Mr. Speaker, in early April, I asked the Minister of Finance to explain to Canadians why his party was choosing to pursue unnecessary corporate tax cuts rather than focusing on important priorities for Canadians.
I will put this in perspective. Before entering public life, I was a business leader. I remember during the 1990s us petitioning to try to bring down corporate taxes. I will share with the House some of KPMG's tax figures. I recall back in 2000 when the federal tax, including a surtax, was 29.1%. It went down in 2004 to 22.1%. In 2007, it was 22.1% again. In 2010, it is down to 18%.
I also recall in mid-2000 the business community saying that if it could only get to 17% it would be a good corporate tax rate. It is at 18% now and there have been a lot of changes to our economy and a lot of requirements that are needed for investments in our country to ensure we have the kind of country that we want to have going forward.
What the Liberal Party is advocating is that rather than continuing to decrease tax rates from 18%, possibly getting down to 15%, we press the pause button.
I asked the Minister of Finance a question about whether it would not be better to take some leadership as a country and make strategic investments in our country.
We know there is a perfect storm coming. We know, for example, that we have aging demographics, a pension crisis, a skilled labour shortage and our health care costs are sky-rocketing. In the future, 50% to 70% of provincial revenues may be used toward health care costs. We need to find some solutions to those issues.
We also have a change in our economy. We are moving from an industrial economy to a knowledge based economy. We need to make big investments to ensure we have the workers for the jobs of tomorrow and to ensure we take care of some of the concerns that we have as Canadians.
Instead of pushing the pause button on decreasing corporate taxes, the Conservatives are actually increasing payroll taxes by some 35% over the next five years. They speak out of both sides of their mouths. They say in one sense that they will decrease corporate taxes and bring them down even below what the corporate community was calling for but on the other hand they will increase payroll taxes by some 35% over the next five years.
We need to make investments in innovations, in science and technology and in the jobs of tomorrow. We need to make investments in the care of Canadians, in learning, in early childhood education, in ensuring that everyone has access to post-secondary education and in ensuring that people have the right kinds of skills needed in our country.
We had a conference a couple of months ago where we engaged Canadians on the type of Canada they wanted to have by the time we reach our 150th anniversary. We talked about some of the changes that are occurring in Canadian society. Some of the knowledgeable speakers who came to see us spoke about the rising level of unemployment in our country. Another million people will be joining the unemployment ranks over the next number of years. By the time we reach 2017, over another million Canadians will be unemployed but at the same time there will be over 1.7 million job vacancies. That is because of the skill shortage in our country.
Why would the minister not consider making some very important leadership choices and decide to press the pause button on corporate taxes and make some very big investments in our communities?