Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Scarborough—Guildwood.
This is an issue that all of us have heard from our constituents at length. There is a big push across the country to get the Conservative government to mend its ways and reverse the devastating policy initiatives it has made since it has come into office. The Conservatives have not only affected individuals by raising taxes, particularly on the poor, but they have also negatively affected the private sector, the small to medium sized businesses. These businesses are the heart and backbone of our country. They provide the jobs that generate the tax revenues that allow any government to have the resources to deal with everything from health to education.
Let us take the first big blunder by the government, and we are dealing with that today. It is the issue of income trusts. I remember, as do all members of the House, what the Prime Minister said when he was in opposition before the last election. He put his hand on his heart and said, “Whether it is death taxes, or taxing income trusts, a new Conservative government will never let this happen”. He said that to all Canadians. What did he do when he came into power? He took his hand off his heart and announced to all Canadians that he would tax income trusts.
We all knew there were problems with income trusts. In fact, the former finance minister, who currently sits in the Liberal caucus, had put out solutions and said that we should look at this. The government today, the then opposition, castigated the Liberals for even thinking about it, saying that they would never do it.
As a consequence of the hand on heart promise by the Conservative Prime Minister, millions of Canadians from coast to coast put their faith in him. They thought they could trust that individual and put their hard-earned moneys into income trusts.
Who are these people? Many of them are grandmothers and grandfathers. They are individuals who have limited resources and require a standard and ongoing reliable source of income in order to provide for themselves in their elderly years. People with limited funds and had very little to spend put their money into income trusts based on the promise of our current Prime Minister.
When the Prime Minister taxed income trusts, he ripped off and destroyed $25 billion of Canadians' assets, ordinary Canadians, many of whom are poor, or have limited resources or are retired. He robbed $25 billion of their hard-earned moneys, moneys in capital that they can never ever hope to recover.
Imagine, if these individuals were our grandmothers, grandfathers, fathers or mothers who had their moneys robbed at one of the most sensitive times of their lives. That is what has happened.
It has also caused companies to be open for takeover. As a result of the government's gross and irresponsible mismanagement, we have seen, through this income trust blunder, 15 takeover attempts in the last five months and another 15 strategic takeovers in critical sectors. That is a direct result of what has happened.
We have also seen a number of other takeovers as a result of income trusts plunging in value, others coming in from outside of the country and taking these assets from Canadians. In other words, what the government has done by lying to the public is it has allowed others from outside the country to rob Canadians of their assets. That is unthinkable. Frankly, I do not know why the government does not say that it made a mistake and that it will change this, but I know it will not. I will get to that a little later.
On the income deductibility issue, for Canadians who are watching, it will not allow Canadian companies to be on a level playing field. Countries such as Japan and many others allow their companies to deduct interest on moneys that they borrow in order to acquire companies abroad. When our companies are deprived of doing that, we are hamstringing them and preventing them from competing with other countries globally.
By doing that we not only prevent our ability to expand, because we are a trading nation, but we also prevent our country from growing economically and as a result prevent the creation of jobs and the tax base that I thought the Conservative government would understand. But it does not.
Frankly, I do not understand why, other than to talk about how decisions are made in that caucus and how decisions are made in government today, which is vastly different from the way things were made before. In other words, we have a very small number of people in the Prime Minister's Office, including the Prime Minister, and a tiny number of people around him, who make all the decisions, who tell cabinet ministers what to say and what to do, and tell them what not to do and what not to say. That deprives cabinet ministers and backbench government members from being able to do their jobs and represent their constituents.
It prevents the bureaucracy from being able to provide the intelligent, informed, and knowledgeable opinions that they have and advice that they could give to any government regardless of stripe. The reason why this happens is that the Prime Minister is a follower of the political philosopher Leo Strauss from the U.S. who believes that a small number of people are predestined and predetermined to rule a country.
Because we have a small number of individuals doing this within the Prime Minister's Office, including the Prime Minister, and because this is made with a very small number of individuals without adequate checks and balances, that is why we are seeing the blunders that the government is committing today.
The normal checks and balances that have been there forever are now gone. Frankly, I have never seen it before, where a Prime Minister erodes the power of the media in asking questions that are required and erodes the power of the public sector to engage not only government members but also opposition members.
We as opposition members regardless of stripe are deprived and prevented from being able to access the knowledge, abilities and information from government workers in the public service. We cannot even get the briefings that we need when we need them because it is shut down by the Prime Minister's Office.
What does that do to democracy? It erodes the fundamental pillars that we have in our country. That hurts everybody. It hurts the government, the Prime Minister, opposition members, it hurts democracy and worst of all, it hurts the public, the people who rely on us to do our job for them.
A symptom of this is the ridiculous situation that took place with Shane Doan. Why do we have issues like this coming to the forefront when we should be dealing with health care, which never comes to the forefront in the House, and yet the average wait in an emergency department now is 8 to 12 hours? The 8 to 12 hours, when one is sick in emergency, is a crisis and it should be something that the House should be dealing with, with the provinces. But do we hear about it? No, we do not hear about it.
Do we hear about the poor? No. Why? It is because the government raised taxes on the poor. It lowered the basic personal exemption and it raised the lowest tax rate on the poor. How unthinkable is that at a time of surpluses? Why are we not dealing with issues like poverty reduction? Why are we not dealing with issues, pragmatic solutions to deal with the environmental crisis? Why are we not dealing with the aging workforce that we have? Why are we not talking about the demographic time bomb that is coming through our country like a tsunami, that is not even being addressed in the House? Why?
These are the solutions that members across party lines can put their competent minds to, to deal within the interests of the public service and in the interest of the public. We have great people in our country and in the House. We have wonderful ideas in the House, outside of the House, in the public service, across our country and around the world. We could be a place in the House where we could adopt those solutions and apply those solutions in the interest of the public. Why are we not doing that?
It is in part, as I said, because we have a Prime Minister and a new government that is focused on trying to win elections and not serving the public. The public service has been subsumed to private interests in the case of the government and in doing this, it has weakened everything that we wish to do, from trying to deal with proper economic solutions that it is failing at, and we have two today on income trusts and income deductibility, to social program renewal, the environment, defence and foreign policy where it is missing in action frequently. These are the issues Canadians care about.
These are the issues that Canadians pay our salaries to do for them. These are the issues the House should be consumed with and yet it is not. I hope that the public gets mad enough to demand from the government and the Prime Minister the responsible actions that they demand of a competent Canadian government and a competent Canadian institution. I hope they do it and they do it soon, and we will be there to help them.