Mr. Speaker, I speak today on behalf of the citizens of Calgary Centre-North, my constituents.
In addressing this budget implementation act, I wish to address the House with respect to the necessity of personal income relief and personal income tax cuts in particular.
My constituents believe that the personal income tax measures contained in the budget are insufficient, They are back-end loaded, certainly, but moreover, they are insufficient and they are inadequate. Frankly, I would say that they are disrespectful to the many everyday Canadians who essentially carry the Government of Canada on their backs in a financial sense.
What we need to do in this country is fashion a Canadian fiscal vision. Part of that needs to be a vision that speaks to everyday Canadians in terms of tax relief.
A Conservative government would be very clear. We would provide immediate and long term broad based income tax relief. We would reduce personal income taxes. We would substantially raise both the basic personal exemption and the spousal exemption.
We would reduce personal income taxes and increase the take home pay and raise the standard of everyday Canadians and do it in a way which earns the trust and respect of everyday Canadians in terms of the handling of the public finances of Canada. We would treat their money with respect, something we do not see from this Liberal administration.
Within eight years Canada will have achieved some progress in the gradual reduction of its debt, perhaps not the progress that we wish, but we hope that within eight years Canada would be somewhere near a 25% debt to gross domestic product ratio. Yet at the same time that productivity is stalled, tax cuts are stalled and Canadian real disposable income has slipped, overall tax levels are increasing.
We need lower personal income taxes in this country. One measure of how we have slipped as a nation is the measurement which I believe the Fraser Institute calls tax freedom day in Canada. Tax freedom day in Canada has actually worsened under this Liberal administration, from a date of June 10 to a date of approximately July 1.
Each year, tax freedom day in Canada under this Liberal government now occurs on July 1. How do we compare to other industrial democracies? By comparison, in the United States of America, tax freedom day is on April 11, this week, a significant departure from Canada. In the United Kingdom, tax freedom day is May 30, again significantly better than the situation in our country.
In contrast, the Liberals have put forward a budget which proposes no meaningful tax reduction whatsoever. There is an immediate consequence of the budget, and I refer to it often as the pizza budget or the burger budget, because the consequence for a regular Canadian family is $16 for the next year, which is just about the same amount of money that one would need to take one's children out to a burger place or to a local pizza joint.
Sixteen dollars is an insult and an affront to Canadians. It is an affront to the constituents of Calgary Centre-North. On their behalf, I call the government on this today and say it is unacceptable.
Even the full implementation of this budget through to 2009 contemplates income tax relief of $192 for regular Canadians. That is paltry and unacceptable.
What we require in this country of ours is smart fiscal policy. This is our key to prosperity and our key to our future together.
My comments today are offered within a framework of that objective. Our objective as Canadians should be to achieve a high, sustainable rate of economic growth, economic growth for this reason: so as to finance a high quality of life in terms of both private income and public goods.
The public goods of which I speak are things like public health care, public education and the quality of our environment, which is indeed also a public good. Stated simply, that takes money. It takes a prosperous economy to generate a high quality of life.
I would observe in passing that this government has lost its way on the key characteristics of other successful economies. The so-called tiger economies provide a useful example. They come to mind. These are economies that share some of the characteristics of Canada: small population, proximity and access to affluent export markets, a skilled and educated labour force, good infrastructure for communications and transportation, and finally and most important, smart fiscal policy.
Canada has the potential to be a leader in these respects. Canada has the potential to meet all of the requirements to have a burgeoning economy based on this approach.
The key to smart fiscal policy is lower taxes. Taxes must be kept determinedly low to encourage expansion. Regrettably that is not the case in this tax and spend Liberal budget, which does not share that objective.
In regard to our country, there is still a discrepancy between personal income tax rates Canadians pay and the personal income tax rates taxpayers in the United States pay. In contrast, marginal tax rates in our country remain high. For example, in Alberta they are at their lowest at 39%. Ontario's are at 46.4% and Quebec's at a whopping 48.2%. The Canadian average is 44%.
A number of economic circumstances in Canada are positive. We have low inflation. Our economy is growing. There is positive economic growth. Employment is rising.
Yet the take home pay of middle class everyday Canadians in ridings like Calgary Centre-North is not increasing. Take home pay has stagnated under the Liberal government and has been stagnating for the past 15 years.
Economic output in our country has increased 25% in the time between 1990 and 2004, yet the after tax income of everyday Canadians has increased by only 9.3%. This is the consequence of shameless tax and spend Liberalism.
I would like to draw to the attention of the House the consequences of the last election and the Liberals' election promises. In that election, the Liberals promised that if they were elected they would spend $28.3 billion over five years: $8 billion on health care, $5 billion on child care, $4 billion on gas taxes to the provinces and $3 billion on peace and nation building initiatives. That is a total of $28.3 billion. Yet in this budget, less than a year after the government was elected on those very promises, it has put forward a budget which totals $75.7 billion in expenditures over five years, compared to the $28 billion the Liberals promised Canadian taxpayers.
I would remind the House that in the context of that election the Conservative campaign commitments were only $57.8 billion. Subsequent events have proven that those commitments were affordable and were well within the budget targets and the economic performance of the government.
Liberalism is out of control with this budget. The 2003 expenditures, for example, mark the largest expenditures in modern times. Frankly, since 2003 the rate of increase in government expenditures has been mammoth. There has been a marked increase of expenditures in the budget. If we had simply constrained government spending in this country since 2000 by a rate of inflation adjustment, let us say 3%, we could justify or substantiate enormously significant tax cuts in the country. If we had done that, the expenditures of the government would be some $30 billion less than they are today. This would more than permit us to have very significant tax relief for everyday Canadians.
That is what I hear from my constituents. That is what I hear in Calgary Centre-North. People want tax relief. They want the level of their taxes reduced through exactly the sorts of measures which a Conservative government would propose.