Mr. Speaker, it is April and it is snowing outside. It is cold comfort for the hapless taxpayer, as we just heard from the previous speaker.
Before us we have Bill C-25, an act to amend the Income Tax Act, the Excise Tax Act and the Budget Implementation Act, 1999, tendered by the Minister of Finance. This bill is representative of how the government spends the people's money. We must remember that fact; it is the people's money and not the government's.
We know that the Liberals, in an overall sense, tax too much, spend too much and then end up owing too much. It could be said that they are just the lowly Liberals; they exist, therefore they will spend. Because of that nature, the economy is not in great shape, especially when we compare ourselves to the world community.
In considering how our future is being squandered by the waste and mismanagement of the government, we need to hold this administration to account and to outline a real vision of hope and responsibility of what could have been done. We have so much potential as a country but what stands in our way is the ideology carried by the Liberals in budget after budget. It seems Canada is always described as having a great future as far as living memory recalls, but when will it ever arrive?
This bill still represents an old style of governance that does not reflect what the country needs in wise fiscal management. However, it is somewhat in character with what the Liberals calculate they can buy votes with and keep the national attitude going that it is the Liberals who will dole out local favour to those who ingratiate themselves to the party rather than administer it as a trust for the protection and sustenance of all.
The Minister of Finance and his minions know, for example, that HRDC spending is only marginally successful as an overall economic benefit to the economy as compared to alternative strategies. However, the government pursues them anyway no matter how much it will hurt the country in the future because in the short term politicians can make political spin and political boasting about their accomplishments. Patronage and vote buying may influence elections, but it is a perpetuation of the rape of the country for the favoured few.
The electorate needs to distinguish between wise economic governance and crude vote buying, which has now been fully revealed in the House, and what is the character of a Liberal. It is very hurtful behaviour to the country economically and, in a moral sense, it is wrong.
Specifically in the bill, the amendments implement certain measures announced in the budget of February 16, 1999. Also included are income tax amendments to implement a measure relating to taxation agreements with aboriginal groups, included in a notice of ways and means motion tabled in the House of Commons on December 2, 1998, and income tax amendments relating to the demutualism of insurance corporations that were released on December 15, 1998. In some ways it is a technical bill, but it is representative of a misguided and hurtful quasi-socialist ideology with a lot of old style political conniving thrown in.
What the bill is part of is an overly intrusive administration that is Keynesian to a fault. Voters must understand that Liberals cannot manage. When they influence the economy for party interests rather than in the interests of every citizen, we see the reason why historically our country has always come in as an also ran, never great, never bold, full of unrealized potential.
Fiscal decisions are measures of how a government attempts to influence the economy. The national budget generally reflects the economic policy and it is partly through the budget that the government exercises its three principle methods of establishing control: the allocative function; the stabilization function; and, the distributive function.
To understand how we are doing as a country, we must look hard at the world of nations in the global village market so to speak. The comparative picture is not great. Responsibility for Canada's measure of prosperity rests mostly with our own governments and not outside forces. When we hear socialist talk of globalization, it often leads to feelings of helplessness, resentment and envy. The NDP have done fairly well with its politics of envy. Certainly with inadequate economic attitudes, a country can feel like flotsam in the great tide of global economic change.
The irony in globalization is how much importance it places on local attitudes and strategies as determinants of national success. Never before has the maybe tired phrase “think globally, act locally” had more meaning, especially in the realm of macroeconomic. Canada need not be a victim of forces reputedly beyond its control. The degree to which this country shares and engages in the wondrous economic opportunities created by globalization and new technology depends in good measure on what we do at home to be effective abroad. Understanding that we are powerful rather than weak, that we have choices to make rather than immutable facts to accept and that we are as good as anyone else on a level playing field is the key to our national prosperity.
The stakes go far beyond simple measures of per capita wealth and gross domestic product, although those matter very much. Canada's real per capita GDP grew by only 5% in the 1990s despite our embrace of freer trade, some tax reform and other adjustments, for they were too timid. The real per capita income of the Americans rose almost four times; of the Dutch, five times; of the Norwegians, six times; and of the Irish an astounding 18 times, almost doubling in a decade. The Irish might now have higher incomes than Canadians.
Faster rates of growth beat the higher standards of private and public consumption, better housing, more cultural expression, better education, health care, environmental conditions and leisure opportunities. The converse is also true that the evidence is that the more socialistic or centrally controlled the national economy is, the more impediments there are for open markets to function, the worse off are the people both in their household budgets and in their more polluted environment and in their more circumscribed lives with the lack of basic human rights.
However, the rewards of a global consciousness for local competitive conditions go deeper. They ensure that a compelling variety of career opportunities exist for the next generation. Creative and exciting jobs will exist in those localities that learn to serve global markets well. Of all the things we owe to the next generation, this is the most important: good jobs for their own sake and economic freedom to fulfil natural potential. However, the Liberals have not been able to create the needed optimistic economic climate required for growth because they have been too socialistic and too prescriptive for the average taxpayer.
An in-depth 1999 survey of 50 leading corporations in Canada revealed some sad realities. Forty per cent of chief executives from Canadian and foreign-owned companies alike put the probability that their own jobs would leave Canada within 10 years at 50/50 or higher. An exodus of chief executives or legal head offices does not put at risk all the Canadian jobs of such companies, but the place where a company's decision making power resides is linked to everything from the opportunities opened to talented Canadians to the potential for strategic alliances with other Canadian companies and broad synergies.
Twenty years ago many Canadians worried about the presence in Canada of foreign-owned companies with significant operational responsibilities here. Many of those firms have since centralized power in their home countries, leaving their Canadian branches with externally directed world product mandates. Now the pressing concern is whether globally successful Canadian-owned companies will stay here or even start here. Why would they? The Liberals tax too much, spend too much, owe too much and they cannot manage the people's money.
We have much higher corporate and personal tax rates, more restrictive regulations governing mergers, compensation, exchange listings and tax deferrals. There is a brain drain from the universities. Inflexible unions and rigid labour markets hold us back. Boondoggle waste starves needed infrastructure investment. Sadly, we still have a cultural hostility to economic success.
Many Canadians dismiss business community concerns, especially after the turmoil of the 1980s, but they can be explained in large part by mismanagement of public finances from government rather than private sector activity. Many more changes are required to reap the benefits and opportunities of globalization. As the most recent federal budget showed, we have not understood how urgent these issues are and how amenable they remain to our own decisions. The Canadian Alliance clearly says that we could do so much better as a country. Canada's story is one of missed opportunity, a story of what could have been if we had a more competent and ethical government.
For example, we have warned for the need to anticipate high interest rates and its consequences, but the debt bomb has been left ticking away. We should have been accomplishing more in reducing the national debt. Every prudent householder and small business owner knows that when times are more prosperous it is time to put the finances in order to withstand a future downturn. It means paying down debt to reduce interest payments. At the same time, capacity room is created for borrowing later should it be necessary. This applies to the country as well. If we do not reduce debt when times are good, when will it every be appropriate, when the economy is in recession and revenues are falling while expenses are rising? Hardly. That again is the Liberal record.
Canada has enjoyed almost nine years of uninterrupted moderate economic expansion, which, among other benefits, has helped the government to eliminate the yearly deficit. Long term economic policy should be such that the government sets its fiscal levels of taxation and expenditures to promote economic growth without inflation. As the economy continues to grow, while running close to capacity, and as the unemployment rate declines, the threat of inflation grows.
These circumstances call for rapid debt reduction and limited, if not zero, increases in government spending. Debt reduction itself will restrain inflation somewhat and holding back expenditures will dampen the damaging economic fires. The old habit of the Liberals is to use rising government revenues to spend for redistributive programs rather than reduce debt. It is reasoned that there are potentially more votes when the government writes cheques to people than relieving burden that is not immediately evident.
This approach has two problems. First, increased expenditures fuel inflation in a heated up economy resulting in higher interest rates. Second, high levels of taxes that were necessary to slay the deficit are out of line with those in other developing countries.
High taxes act as a break on future growth as money seeks to escape the claw of the tax man. High taxes discourage risk taking and tend to send investment offshore. That means no growth. Without growth there will be less income to redistribute and fewer resources to put medicare or other social programs on a stable, sustainable footing and be more shielded from the ups and downs of the world economy.
Taxes can be significantly and permanently reduced only if the interest on the national debt can be reduced. Our permanent outstanding debt is more than $570 billion. It costs more than $40 billion per year just to pay the interest. This is the single largest program of government. For each $1 billion of debt reduction, interest payments would decline by at least $60 million, funds that could be either spent on programs or applied to tax reductions.
The biggest part of the so-called $58 billion in tax reductions announced in the recent federal budget is scheduled to take place three, four and five years from now, long after the mandate of the current government runs out. It is an insincere ploy to make that kind of future commitment when a future government cannot be held to them. It was a wrong choice.
If debt were reduced more aggressively now, the government would gain future room to manoeuvre in two ways. First, the current interest payments would decline and second, a return to deficits would be less a possibility.
Another way of looking at things is the present surplus is hurtful high taxation and the money could be more productively left in the hands of the consumer and entrepreneur, rather than languish in the hands of a government bureaucrat.
Fortunately the debt to GDP ratio is gradually declining. The main reason is moderate growth of the economy and not a decline in the debt through wise management. The debt ratio could decline even faster if only the government devoted more appropriate effort toward planned debt reduction rather than increased program spending. Among other things, increased spending will further complicate the workings of monetary policy and will probably result in yet even more pressure for higher interest rates. As interest rates rise, so will the cost of servicing the debt. It is a vicious cycle which the Liberals have ignored because they chose questionable spending schemes instead of tax relief, internal reallocation and debt reduction.
The way things stand, when a downturn occurs, and it surely will come soon enough, government revenues will decline, interest payments will remain at choking levels and expenditures on employment insurance and welfare will increase. We could easily be right back in the deficit spiral that nearly destroyed the country and the few revenue reductions in the recent budget may never occur. All the sacrifices of the past few years will have been for naught.
We are not out of the woods. Our national balance sheet is far from strong. Until we pay down a good part of the national debt for past unwise spending, we will still be at serious risk. Without real debt reduction, the promised tax adjustments may just disappear.
We cannot put groceries on the table with headlines and budget speeches. We cannot put more money on people's kitchen tables with Liberal Party economics. Personal relief is what Canadians really want and need. They want more money left in their hands for economic freedom. They want more groceries. They might even want to buy a pair of jeans, but they will not be able to do that with this bill because it just does not leave them nearly enough money.
Instead of giving Canadians a fake break, we should give them a real tax break. The Liberals unreasonably disturb the market, confiscate too much from the taxpayer and then poorly and inefficiently deliver high priced services.
The preferred choice is solution 17 of the Canadian Alliance. Our proposal will dramatically lower taxes for all Canadians and ensure that middle class Canadians whom this government is targeting end up with more real disposable income in their pockets and not just a headline and a speech which does them nothing.
The finance minister said in his 1995 budget speech that subsidies to business impede growth. All economists know that this is true in the Canadian context, however the finance minister continues to rubber stamp all kinds of subsidies to business. The minister has previously admitted that government cannot pick winners, but losers can pick governments. Truer words were never spoken.
There have been many losers who have not only picked the pockets of this government, but have also taken resources from the average taxpayer. Yet the finance minister rubber stamps more of these spending schemes. They go to the human resources minister, the Indian affairs minister, the industry minister and the Canadian heritage minister.
Too often they are used for things which appear to be political slush, or things which are of such low priority that they are seen by the average person as complete rip-offs. In some cases they go to some of the wealthiest companies in the world, and too often to boards of directors associated with the Liberal Party that is close to their political fundraising.
In my theme of the character of Liberal style spending and governance, I want to touch briefly upon what has been going on in the Department of Human Resources Development.
Back in January we brought to light an audit which revealed all kinds of mismanagement and a callous attitude toward the hard-earned money taken from Canadians. We found there was little or no monitoring of files on over $1 billion worth of grants and subsidies. There were many cases where applications were not even submitted but grant money was given to people. We found all kinds of unbelievable things especially in Liberal ridings.
The sad thing is that instead of following accepted standards of professional public administration, program designs were flawed and unreasonably open to political interference in what should have been business standards and program delivery decisions rather than questionable political favours. When they were found out, a six point fix-up plan was hatched afterward with a promise to do better. The plan is an unbelievably simple recitation of the most basic procedures that ordinarily should be followed in any federal program.
The conclusion from all of this is irrefutable and absolutely conclusive. The Liberals cannot manage. The more we have dug, the worse it gets. The government hangs onto every bit of information as long it can, running a game of confusion all geared to hide the true nature of the Liberal style of the money game.
The Indian affairs minister has all kinds of disasters going on in his area and the police have been called in to conduct investigations in the Prime Minister's riding. This has happened at a time when the finance minister has brought down a budget that has more of the same. There is even more money in the budget going to the human resources minister. It is almost like a dare to stick it to the taxpayer one more time. It is unbelievable after the record of poor program design, general mismanagement and even outright political meddling.
The ministerial accountability rule dictates that at least several ministers should resign in view of this. They are responsible for the planning, approval and ultimate delivery of those programs. There is no question that they should resign.
The government spends about $13.5 billion a year on grants and contributions. The entire time the government was cutting the heart out of health care, it maintained very questionable spending for grants and contributions.
The Liberals' desire to spend for their friends and to support their outmoded prime the pump economic strategy kept them funding these pet projects. They made a cruel heartless choice. They cut hospital beds across the country so that they could fund hotel beds in Shawinigan. That is what it appears to be.
Repeat that word picture a thousand times across the country. The Liberals call these schemes job creation. When challenged about its claim of 30,000 jobs, the government cannot provide any quality evidence that it produced significant program goals. Many of the companies just got the money and then went bankrupt. For many there were no records, but for the Liberals it was only $1 billion so who needs to keep records? Many of these programs likely hurt more than they helped.
We must also remember that this comes on top of massive tax increases which the government has brought forward over the six and a half years it has been in power. Canadians know that at the end of the day they will be paying more in taxes than they did when the Liberals took power. We would never know that from reading a headline the other day, “$58 billion in tax relief”. The real impact is that Canadians will still be paying a lot more in taxes than when the government came to power, about $700 per family.
We can congratulate the government for pulling the wool over the people's eyes, including a lot of the fawning, unquestioning media, but the truth is that Canadians will still be paying taxes that are far too high even after the implementation of this bill. Canadians will see the effect on their pay stubs as the year progresses, as the changes in this bill and others are implemented.
In addressing budget 2000, I am sure all members are conscious that millions of Canadians have hopes and dreams for themselves and their children that can be affected by the spending and taxation policies and budgetary promises of the federal government. For example, if the federal government wastes taxpayer dollars through irresponsible spending, then it is Canadians who will suffer. They are the ones who then have fewer dollars available to fund services such as health care which Canadians value highly.
If the federal government taxes Canadians too heavily, it is the take home pay and the bank accounts of individuals, families and employers that are savaged. It is Canadian jobs and economic opportunities that are smothered, or exported to more friendly economic climates.
If the Minister of Finance makes promises and commitments in his budget which are then broken, if the truths asserted in the budget turn out to be half-truths, then it is the faith of Canadians and the integrity of the government itself which are eroded.
Indeed that is where we are at, for fewer voters bother to exercise their hard won right to vote at the ballot box. In each election the percentage of turnout is going down as people get fed up and disengage from the political life of our country. That is what the Canadian Alliance can mend and change, putting real power and democratic influence into the hands of the electorate.
It is clear from the last budget that the highest priority of the Liberal government is not tax relief but increased spending of taxpayers' dollars. The budget reveals that the government will be spending more this year than provided for in last year's estimates. In other words, the promises in last year's budget to limit spending for this year will once again be broken. The chronic tendency of the government to break promises to limit spending has often been criticized by the auditor general. One expert said:
While responding to health care needs and refurbishing the RCMP and military spending clearly reflect the priorities of Canadians, taxpayers should be concerned about the fact that the government is using the surplus of over taxation to fund these priorities. Instead of reallocating from existing budget envelopes by ending corporate welfare, winding down regional development schemes and ending job creation boondoggles, the feds have opted to use the surplus of over taxation revenues to fund new initiatives. The finance minister and his colleagues have ignored the obvious lessons arising from the HRDC. This puts a blemish on this taxpayer friendly budget.
Until the government embarks on a legislated line item plan of annual debt reduction, we will continue to lose on average $114 million a day to institutional bondholders. Reducing debt today cuts tomorrow's taxes.
After years of deep cuts in the wrong places, the Liberals began restoring the Canada health and social transfer, the CHST. However by 2002 federal spending on health care will only reach 1995 levels. The CHST allocation hardly revitalizes the system. What it does not do is take into account an increasingly older population, expensive advances in technology and advances in capabilities.
The announced $2.5 billion is spread over four years and the provinces are free to spend it on universities and colleges as they see fit. This freedom may be good, but the overall picture and economic environment set by the federal level is insufficient. The budget increase will not fix the crisis in acute care, update old technology or heal the shortage of medical and nursing professionals, let alone build new programs.
The Canadian dollar falls to 63.5 cents U.S. and the Prime Minister's response is “No problem”. Canada's best trained people leave for the United States and he says “What brain drain?” The human resources department is found to have mismanaged at least $1 billion in jobs funds and according to the auditor general untold billions of dollars have been wasted. The Prime Minister calls it a minor administrative problem.
Given that history, imagine my smile when the recent Liberal Party convention highlighted the great danger in being next to the world's most dynamic economy. A danger. Anti-Americanism has always proven to be a valuable tool when it is time to rally the troops of the NDP or the Liberals to justify more intrusion of government into markets.
Given that virtually every economist has noted that our growth in the past six years has been a result of our record trade surpluses with the U.S.A., cabinet should be a little embarrassed by focusing on our proximity to the U.S.A. as a big problem. There is little doubt that our future prosperity is based on the American economy remaining strong. Canada is riding the American economic wagon, yet we are complaining about the driver.
In an effort to excuse more government regulation and intervention, focusing on preventing American takeovers of Canadian companies in certain sectors might be worthy of some discussion, but it misses the bigger problems. While too many members of the media play into the fearmongering politicians who decry American ownership in Canada, a real threat to our economy is the huge amount of Canadian money leaving the country. In 1998 a total of $17 billion came into Canada from the United States while $54 billion left.
I do not know why it is so hard for some people to understand that when money leaves it takes jobs and tax revenues with it. When money comes in, most of the jobs stay here and only perhaps some of the profits leave the country after a lot of taxes have been paid.
In the corporate world as much as 70% of all taxes collected are unrelated to income, so the vast majority of tax revenue generated from businesses stays here. The government does not acknowledge the negative economic impact of capital outflow, but the amount of money leaving the country may be the biggest economic problem we face because of the poor economic climate the Liberals have created.
In the past 10 years $135 billion more left the country than came in. If the Liberals want to focus on just one economic problem, this would be a good place to start, and the solution would not be more government intervention, as that would be identified as a major cause of the problem.
There has been a surplus in the last few years despite poor priority allocation, as it has been done with high levels of taxation, which has been an unnecessary drag on economic growth. The budget should be balanced every year, save for times of national emergency. However, it should be balanced at a lower level, where there is not a wasteful confiscation of citizens' labour and production, for at some point taxation even becomes a moral issue of basic economic freedom. The basic economic freedom of Canadians is too tightly held by the government. An excess surplus year after year can also be seen as evidence of burdensome, hurtful taxation.
Concerning taxation, the net impact of the last five Liberal budgets has been to raise Canada's tax bill some $6 billion in 1999-2000 above what Canadians would have paid under the 1993 tax regime.
If Canada needs to reduce taxes, what about the bill before us today? At first glance the bill tries to pass itself off as legislation to bring about tax relief to Canadians. A closer look reveals that for each token tax relief measure there is an accompanying tax grab through another initiative. Specifically, clauses 3, 6 and 8 are revenue generating amendments. Clause 12 enhances incentives for labour sponsored venture capital corporations, which are known to distort the market with respect to sound investments. The other changes in the bill are primarily of a housekeeping nature and include items such as RRSP proceeds on death, demutualization of insurance companies and the hepatitis C trust fund.
In contrast, the Canadian Alliance single rate tax plan, solution 17, would deliver significant, deep, across the board tax relief. The basic personal exemption would be increased to $10,000 and it would also introduce a $3,000 per child standard deduction. Once implemented the measures would remove 1.9 million low income taxpayers from the tax rolls as well as increase disposable income and financial freedom for all taxpayers.
Under our plan taxpayers would pay a maximum federal rate of 17%. The 5% surtax would be eliminated and capital gains would be reduced. Our overall tax relief proposals would improve incentives to work, encourage investment and business risk-taking entrepreneurship and help stem the costly brain drain.
We still have the overwhelming crushing tax burden faced by Canadian taxpayers and businesses. We still have one of the highest personal income tax rates in the G-7. The token measures outlined in Bill C-25 do nothing to reduce that burden. Once again the government masquerades as a proponent of tax relief while simultaneously hiking taxes elsewhere.
However, solution 17, our single rate tax plan, offers real, comprehensive tax relief compared to the tinkering the government has proposed in the bill. Try as it may the government will attempt to portray these legislative measures as a symbol of its ongoing commitment to generous tax relief, but it is our duty to expose the plan for what it really is: tinkering, tokenism, empty of the priorities this country needs.
At the end of January we released the details of solution 17, our 17% single rate tax. Solution 17 is designed to deliver significant tax relief to all taxpayers and it would take 1.9 million low income Canadians completely off the tax rolls.
Here is why we believe this is the right time for major tax reform in Canada and why we believe a single rate plan would be the best vehicle for delivering tax fairness and tax relief to all Canadians. Right now Canada is in a tax crisis. We are paying too much, losing too many people and businesses to the United States, discriminating against families who want to care for their children, creating disincentives for people to work for themselves, to get out of the welfare trap, and penalizing people who want to save and invest for their own retirement and security.
The federal Liberals argue that Canada's fiscal dividend should be used to increase the size of government. Yet the recent OECD analysis of member countries shows that only Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Iceland spend more per capita on government spending than we do in Canada. With our high tax load and the finance minister predicting surpluses approaching $100 billion over the next five years, the timing could not be better for significant across the board tax relief.
Not only is the government taking too much from us in taxes, it is taking it in the wrong way. Over the next few years as we look at growing surpluses we will have a golden opportunity not only to reduce the actual tax load aggressively and quickly, but to reform the tax system to reduce or at least minimize the harm that the system imposes on Canadians' lives.
Canada's current income tax system is structured around three main tax brackets and a surtax. What is wrong with this? The severity of the jump in marginal rates at low income levels exacts a heavy toll on all our taxpayers and, ultimately, the economy. The highest marginal rate, about 50%, kicks in at roughly $60,000, compared to $430,000 in the United States. The U.S. rate is about 39.6%, depending on the state.
There is a massive disincentive to work and save and invest.
This discriminates also between single and dual income families. It leads to accounting gymnastics. Our plan would bring a single rate tax system, augmented by significantly increased personal and spousal deductions and a restored deduction for dependent children. Every Canadian would see lower taxes under this plan. It would maintain all existing deductions and credits, with three significant exceptions. The personal and spousal exemption would be increased and equalized, and we would introduce a standard $3,000 children's deduction to acknowledge the family expense of raising children.
In our plan 1.9 million low income Canadians would be completely taken off the tax rolls. The impact of any single marginal tax rate would then depend on the base exemptions and the rate selected. If we combined the single tax rate with lower taxes for all and greatly enhanced personal exemptions to assist those at the lowest income range, everyone would benefit. That is what would be achieved under our single rate plan.
Under our single marginal rate not only would those individuals and families with a greater ability to pay now pay a greater absolute amount, they would also pay at a greater proportion of income than those at the lower end. A single rate system of taxation would do something else. It would remove the massive disincentive to work, to save and to invest, which is currently the case in Canada. It would end the penalty for hard work and success.
Our current multiple rate system penalizes extra work. Why be more productive or take an extra contract only to have Ottawa take an even higher percentage of the fruits of our labour? Why take investment risks, saving for the future, when Revenue Canada will get a bigger chunk of our effort? This marginal tax penalty would be removed under a single rate system.
A single rate tax would end the existing discrimination between single and dual income families. Right now families who choose to have one parent stay at home are taxed at a higher marginal tax rate. They are penalized by the tax system if they choose to stay home with their children. A single rate system would remove this discrimination and, along with a significant per child deduction, would lower the overall tax burden for families. The Canadian Alliance is the real family friendly party.
Not only would our single tax rate bring income levels more in line with our largest trading partner, it would significantly lower capital gains taxes. This would discourage the brain drain in key sectors of our economy and encourage new businesses and the venture capital formation necessary to attract the well paying jobs that build wealth and ultimately raise the standard of living for all Canadians.
The benefits of a single rate are obvious. A single low marginal rate would eliminate the discrimination between families and would deliver tax relief for everyone. It would eliminate the disincentive to succeed. It would increase take home pay. It would encourage more high tech firms to set up shop in Canada, and it would make all of us more internationally competitive in the new global economy.
It is a plan that would promote growth and wealth creation by making all taxes simpler, flatter and lower. It is a plan for today and a tax plan for Canada's future, and it is all possible using the same economic assumptions and basic numbers of the Minister of Finance.
In conclusion, if we can deliver such an astounding package compared to the Liberals, the basic question must be asked: What are the Liberals doing with the money? They are wasting it and mismanaging it.
This bill does nothing to change the conclusion of the argument that I have made today, and that is that the Liberals cannot manage.
