Madam Speaker, it is indeed an honour to speak to Bill C-43, the budget implementation bill that the government has presented to the House. However I do so with mixed feelings because we actually have before us two budgets. We have Bill C-43 and Bill C-48 which will be debated right after this particular debate collapses.
We need to recognize that certain elements in Bill C-43 are actually quite encouraging and we can support them, particularly the business of implementing the Atlantic accord. This is a very significant issue and we will be supporting it.
However there are some things that I believe the people of Canada and particularly the constituents of Kelowna—Lake Country need to be aware of. This budget implementation bill is not as great as it appears to be.
I want to speak in particular to the personal tax cuts and to tax cuts a little bit more generally because there seems to be a feeling among the Liberals of “Look at how benevolent we are. Look at what we are doing. We are cutting personal income taxes”.
Yes, indeed, the Liberals are cutting them: $16 next year. Most of us know there are 12 months in a year. If we divide 16 by 12, it does not leave us very much per month, does it? I suggest that there are not even enough tax cuts in each month to buy a cup of coffee at Starbucks.
The Liberals then go on to tell everyone what they will do in the future. Yes, by the time we get to 2009, four or five years from now, it will be $192 in savings. That is a pittance. If there is to be a tax cut, let us make it a real tax cut.
The interesting thing is that in those tax cuts and counterbalancing those tax cuts, we need to look at what the budget also does. It increases the overall spending of the government. If we look at it in some detail, we discover that in 1996-97 the real federal program spending per capita was $3,466. It will have risen to $4,255 by the year 2005-06, the year we are talking about now. That is an increase of $800 per capita in volume terms, or $3,200 for a family of four. The current Liberal spending plans will take it to $4,644 by 2009-10. That is a projected increase of almost $1,200 per person.
However increases in real government spending do not necessarily equate to solving problems or getting better results. Imagine if that same money had been left in the pockets of the citizens of Kelowna, for example. If they had put $1,000 of tax savings into an RRSP, which they should all be doing, and if that had been invested at 3.5% per year, and that is a very low level but is, at the same time, very realistic, that would result in a nest egg of $29,200 in 20 years and $53,000 in 30 years. A return of 5% would result in a nest egg of $34,000 and $69,000, almost $70,000 in 30 years.
It is pretty evident that if that money had been left in the hands of individual citizens and they had invested it as they wanted to do it and at these very minimal rates of return, they would have benefited far better than a measly $16 tax cut or, in 10 years, $192. That is on an individual basis.
We need to cut the taxes of industry. I have been an advocate of cutting taxes to business for a long time. There is a reason for this. What does not seem to be clear is that business employs people and it is business that actually is the economy of a country and makes the country work. It is business that creates new ideas, that innovates new products, that commercializes the findings of research, that actually conducts research to make better products, that makes the process of manufacturing a little bit more efficient, that provides employment for all kinds of people and that focuses the application of money in such a way that it gets the greatest resources.
We have a tremendous industrial sector and a great manufacturing sector in this country. However, by increasing the taxes and making the tax burden so heavy, these people are finding themselves hamstrung to do the innovation they know they can do but cannot implement because they do not have the capital to make it possible. They do not expand their plants or invest in machinery and equipment because the tax burden is too high.
There was a time when the government even had a capital tax. It really did not matter whether a business was doing anything at all. Simply by having invested millions of dollars in equipment and machinery, they were taxed on the fact they had put that money to work.
Can anyone imagine anything less economically stimulating than a capital tax, and yet that was done? It cost many people their jobs. It is such backward thinking to do that sort of thing and yet we do no have a reasonable tax cut for businesses in this budget. I cannot help but encourage members to think about increasing the tax cuts for business.
The other point I want to make has to do with trust and the management of our country's affairs. We will soon be debating Bill C-48. I will not go into it in any great detail but I want to refer to a provision in the bill that essentially provides $4.6 billion without a plan as to how that money will be spent.
We are in the business at the moment of listening to the discoveries of Justice Gomery. He is revealing what happened over the last number of years because there was a fund designed to build stronger unity in Canada, particularly with Quebec. Two hundred and fifty million dollars were spent in the advertising program to build things up but with no plan as to how that was supposed to actually be done. The result is that the money was spent not only willy-nilly but very clearly through fraudulent activities. We now know it as ad scam.
How did that ad scam program actually work? There are essentially three points. First, advertising agencies overcharged the federal sponsorship program with fake invoices for work that was never done. Second, the agencies then gave the money to Liberal Party workers and riding associations. Third, in some cases the agencies hired Liberal Party campaign workers and paid them using taxpayer money gained from the sponsorship program. I am sure some people listening want us to provide some evidence of this because we make these broad, sweeping statements. We had witnesses and testimony has been presented. Let me read into the record some of the testimony that was actually given to the Gomery commission.
Lafleur Communications took a commission of $112,500 for simply delivering a $750,000 cheque to VIA Rail. It received $112,500 to carry a cheque from one corporation to another? Those were taxpayer dollars.
Bernard Thiboutot of Groupaction funnelled cheques totalling $57,000 to Liberal Party organizers through an employee consulting company. These too were taxpayer dollars.
This is all sworn testimony.
Luc Lemay, whose companies took in $36 million in sponsorship contracts, testified that he paid Jacques Corriveau, a close friend of Jean Chrétien, nearly $7 million in commissions over the years. He said that Corriveau did little or no work for this money. These were taxpayer dollars.
Those are three examples.
In conclusion, I want to thank the people who voted for me in the last election. It has been an honour to represent them in this House, but at the same time I feel honour bound to tell them this about the budget. We will support this implementation bill at the end of this day because it has some good things in it, but I want them all to know that there are some things in this budget that are very wrong and they will see why in the debate on Bill C-48.