Mr. Speaker, the member for Western Arctic is, as usual, very eloquent and is absolutely right.
In study after study by KPMG and Price Waterhouse, it has been confirmed that the corporate sector gets its major source of subsidy from Canada's health care system. Therefore, the primary level of competitiveness that comes from Canadian companies is due to our publicly subsidized health care system. A company in Canada does not have to pay the health care premiums that a company in the United States or in other countries has to pay. Our public health care system is a major source of subsidy and support to Canadian companies.
What happens? Because we obviously have a mathematically challenged finance minister and a Prime Minister who learned his economics from a textbook and never actually had to meet a payroll in his life, instead of adjusting corporate income taxes so the corporate sector picks up part of the cost of that extensive subsidy, they give more money to the corporate CEOs.
On the one hand, we subsidize, through public support, health care, but as health care declines, instead of providing more funds for that, which would be a greater support for Canadian companies at the same time as it is greater support for ordinary Canadian working families, we see the opposite. The Conservatives cut back in health care and make the health care system worse but they give tens of billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts; $6 in corporate tax cuts for every $1 in new program funding. That is absolutely disgraceful.
However, I did find one element in the budget that purports to help working people and it is the announcement the minister made about a tax-free savings account. He compared it to RRSPs. Canadians would assume that means that the money going into a savings account is tax free. That is not at all the case. This is just another case of Conservative snake oil. The money going into that tax-free savings account is fully taxed. It is only the small interest income that the individual gets that is tax-free.
That is just another example of how little the Conservative government does for ordinary working families. It is a disaster. It is as bad as the former Liberal government and that is saying a lot.