Madam Speaker, the Conservative Party of Canada believes that Canada can become the most prosperous nation in the world, but we do not think that can happen with the Liberal government at the helm. Certainly not when it is supported by the NDP and is taking its marching orders from the NDP when it comes to economic and fiscal policy. I cannot think of a worse scenario in terms of generating wealth for Canadians, creating jobs, and doing the things that are necessary to provide Canadians with the opportunity that they really deserve.
Having said that, it is my pleasure to stand today and say that we are going to support Bill C-43 because we have been able to make some changes to it.
I want to point out to the House and to my friend across the way that back when we had a throne speech at the beginning of September, the Conservative Party insisted and finally got amendments to the throne speech that called for tax relief. It is actually the same tax relief that my friend in the NDP was running down a moment ago and was agreed to by his party. That became part of the budget.
Finally, the government has started to come around and see that these things are important. It is important because Canadians perversely pay income tax at $9,900 a year, which is ridiculous.
We think about helping people on the low end of the income scale. Obviously the NDP do not care about that. However, when it comes to helping people on the low end of the income scale, why do we tax people who are scraping by on pensions? It is ridiculous. I am thrilled that we were finally able to get the government to move a little in our direction on personal income tax cuts.
When it came to tax relief on large employers, the Liberals have gone through this crazy process where they said they believed in this and they had to have it because it would create jobs. Then in an effort to save their political skin they reversed themselves and said that they would take it out of Bill C-43 and strike a deal with the NDP.
Then the next day, after there was much pressure from our party and from people who actually employ Canadians, they put it back in. They said that they would bring it back in a different piece of legislation. It is ridiculous. The Liberals do not have a clue as to what they are doing. They obviously do not have a vision for where we should go down the road. I think it is important for the Government of Canada to have some kind of a real vision, so that we can guarantee Canadians jobs and opportunity down the road.
I want to point out today that we have big challenges. We have flat take home pay in Canada. There was a report in January that showed that Canadian take home pay has only gone up 3.6% since 1989 which works out to an increase of about $84 a year for the average Canadian. That is reprehensible.
In a country this wealthy, to have take home pays flat like that for 15 years, that speaks volumes about public policy. The government is not leveraging the tremendous natural resources that we have and the human resources. The fact that we have this unfettered trade relationship with the United States, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, we should be exploiting that relationship. We are not doing those things to the degree that we could and the result is that take home pay is basically flat in Canada. In fact, there was a report from Statistics Canada the other day pointing to the fact that productivity is flat in Canada. We turned in our worst productivity performance this spring in six years.
Because of the government's high tax policy, average Canadians pay around 49% of their wages in taxes. There was a report by the Fraser Institute that showed an Ontarian making $35,000 a year spends $17,175 in taxes and levies to all the different levels of government, which is crazy.
I know the NDP member says that they pay it to the government and then the government gives it back to them in some form and everyone is better off. What my friend fails to note is that when government reaches into people's pockets, takes $1 out, gives 20% of it to the bureaucracy, and in some cases Liberal advertising agencies, then gives them back 80¢, and people are supposed to be grateful for the 80¢ they get back out of their $1. That is crazy.
We need to figure out which are the things that government can and should do and which are the things it cannot and should not do. There are many things today in which the government is engaged and involved that I think have turned out to be very wasteful. I could talk about the firearms registry and a lot of different things, but time will not permit that.
One thing the Conservative Party was successful in doing, along with getting the government to change its mind on personal income tax and corporation taxation, was to remove part 15 of the budget legislation that would govern large final emitters under the Kyoto provisions through the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. It was inappropriate. All parties noted that eventually. We claim success on that. We think that is important and it can be done in a different way down the road when the government has taken the time to figure out how to do it in a way that will not unduly hurt the economy. We have to be concerned about that.
We also were able to effect a big change when it comes to the greenhouse gas technology fund. We brought in some amendments, which the government will accept, that would make it much more flexible so companies working through this fund will be able to meet targets in a way that will cost a bunch of jobs in the Canadian economy.
We also brought in several accountability provisions so advisory boards that reported to the minister with respect to the greenhouse gas technology fund would have to make their advice public, which I think is only appropriate.
There are many things we have done to change and strengthen the bill, of which we are proud.
However, the government has to go further. The deal with the NDP is a disaster. I want to argue that there is a better way. We think there is a role for government, it has gone way beyond where it should be in Canada today. Canadians should be allowed to keep more of the money they earn.
Members may have heard me speak in this place before about the impact of leaving $1,000 a year in the pockets of low income Canadians. I did some calculations. Let us think about some of the people we know who are struggling today.
I know a family with four children and a modest income. If we gave that family a $1,000 a year tax break and it was put into an RRSP, it would work out to $1,160 with the break it would get from the RRSP. If we amortize that over 30 years with only a 5% return, it works out to $81,000 that would build in that RRSP. If a tax break of $2,000 a year was given, obviously it is double.
Those people know better than government what is right for their families, with their money. Does it make sense to give money to a government that has wasted money and in some cases, I am afraid to say, money that people in the Liberal Party have stolen? There is no question about that. That is not disputed. In fact, criminal charges have been laid. Liberal Party officials have admitted that they were engaged in stealing money.
Let us make an effort to leave more of that money in the pockets of Canadians who earn it in the first place. If we do that, I think we will eventually reach the goal of making Canada the most prosperous country in the world. We should be there today. We have been falling. Other countries have shot by us. Countries like Iceland, Ireland and the Netherlands have all passed us in terms of standard of living. Why? Because of bad public policy.
Do those countries have resources that we do not have? That is hardly the case. They have no resources, typically. We have all the resources but they are moving ahead of us in standard of living. They have reduced the taxes that hurt their productivity the most, which this government refuses to do. In fact, the finance minister spoke in Halifax today and criticized business for not being more productive. He is the one with some of the highest taxes on capital and investment in the world.
How can our businesses compete when those taxes have gone through the roof? How can businesses go and hire more people when we have that kind of anchor to pull around behind us? Where is the vision from the government to make Canada the most prosperous country in the world?
If we can achieve that, then we can make Canada the most generous country in the world. If we have the most prosperous country, then we can be the most generous.
I want to put the lie right now to what the NDP member and my Liberal colleague across the way were saying just a moment ago. They say that all we believe in is tax relief. Tax relief is the means to an end. What we want is prosperity for Canadians. We want opportunities. I do not really care about having a program that is only about tax relief, not at all.
There are many other things we have to do to ensure that people have that high standard of living. We have to be able to ultimately afford to fund our social programs, like post-secondary education. One of the most important ways to ensure that people have a high standard of living is to ensure they have access to post-secondary education. Not only that, rather obviously, it just enriches the life of the person who gets that education.
The only way to ensure that we will have the money down the road is to expand the tax base. That means getting excessive taxation off the backs of all kinds of businesses such as small businesses, the types that are championed by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business and the Chamber of Commerce, groups which have been very critical of the government in the last while and Bill C-48, and large employers.
I point out that the C.D. Howe Institute says that if the government had reversed itself on removing the taxation on large employers, it would have cost the Canadian economy 340,000 jobs. That is not just a statistic. Those are jobs to individual people, people who have to look after their families. I am glad the Conservative Party and a coalition of people who actually hire workers were able to pound the government to the point where it came to its senses. Now it is bringing back the reduction in taxation for large employers. It is very important to do that.
Getting back to my point, we believe there is an important role for government. The government has a role to play when it comes to ensuring the rule of law, Frankly, we do not do a very good job of that today in Canada. We just had a question period today where the Conservative Party was grilling the government over the report that there were now a thousand Chinese spies operating in Canada.
I want to argue that in many cases money, which should go to essential services, the things only the government can do, is taken away to put into things that the government should not be doing at all, like again the firearms registry. I could talk about other places where it has wasted money. I could talk about the submarines that the government bought and cannot get them to float or sink or whatever it is. It has done a terrible job on some of this stuff. Suffice it to say, we believe there is a role for government.
We also believe the government has a really important role to play when it comes to ensuring that we have access to markets. One of the problems the Conservative Party believes the government has not addressed today is the whole issue of ensuring that we can provide goods and services to the United States, by far our most important market. Eighty-four per cent of all our exports go to the United States, so it is critically important. We see that border too often closed to us these days. We think that is an important role the government has to play, but it has not done a good job of it.
We think the government has a very important role to play when it comes to things like health care. We believe the government should adequately fund health care. We also believe, and I think this is now backed up by the courts, the government has done a horrible job of ensuring, after 12 years, that Canadians can get access to health care. The government cannot blame that on anyone else. It has become so bad that people now have to go to the court to force the government to deal with their medical problems. The government is not doing a good job when it comes to providing certain kinds of government services.
Here is something Canadians run into all the time. Has anyone here tried to get a passport lately? The only place a person can go to get a passport is the government. The government is doing a lousy job with that $160 billion we sent it to use for providing programs and services. It is doing a lousy job when it comes to those kinds of things.
As an MP, I have people come to my office all the time saying that they have sent their paperwork in six or eight months and they still do not have their passports and they have to go somewhere. They are doing a lousy job in providing basic services.
We think there is a role to play. We do not think the government is playing that role. We think very often Canadians could do a better job with the money that goes to Ottawa and too often is wasted.
If the idea is to ensure that people are as well off as they can be, as prosperous as they can be and that they can look after their family, many times a government program will not do that. Many times a family will do that, a family which has a good job or maybe two good jobs. It is a family who has enough income, after they have paid their taxes, to put money into an RESP so they can look after their son or daughter's education down the road or money in an RRSP so they have a bit of a nest egg to retire on. I think that is a great idea.
My friend across the way is mumbling that it was a Liberal idea. It may have been a Liberal idea, but it is also a Liberal idea to tax people to the point where they can hardly afford to put money into RRSPs today. A 49% taxation rate is also a Liberal idea.
We think Canadians need that money to buy groceries or to go on a vacation. We want to see them have a high standard of living. We want them to have enough income after they have paid their taxes so they can really enjoy their life. We want them to have some choice in child care.
Here is another issue on which I think a lot of Canadians are certainly behind the Conservative Party. The government says to parents that they are not doing a good job of looking after your children. Then it says that it will take some tax money away from them and put it into a national day care program. Whether they prefer to use day care or not, they still pay taxes for it.
Many Canadians make a different choices. Many Canadians say that they would like to have one parent stay home for awhile with the children as they grow up.They think that is the best way to help them get through those formative years. Other people make a different choice and put their children in day care. The point is, Canadians should have some choice.
The government, although it denies it, is trying to take away choice by taking tax dollars from everybody and putting it into institutionalized day care. That is the government's preference but it may not be the preference of other Canadians.
The Conservative Party completely opposes that and I make no apologies for it. Every poll I have seen indicates that 80% of Canadians would like to have choice. In fact, 80% of them say they would prefer to spend time at home with their children instead of putting them into a day care. We are not saying they cannot. Give Canadians the choice. The new minister may have had great expertise in hockey, but he does not seem to understand the issue of parental choice.
I look forward to hearing questions from my friends across the way.