Madam Speaker, before I begin my speech, I would like to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the member for Longueuil—Saint-Hubert.
I am pleased to rise today to talk to an issue finally that really matters to people in my riding, and if the motion were to pass, would actually do something for them. We spend a lot of time talking about various issues which the different parties bring forward, but I am not always convinced that the subject is really top of mind for my constituents.
The idea that people who in half a day make what an average Canadian worker makes in an entire year send that money to Barbados and do not pay tax on it, or who decide around the corporate board table to get paid in stock options instead of a salary and not pay the same tax on that money, is outrageous.
There is an important principle at stake here. It is one which separates the NDP from the other two traditional parties in the House which have spent a long time working together to find ways to help people who are already rich and powerful shelter their money and not pay their fair share of taxes. That is something on which Canadians want to see us take action. People where I am from want to see us take action on this.
People go out to work every day and they pay their fair share of taxes. They are also looking at their families and noticing that as their parents and grandparents age, they need help with health services. The cost of drugs is high. Yet, we have heard successive Liberal and Conservative governments, no matter what they promise in their platforms, plead poverty. They claim not to have money for a national pharmacare program. They claim it is too expensive and ask where they would get the money. It is pretty hard to believe government, whether it be Conservative or Liberal, that we do not have the money, when we see the amount of money that is bleeding out of the Canadian economy every year because people who make obscene amounts of money do not want to pay their fair share of taxes.
It is hard to believe that we do not really have the money. The problem is that the Liberals and Conservatives would have to stand up to their friends in order to get it. Canadians deserve a government that is willing to stand up to corporate Canada and say, “You are here making money in Canada. You have to pay your fair share.” Companies are making money in Canada and they are making that money because Canadians go to work every day and produce value for those companies. Government should stand up and tell them to pay their fair share so that when a mother gets sick and needs a certain prescription drug regimen, she can afford it. When Canadians are going out to work to produce that value for those companies, the companies should chip in their fair share so that their workers can have proper child care so that their kids have a safe place to be during the day. The workers are producing value for the people and companies that cannot be bothered to pay their fair share in taxes but instead think that sending their money to Barbados is an acceptable way to conduct themselves.
This issue is one of the main drivers for my participating in politics. I look at the old line parties, be they Liberal or Conservative, and the way they fold when powerful, rich folks come to Ottawa to tell them what to do, and I think it is disgusting. Canadians deserve better.
As an example, we thought that maybe the Liberal Party was about to kick its old habit of kowtowing to the rich and powerful in Canada in the last election when the Liberals agreed to close the stock hold loophole for CEOs. It is in black and white in the Liberals' platform. That was a promise. Nothing changed from before the election to after the election, except that the Liberals were elected. They knew they had four years in government and they did not have to keep their promises to Canadians. That was their attitude. The only thing that changed was that they were elected. Then the Bay Street lobbyists came to Ottawa, and the evidence is in the lobbying registry, and spoke to their buddy the minister of high finance and said, “Mr. Minister, please, you can't do this. It is going to cost me so much money I am going to have to get the “B” class yacht instead of the “A” class yacht.”
Can the Liberals go to Canadian families and tell them there is not going to be a national pharmacare plan? Can they go to Canadian workers, the ones who are working for me, and tell them they cannot get reliable access to safe child care because people do not want to be embarrassed when they go down south for a month and their yacht is not the nicest on the dock? Imagine the nerve and the gall of what is being said in those private conversations and what is being asked of ordinary Canadians who not only need help but are working and paying their fair share for a system in this country that they want to deliver on the things they need, be it child care, be it a drug plan, be it investments in home care.
We have a government that is unwilling to go after tax cheats. It is giving them amnesty. Then the government is saying it does not have enough money for home care so the provinces are going to have to accept the Harper escalator on health care. If the provinces want just a little home care money that the government eked out for Canadians, which was an election promise that was to be flowed immediately, the government managed to find a little of that money but it is not going to give it to the provinces unless they sign on to the Harper escalator.
That is where politics has gone in this country under the Liberal government. It is using promises it made and money that should have been there, that the government promised would be there, to hold provinces hostage unless they accept less health care funding overall, funding which would have a direct benefit to Canadian working families. In the meantime, the government is instructing the CRA to give amnesty to the people who are taking money out of the Canadian economy and sending it elsewhere. It is reprehensible.
We could talk about other current issues, for instance, worries about whether we have enough resources to accommodate refugees, whether we are doing our fair share when it comes to first nations and giving them what they are owed in order to get those communities back on their feet. Again, governments plead poverty, be it a Liberal government or a Conservative government. It ends up the same.
The fact of the matter is we produce a lot of wealth in Canada. If the people who are making the most, those at the top, would pay their fair share, we could afford to do these things.
There is a revenue problem in Canada. It is not because the revenue does not exist. It is not because the wealth is not being produced. It is not because we cannot pay for these things. It is because the government will not pay for it, because it means challenging its buddies. That is not fair to ordinary Canadians who are paying their fair share, who are going to work every day, and who thought they were voting for a government that was willing to do that.
The government talks about its tax cut for the middle class. The Liberals cannot define the middle class, so it is interesting to hear them use the term all the time. In fact, they put in writing that they could not define the middle class. At least we can say that the middle class according to the Liberals does not include anyone who makes under $45,000 a year.
Then the Liberals promised they would make up for that tax cut at least by instituting a new tax on those making the most, and that that was going to be revenue neutral. Well, they did bring in that tax increase, but they did not do it on the basis of paying for the tax cut for the middle class. The people who got the most benefit out of that tax cut already make six figures. There we have it again.
The Liberals were going to do the Robin Hood thing. They were going to tax the rich, bring in a whole new tax bracket. They were going to pay for this tax cut that was supposed to be for the middle class but actually ended up being for people making six figures, and they could not even get that right. At the end of the day, they actually reduced government revenue to give a tax cut, the maximum benefit of which went to people making six figures, and in the meantime granted amnesty to the people we know are Canada's worst tax cheats.
How does that square with the notion that the Liberals are going to courageously go after Canada's wealthy to give a fair shake to ordinary Canadian workers? For those in the House who are wondering and those at home who are wondering, it does not square. That is why I am glad to be sitting in a caucus of 44 people who are willing to say so and put it on the record, because if it was up to the other two parties, no one would be saying that much.
It is important to speak truth to power. It is something the Liberals promised to do, but when the Bay Street lobbyists came and the decision point came and they actually had to do the deed, they actually had to say, “Sorry, rich guys whom I really want to be friends with because you are just so cool, and maybe I will get to ride on your helicopter to a private island, but we are going to have to do something that costs you money.”
When it came down to it, the Liberals could not do it. They just could not do it. The Liberals just want to fit in so badly with the rich and powerful, when they should be trying to fit in with ordinary working Canadians who go to work every day and pay their taxes, and who want to be part of a country that assesses a fair rate on everyone and does not say, “Because you make a lot of money, you are off the hook.”
What is the message being sent to Canadians here? The message is that if they get caught not paying quite enough tax but make a regular income, the Liberals will come after them. The problem is they did not cheat enough. If they had just cheated more, then they would be in the category of people the Liberals do not really want to go after.
The message being sent to Canadians is not to cheat a little bit, but to cheat a lot. They can only do that if they make enough money to cheat that much, and if they do, the Liberals will want to be their friends. Otherwise they are just ordinary Canadians, and the Liberals cannot give them the time of day after getting elected.