--and recommend to the Governor General to dissolve Parliament. The Governor General would have all the authority to do so.
As my colleague from Beaches—East York just mentioned, if somebody actually read the BNA Act, our Constitution, they would see that this is actually what we already have. Under the Constitution, Parliament has to be dissolved no later than in the fifth year of the preceding election.
However, within that time, the prime minister can go to the Governor General and recommend that Parliament be dissolved at any time. In fact when one looks at it, historically it is usually toward the end of the fourth year following a general election that the prime minister of a government in Canada has actually done that. That is the first thing.
I ask that members please not say that Bill C-16 is about fixed election dates, because it is not, and I ask them not to claim that this would ensure that the Prime Minister of the sitting government, the Conservative government, will not, to use the terms that the members opposite have been using this very day, abuse his authority by calling an election at any time. In fact, if this bill were in effect right now, it would allow the sitting Prime Minister of the Conservative Party, who is also Prime Minister of Canada at this point, to go tomorrow to the Governor General. There is absolutely nothing in the bill that would stop that.
I ask members to please not call it a fixed election date and to please not attempt to portray it as being something fundamentally different from the system we have been governed by here in Canada since Confederation, because this does not change anything fundamentally. This is a game of smoke and mirrors on the part of the Conservative government.
Does that surprise me? I would like to say it does, but unfortunately it does not. It is no different from the tabling of the 2006 budget. The Conservative government heralded tax cuts. It said, “We are going to help the most poor, the most disadvantaged”. What? Does increasing the lowest marginal tax rate from 15% to 15.5% lower taxes? No, of course not. It increases taxes.
I do not know about my colleagues on the opposite side, but I can speak for my colleagues on this side, the Liberal Party, the official opposition. After July 1 when that tax hike kicked in, most of us received a lot of letters from our constituents who happen to be seniors. They were saying, “I thought the Conservative government said it was lowering taxes. How come my taxes just got increased half a point?” They were not too pleased. The Conservatives may want to think about that.
On the other hand, the Conservatives talked about lowering the GST and how that was going to put a lot of money into people's pockets. Studies actually show that in order for somebody to make back $100 on that one point reduction they would have to spend a heck of a lot more money. They would have to spend $10,000 for that one point reduction to put $100 in their pockets.
I do not know too many people in my riding who have that kind of disposable income that they can spend $10,000, whether it be on clothes, restaurant meals or buying a new car. I do not know too many people who can spend $10,000 of their disposable income in order to get back $100. Most people would have preferred that the marginal tax rates remained where they were rather than increase them 5% in order to pay for luxury items for people who can afford to go out and spend $10,000, $20,000, $30,000 or $40,000 a pop.
Another example of the duplicitousness of this--