just said about income trusts flies in the face of what leading economists have told us, but that is not the reason for my rising at this point. I want to point out to the member that Bill C-66 could be much better.
The flavour of the day today, the talk among a lot of people, has been the Gomery commission and the recommendations that Gomery has made. One of the key things that he pointed out and the problem he detected is that programs were designed with political motives, and here we have an example of just that.
The people who need the help the most, those who are experiencing high energy costs, are not going to see a benefit from this bill. Why can we not reduce taxes for everyone affected? That would ensure that we do not have another fiasco waiting to unfold, a huge bureaucratic mess here.
Liberals seem to always devise programs that cost a lot to administer, that are complex rather than simple. I see this very clearly in the agriculture programs that I have to deal with on a daily basis in my riding office.
I want to point out one fact. The government has profited more than the oil companies from the recent spike in fuel prices on a per litre basis. Sometimes it wants to hide this fact. Bill C-66 comes just before an election and it really flies in the face of what Gomery said should happen. The programs are politically motivated.
I want to make one other comment. Today we have stumbled over a very obvious thing in the sponsorship scandal, and that is that the present Prime Minister was the finance minister. He says that there is still $49 million missing. If he was the finance minister, it was his responsibility to know about that and to find that money. He should be working on that, not passing that responsibility off. I cannot understand how a government in charge of the public purse does not know where the money went. Those in charge of the public purse have a responsibility to administer it appropriately.
Here we have a program being put in place that attempts to redistribute income to a small portion of Canadians rather than help all those who really need it in creating jobs. The government has reaped huge benefits from the increase in fuel prices. Why not give that money back in the way of tax cuts?