Ken Epp

[Privilege, April 15th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I really think it would be helpful for you to have all the truth and all the facts as you study this. I would like to appeal again to members on the other side to grant leave for the member to table the document that he wanted to table since it is valid information and should be considered.

[Excise Act, 2001, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member and was quite interested in the fact that he spent quite a bit of time talking about the airport tax which of course is not in this bill. It was in a previous bill. The hon. member raises some important points with respect to taxation.

In pretty well every speech the member talks about the Tobin tax. I do not know whether he has thought through the idea of having a money movement transaction tax that would siphon billions of dollars out of the economy and put it into the hands of the government or the governments of the world to redistribute as they want.

Is the member really convinced philosophically that that is the way to solve the problems of poor people? Would it not be a lot better if instead we had entrepreneurs go into these areas, start up businesses, manufacturing plants and other things, give these people an education, help them to work in the knowledge industry or whatever and have them develop jobs instead of perpetuating the idea of a government taking money away from those who earn it and giving it to those for simple survival?

I would like to do so much more than just provide for survival for these people. His Tobin tax idea is really very short sighted. I would like him to comment on that.

[Excise Act, 2001, April 9th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am continuing an interrupted speech. The speech was interrupted about two weeks ago when 1.30 p.m. rolled around on a Friday afternoon in the middle of my riveting presentation.

I do not know whether I hold the record on the interruption of speeches but I do remember one in which my speech was interrupted in early December. I do not remember which year but I completed the speech the following year in November. I remember that because it was an 11 month interruption of a speech.

The bill we are debating today is a bill on taxation. I am sure all members present have taken the time to read Hansard from two weeks ago Friday and have re-read the first part of my speech so they have the continuity. In case some have not I will reiterate again that the theme of my speech is the insatiable appetite of the government for tax dollars. Bill C-47 is about taxation.

I talked about the three different ways in which the government can tax individuals and corporations. There are actually four different ways in which the government can earn revenue, directly and by taxation. The three different ways of taxation are: first, taking a portion of everything that a person owns, property taxes for instance; second, taking a portion of everything that we earn through income tax; and third, taking a portion of everything we spend, the much loved GST is an example of that. Many provinces have provincial sales taxes as well.

I live in a province in which there is no provincial sales tax. To my knowledge we have never had a sales tax in Alberta. Until that hated GST came in it was actually wonderful to go to a store. If someone bought something that had a price of $5.99 and gave $6.00 in payment, a penny was given back. There was no computation of a tax. There was no sales tax. I would propose that perhaps the lack of a sales tax was one of the things that helped to make Alberta so strong that it is now one of only two provinces that is a net payer into the scheme of equalization.

I went to school in Portland, Oregon for a year and was interested to find that at least at that time Oregon was one of only two states that had no sales tax. Somehow I am attracted to governments that do not have sales tax.

Economists tell us that sales taxes are a better form of taxation than income tax and that reducing income tax actually has a greater positive effect on the economy than the reduction of sales taxes. However, there is a huge psychological difference to that. When one earns money, especially if the income tax is deducted at source, one never notices it in a way because one just does not ever get to see it. If we pay too much tax at the end of the year at filing time, we find that there is a bit of a rebate and everyone is happy that they got money back.

I do not know how many people stop to think that it is money the government has taken away from them. It is part of their earnings. The government took more than it was entitled to and is now giving it back. We should be happy that it gives it back in the same sense that we would be happy if someone robbed us and gave us back the money.

It is our own money and it is important for us to never forget that when it comes to taxes the money belongs to the person who earns it. Governments who take part of that money away, either through income taxes or sales taxes, need to always be cognizant of the fact that they are trustees of the money, spending it on behalf of the public for the public good.

I am very incensed when I find the present government taking taxpayers' money and way too often spending it for the government's good and not for the public good. I will give the House an example of that. The Minister of Industry happened to be in my riding about a week ago, where he made a great speech and held a meeting at one of the new hotels. All the local dignitaries were there. Everybody was very impressed way out there in rural Alberta in the community of Sherwood Park, which is Canada's largest hamlet with a population of around 45,000. It is still considered a hamlet because it has never been registered.

At the meeting he made some announcements about federal government spending. What was curious was that these were not new announcements. They were announcements that had already been made in the budget. The government is great at announcing and announcing. It seems as if the government multiplies the use of these announcements for political reasons.

The minister basically said “Are we not wonderful?” because the federal government was giving out some money to be used for research. He said that this would be a great boon to our economy, our competitiveness, our creativity and our productivity. He used all the nice buzzwords. He gets a lot of mileage out of announcing $150 million. It takes just the snap of a finger for a Liberal to announce $150 million. A couple of Challengers and all sorts of other things can be bought with $150 million.

There he was announcing it, but I contend simply this: If that money is to be spent for the public good, why does he not just send a cheque? If the money is to go to the university, a cheque should be sent to the university along with instructions on how to use the money and how to report on its accountability. Instead we find the minister making a big announcement.

In another example, I remember the Prime Minister announcing the opening of a call centre in, I believe, Prince Edward Island. The government, through HRDC, helped to fund the introduction of this call centre. The reason I mention this is that we are talking of taxpayers and using their money in trust on behalf of the citizens of this great country of ours. There was the Prime Minister announcing to the people of Prince Edward Island that a grant would enable them to have a new call centre and would provide employment in their community.

On the surface that sounded pretty good, but the reason I remember it is that the response was incredible. I heard about it on the car radio when I was driving. The person who was given this money, and I cannot remember if it was the local mayor or the entrepreneur of the business, told the Prime Minister that he had come through for them when they needed him and they in turn would show the Prime Minister they would be there for him in the next election. That was the gist of the statement.

It ought not to work that way. If the money is needed, it should be spent. If it is not needed, it should not be spent. It is not right to tie it together with the expectation of votes in return. I think the Prime Minister would have been right on if he had told that individual that giving him the money had nothing to do with votes. This was taxpayers' money and for some reason it was taken away from people who earned it and brought there so others could earn some money. I know there is an argument there. We could say it created a new business and jobs for those people who then would generate revenue and pay income tax. They would be paying into the system instead of drawing out of the system.

I know we can make those arguments. Maybe some of them are even justified, but I object strenuously when taxpayers' dollars are used for political purposes, as in my riding with the Minister of Industry making an announcement that had nothing to do with Liberal politics or like the Prime Minister in Prince Edward Island making that announcement.

Here we are talking about increased taxation. Make no mistake about it. Bill C-47 increases the revenue of the federal government by about a quarter of a billion dollars. That is what this is about. It is about increased taxation. It is a rationalization of some taxation. In the case of cigarettes, for example, in different provinces the rates are increasing incrementally. As I said in the previous part of my speech, based on the amount by which those taxes were decreased previously, they are now being restored.

I think I have made my case very strongly. I am sure that all the members here, having listened to my argument, will now have a new resolve in their hearts to never, ever misuse the money that has been given to the government in trust by the taxpayers of Canada to be used for the public good. I hope that is true.

It may surprise the House to know that my present inclination is actually to vote in favour of the bill, a bill that would increase government revenue and taxation. My primary reason for voting in favour of it is that it will increase the price of and thereby hopefully reduce the consumption of cigarettes. I have given speeches on this topic in various contexts before. Whether it is my colleagues in the House, my friends back home or one of my staffers who may be watching this speech right now and who is currently on a quit smoking program, I encourage them to carry through with quitting smoking. Perhaps this tax helped that staffer to make that decision, although I have not actually discussed that detail with him. I would like to encourage him to carry through with that resolve for health reasons and for economic reasons. The best thing we can do is to discourage young people from smoking, thereby ruining their health.

There are also the costs of smoking. I have related before how when I taught mathematics I encouraged my students, as part of the work they did in learning to use their calculators and computers, to compute how much they would have in the bank if instead of smoking they were to put that money into an RRSP over their lifetimes. I used to have them evaluate the mathematical formulas, math and finance exponentials and things like that.

After they evaluated that, which came to around $1.3 million as I recall, I asked whether they knew what they had computed. I went through it and showed them that the 45 meant 45 years from the age of 20 when one started working until 65 when one retired. The .1 at that time was 10% the rate of return that one could get on an RRSP and the $1.3 million was the balance in the RRSP on retirement. They could retire with $1.3 million in the bank if in their lifetimes they would put their smokes money into an RRSP instead of blowing it up in smoke, so the economic argument was strong. I am proud to say that I had a number of students who actually quit on that account. That is my primary reason for voting in favour of Bill C-47. I regret that my time has now elapsed, but I hope that the Liberals will hear my message and act on it.

[Canadian Alliance, April 8th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I was a pretty busy guy this last weekend because we had the big Canadian Alliance convention in Edmonton. My riding is right next door to it.

At the same time we had the largest trade fair in rural Alberta in Sherwood Park in my riding. It was a bit of busyness to jump back and forth between the two functions. I had a lot of fun at that trade fair because literally hundreds of people stopped by. All day Friday I listened to people. By the end of the day I was hoarse from listening so much. It was an intriguing experience.

Over and over people said that we needed to replace that tired, mismanaging Liberal government and they believed we could do it. People came to the booth asking to buy memberships in our party. It was a lot of fun and very exhilarating.

[Excise Act, 2001, March 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I was talking about the taxes on cigarettes being a disincentive. I think especially of those in my knowledge who have succumbed to illnesses caused by cigarette smoking, both heart disease and lung cancer. Those are not good ways to die. It would be a lot better if the use of tobacco were reduced. Whether taxation is the way of doing that I do not know. Generally the principle in my mind is we ought not to use tax policy to drive social behaviour. I think that is an improper mix.

[Excise Act, 2001, March 22nd, 2002]

There are no questions in my speech. The government reduced the taxes to reduce smuggling, the assumption being that if people who wanted cigarettes could buy them commercially at a competitive price instead of buying them from criminals, they would buy them commercially and the criminals would be out of business.

I do not know whether the government has now computed that the criminals are all out of business and will not get back into business, but now it is increasing prices again.

The reason that Quebec's increase is greater is that back in 1994 or 1995 the tax decrease to that province was greater. The government was targeting the areas where most of the smuggling took place. The government is bringing the tax levels back up to where they were before and the differentiation between the different regions of the country is simply to re-establish that the costs will be equal across the country.

I do not have any firsthand knowledge of this point, but a researcher indicated that the cost of a carton of cigarettes would bring in $6.85 in federal excise tax and $5.50 in excise duty, making a total of $12.35 per carton in federal taxes. I think that is absolutely incredible. I wish people would be like me and avoid the tax entirely. Given that they will pay it, I would be very pleased if we would have a lower rate of taxation for them. Plain and simple, I think the government is not entitled to that much money because a person buys a carton of cigarettes. It is a very high rate of tax. I dare to speak out of both sides of my mouth, but maybe we should increase the price even more.

[Excise Act, 2001, March 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I think you look very good in the chair. Perhaps you aspire to making that a permanent position down the road. Learn your French and you will be okay.

I would like to address Bill C-47, an act which has to do with taxation. If members ever listen to any of my speeches they would know that taxes and I do not mix. I recognize and acknowledge that for our different levels of government to do their work a certain amount of taxation is required.

However, let us stop to think about how heavily we are taxed, whether we purchase gasoline, wine and spirits, cigarettes or food in the form of restaurant meals, vehicles, furniture, clothing or even when we give money away.

As a leader in my community, I get, as I am sure all members of parliament do, a fair number of solicitations to contribute to fundraisers. I was solicited not long ago by a group trying to get hockey tickets for a number of young people who did not have both parents. It asked me to contribute to some hockey tickets so that these young people could enjoy the Edmonton Oilers beating someone else hockey game.

I told the group I would contribute and I pledged $50 which I think provided two tickets for these young people. Members can imagine my surprise when I received a statement from the group showing the $50 I had pledged but also showing a charge of $3.50 for GST. I was being billed a tax on my charitable donation.

The federal government, even when its citizens are giving their money away to help others, wants a cut of it. It seems to have an insatiable appetite to take away the earnings of Canadians.

Over and over again we see taxes increase. Once in a while we get a little announcement of a temporary decrease. Even now we hear much crowing from the Liberal side about the reduction in taxes. However when I spoke to people who had received their cheques in January and February, they said that their take home pay did not seem to be that much different. They wanted to know what happened to all the tax cuts they were supposed to get?

We also must remember that our taxes, when it comes to the kind of taxes we are talking about in Bill C-47, the excise taxes and the GST, those taxes are all being paid with money that has already been taxed.

I was thinking about something the other day. Given that governments need some money to run their operations, where can they get the money from? First, they can do something to earn it and, in some cases, they do that.

I worked in the mathematics department at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. The institute had three major divisions: the technology division where I worked as a mathematics instructor, the business division and the so-called industrial division. The industrial division, among other things, trained mechanics, carpenters and many others in the hand skill trades which are so necessary in our society.

One of the things the institute did in order for their students to have hands on experience was invite citizens to bring in their vehicles. They would only be charged for the parts because the labour was provided by the students under the supervision of their instructors. I used to bring my own vehicles in there from time to time, although in those years I did most of the mechanical work on my vehicles myself.

I remember going to the institute's barber school which trained people to be hair dressers and barbers. One could go there and get a haircut for 50¢. It was a nominal charge but at least they got some revenue and the students learned how to cut hair.

Governments could raise revenues by doing things that would actually bring in money. Occasionally governments will build roads and then charge tolls on them. In a sense that is also a way of bringing in revenue. There are many other ways but I will not give an exhaustive list of how it can actually earn money directly.

The other way governments could earn money would be through taxation, that is, by separating the citizens from part of their earnings. As I see it there are basically three main classifications. They can tax people as a proportion of what they own. The municipalities do that with property tax. If one owns a house worth $100,000 the tax assessment every year would be $2,000 to $3,000.

I have not done my calculations recently but, having lived in the same house for over 25 years, I think I have paid more in property taxes than I paid for the house. In other words, the money I paid the government in property tax is greater than the money I paid to the guys who built the house. It is absolutely crazy.

Meanwhile I paid all those taxes with money on which I had already paid income tax. Most of that money was at the marginal rate of around 50%. I earned $6,000 of which $3,000 went to the province and feds and $3,000 went to the municipal government. That means that every year when I write my local municipality a cheque for my property taxes, if I write the cheque for $3,000, there goes $6,000 of my earnings. It was $6,000 of my earnings in taxes and yet all it shows is that I paid $3,000 in municipal taxes.

All hon. members here will be very pleased to know that I have introduced a private member's bill that would at least take the first step toward providing an exemption from taxable income for money that people earn to pay their property taxes. My principle is that Canadians should not have to pay taxes on money they earn for the sole purpose of paying taxes.

I am very unlucky because my private member's bill has never been drawn. My bill has been languishing in the bottom of the barrel. I would just love to have it debated and made votable. I would love to hear the members on the other side say that was a huge injustice.

If I included the amount of money I paid in property taxes with the amount of income tax I paid in order to make the money to pay those property taxes, I would have paid twice as much in taxes as I paid for the house. Of course we still have the house but it is very decrepit because I cannot afford to do upkeep due to all the taxes I have paid.

I am talking about Bill C-47, a bill that would change some tax rules. What the parliamentary secretary was very careful to keep a secret was that it would also increase taxes. I listened carefully to his entire speech and I do not remember hearing him say that as a result of these changes we will be able to suck out of Canadian taxpayers another quarter of a billion dollars, because that is what it is.

Our estimate is that this measure will result in increased tax revenues to the federal government of around $250 million. That is $250 million that will not be available to homeowners. It will not be available to moms and dads who are trying to provide for their families. It will not be available to good Canadian citizens who would love to give to charity but cannot because after they their tax bills most families hardly have enough money left to allow them to be truly charitable.

As an aside, the Liberals have a flawed reasoning when it comes to their taxation system. They claim they are justified in taxing people and then giving back to others who need it, people who make films, people who build airplanes, people who hire factory workers in Mexico to build buses that go to Kentucky and things like that. Liberals think they are justified in taking money away from all of us because we are inherently a generous people. There is a flaw in that argument.

I grew up in a family where that was practised. I have tried to be generous myself and I have tried to teach my children to be generous and charitable. If the Liberals really believed it and if the socialists really believed it, then they would not need to tax the dickens out of us because as generous people we would in fact help those people in need. We always did that.

I grew up in Saskatchewan in the rough years. Neighbours were always helping one another. It did not matter if it meant half a day of one's time. Sometimes someone would give a neighbour a ride to visit somebody who was ill in the hospital because that neighbour's vehicle did not work. My dad would pick people up and take them to the hospital. Things like that were always done.

Lo and behold, along come the socialists, the Liberals, who do not really think Canadians are generous. They take our money, whether we want to give it or not, and redistribute it. Meanwhile, they manage it in such a way so as to provide enough good slush funds in different areas to get re-elected in those ridings. I find that very offensive and so do most Canadians when they stop to think about it.

One form of taxation is property taxes. This involves taking every year from citizens a portion of what they own. In the business field there is the capital tax. That tax affects businesses, corporations and banks. Every year they have to pay into the public coffers a proportion of their capital inventory. No wonder businesses want to move to Mexico to build buses. No wonder they want to move to Ireland to invest there.

In Canada, businesses pay like crazy through the nose. Even when they buy equipment and once it is owned, they still have to pay the federal government an annual capital tax on it. That tax is in addition to any machinery tax that the provincial government may want. It is in addition to any tax that a municipality may level based on property value.

We have all these taxes that very frankly are a tremendous drain on our economy. They are a tremendous disincentive both to individuals and to businesses. We should be looking at ways to reduce that tax burden. Would it not be wonderful if Canadians could keep 90% of their earnings. If they earned $1 they would get to keep 90¢ of it. That would be great.

Before I got into politics, I was an ordinary person on a professional income. With my two degrees, I worked as an instructor. My wife and I made the decision that she would be a full time mom when our kids were small. We were struggling continuously to balance the budget.

I found it very distressing that I could not make ends meet. One day I figured out why. I earned $10,000 approximately five or six years into my career. The federal and provincial governments took about half of it, which left me with $5,000. We were told that we should put approximately 10% of our earnings away for future retirement.

My wife was not gainfully employed. She did not get paid for her labour although she worked in many instances as hard or harder than I did. She was not able to contribute to any pension plans or anything like that so I put some money away for our retirement. If we take the 10% away it reduces the $5,000 to $4,000.

I have always believed in charitable organizations and charitable contributions. For many years I used the rule of thumb of donating at least 10%. I would do that as an obligation.

It struck me one day that the reason we were having trouble making ends meet was that we were trying to live on 30% of my income. Some 50% was taken by different levels of government and the remaining part was taken through choice. We need to ease the tax burden on Canadians.

I have made allusion to other ways in which governments separate taxpayers from their money. Either they are taxed on a proportion of what they own, taxed on their income, or taxed on what they spend. Incredibly the federal, provincial and municipal governments are in collusion to make sure that all of us are burdened, stooped under a load of excessive taxes. We are taxed at all three locations. They tax us when we earn our money. They make us pay taxes on our properties. Business owners pay capital taxes. Then when we spend money to buy our kids some new clothes, we pay the GST and in most cases a provincial sales tax.

No wonder our families have problems. I read in a book that the greatest stress on marriage is inevitably financial. That is most often what leads to conflict and stress among married couples. With our taxation level and regime it is amazing that any of our families are surviving.

I was elected in 1993. Among other things my mandate was to work for lower taxes, and it still is. I believe very strongly that as individual members of parliament we need to do everything we can to reduce the tax load to leave more of the earnings in the pockets of the people who earned it so they can provide for themselves and their families. That is very important.

I want to say something specifically about the measures before us. I appreciated the speech given by the parliamentary secretary. He did a reasonably good job of going through the details of the bill and outlining its various measures. I will not bother repeating the details but I would like to bring a few issues to our attention.

It is interesting that work is being done to streamline the production of wines and spirits, the work of the vintners and distillers who produce alcoholic beverages. They want to make it more efficient. I have to applaud that. We know that our standard of living is inextricably linked to productivity in our country. Our productivity is greatly held down by all the administrative and regulatory regimes and taxes of the governments. I used the word in plural there because it is true at all three levels.

It is an admirable goal to streamline all these measures and bring them together. Presently there is an Excise Act and the Excise Tax Act. This is the first step, as I understand it, to bring those measures into one act which will be called the Excise Act, 2001. It happens to be 2002 but so be it. That will be its label.

I agree with some of the regulatory measures that are being taken. The parliamentary secretary mentioned the need for distillers to have at their expense government inspectors on site all the time. That is a regulatory expense which possibly should be changed to make us all more efficient.

As for colouring pipes certain colours I think they do this in most chemical operations. In a way producing alcoholic beverages is a chemical operation. I think it is a biochemical operation. We should let them do it if they want to do it, but we should not require by government that their pipes have to be a certain colour. That needs to be fixed. It needs to be modernized by all means.

When it comes to these taxes on alcoholic beverages, wines and tobacco I follow my father's footsteps in one regard. When a tax is levied we have a choice. We can choose not to pay it.

My father and mother taught us that drinking alcoholic beverages was not necessary and had inherent dangers if taken to excess. Neither of my parents ever drank or smoked and for some reason I picked that up as being a pretty smart thing to do.

I sometimes look back now still amazed at how insightful I was as a teenager when many of my friends were succumbing to group pressure. Some of them have since died because of either their addiction to alcohol, in some cases due to accidents caused by alcohol, or due to cancer caused by smoking cigarettes.

I have other problems. However my parents said this was a tax they would not have to pay so they did not bother buying that stuff. They not only saved the expense of the original purchase but also the taxes on it.

My dad did the same when the Mulroney government brought in the much hated GST. It is remarkable that sales tax, the GST, still resonates with people. A couple of weeks ago I saw an ad in the newspaper indicating no GST. The ad could just as easily have said 7% off everything, but they get way more attention because people say they hate the GST and will go to that store on the weekend to buy something if they do not have to pay the GST. I could use a word that would be unparliamentary which I normally do not use anyway, but other people sometimes use it when they talk about the GST.

When the GST came into effect my dad who used to trade in his car every three or four years said that was one tax he would not have to pay. He kept his car. I wonder how much that was replicated across the country when people made a decision not to make a purchase because the tax was a disincentive. We need to recognize that those taxes are a great disincentive.

Throughout our lives my family and I have not really become directly involved in the taxes we are talking about today because we buy neither alcoholic beverages nor cigarettes. However it does apply to many Canadians.

We should be aware of the fact that in this case the government will be increasing the taxes on cigarettes. As I mentioned earlier, the tax measures in the bill are to provide the government with an additional $240 million to $250 million.

Cigarette taxes in Quebec are to go up by $2 per carton, $1.60 in Ontario and $1.50 in the rest of the rest of the country. One may say that it does not seem to be fair and that the government is picking on Quebec. Why is it increasing the taxes in Quebec so much more? It is simply bringing Quebec into line because members will recall that back in 1994 or 1995 there was a big push to try to reduce smuggling. The government of the day decided it would reduce the smuggling of cigarettes by reducing taxes. If it reduced the taxes it would be able to--

[Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act, March 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I presume the member would like included in these trade agreements with different countries, especially third world countries and China, clauses that would require them to meet certain minimum environmental standards and certain employment standards.

In the event during negotiations a country said that it was a matter of sovereign right and that Canada did not have the right to change the way things were done in that country, then the trade agreement would not proceed and subsequently the increased economic activity and even the smallest potential of bettering the lot of the poor would be removed. Could the member respond to the dilemma faced in these negotiations?

[Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act, March 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to challenge the member on one statement and that is with respect to poverty. Undoubtedly there are people around the world, including people in China, whose incomes are substantially less than our incomes in Canada. I would agree that we in our global community should do everything we can to reduce and eliminate such poverty. However the fact of the matter is that when one gets into trade agreements with countries like China, it increases economic activity. Generally that means there is an increase in demand, which means that there are more jobs for workers and the ability to produce more would normally increase the workers wages.

That would not always be the case. It depends on the kind of wage agreement. We know that members of parliament for example have a fixed wage regardless of whether they work 12 or 18 hours a day. Teachers are often paid exactly the same, regardless of how many hours they work. We have to take that into account as well.

Does the member not at least generally concede that these international trade agreements tend to improve the lot of both countries involved in the agreement?

[Canadian Alliance, March 22nd, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I came to parliament in 1993 with some pretty specific goals, some of which have been achieved.

I represent the people of Elk Island who wanted to stop the incessant dive into deeper and deeper debt. Our influence on eliminating deficits has been substantial. The people want to pay down the debt. That work has hardly begun. They want to strengthen families, and our motion to define marriage was an important step. They want lower taxes. There is still much work to be done there. We have not nearly completed our work on justice and the issue of young offenders. Our goal of fixing a dysfunctional parliament has been totally stymied by the Liberal government and the present control freak Prime Minister. The people want to end political patronage and pork barrel politics.

With the election of Stephen Harper as our new leader the heat on the government will continue to increase. We will show the shortcomings of the Liberal government and we will earn the trust of the people. We will press on toward the goal and Canada will benefit.