Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in today's debate on Bill C-2, the government's tax bill. I would like to begin by saying that we will vote for this bill.
We will vote for this bill, but not because it is excellent; it is not. It is actually rather insignificant, but it is slightly less bad than the status quo that the Conservatives and the NDP were championing during the recent election campaign.
This bill gives effect to the ways and means notice that was hastily tabled before the holidays as a gift to taxpayers. It implements just one of the tax measures that the government promised, and not necessarily the best one.
Objectively, there is little or nothing to justify separating this tax measure from the other tax measures in the upcoming budget and rushing to introduce it before Christmas, nothing but partisan motives.
The government had to do something, anything, to convince people that it intended to keep its promises. It had to do something, because the Liberals have a long history of failing to make good on promises.
The previous Liberal government promised to abolish the GST. It did not. It promised to tear up NAFTA. It did not. It promised to be the government of honesty and transparency. It gave us the secret national unity fund, the sponsorship scandal, and Alfonso Gagliano as minister in charge of government operations. It promised to be the government of growth. It cut transfers to the provinces so drastically that it practically sent Quebec into bankruptcy.
The government had to do something, anything. That something is Bill C-2, which we are currently discussing.
Taxation should be looked at as a whole. It is only by looking at all the tax measures, tax credits, exemptions, benefits, in fact all tax measures, that we can measure a government's performance when it comes to wealth, the middle class, families, and those who are hurting, struggling to pay their bills and make ends meet.
Here we have a government proposing a measure in isolation that will affect a minority of people. This bill proposes to raise taxes on those who drive a Bentley in order to provide relief to those who drive a BMW.
Above $200,000 of taxable income, the marginal tax rate jumps to 33%. This increase will affect the richest 1.4% of taxpayers. No one can disagree with that. The wealthiest 1%, in particular the wealthiest 0.1%, continue to hold a growing share of our society's wealth. That is a problem. They are holding an increasingly larger slice of the pie, while the middle class and other classes continue to get poorer.
On the other hand, Bill C-2 would drop the tax rate for incomes between $45,000 and $90,000 from 22% to 20.5%. The government claims that this mini-reform will provide relief to the middle class, but the kicker is that this measure does not provide any relief to the middle class. According to figures from Revenu Québec, 74% of Quebec taxpayers earn less than $50,000. These people are the ones who really need a break, but Bill C-2 will not help them. The bill does nothing for most of the middle class, for most of the people who are represented here. Instead, this bill will help the majority of the people here in this chamber, who will be able to take full advantage. All of us here, in the House, will benefit from this bill.
According to Revenu Québec, only 5.2% of Quebec taxpayers earn more than $100,000. I find that this government has a rather strange view of the middle class.
Furthermore, the parliamentary budget officer believes that those subject to the tax increase will take steps to avoid it by changing how they report their income. In the end, the government will lose out. We know that without measures to combat tax havens, Bill C-2 will be ineffective for the most part.
As I mentioned, passing this bill will lead to a slight improvement over the status quo. However, it is not this bill, which is nothing more than a public relations exercise, that will determine whether this government really plans on helping the middle class and people of modest means. It will be the next budget.
The next budget will reveal whether the government really supports families by providing its new benefit, collecting enough taxes from those earning more than $100,000—such as MPs, especially by eliminating certain measures—helping seniors by increasing the guaranteed income supplement or by indexing pensions, and looking after the unemployed by making changes to the employment insurance fund and not plundering it, as has been done over the past 20 years.
There is another problem with taxation. I honestly do not think that the government is going to tackle this problem, and I do not believe that the other parties would tackle it if they were in power. I am referring to the fiscal imbalance. The federal government takes approximately 50% of tax revenue in Canada, but provides virtually no services. Consequently, it needs more money than necessary to assume its responsibilities. There are two consequences.
First, the federal government does not need to manage its money properly because it already has too much. Look at what happens when it starts to manage its services. It costs 150% more to handle an employment insurance claim in Ottawa than it does to deal with a claim for social assistance in Quebec. It costs 100% more to take care of a patient in a Veterans Affairs Canada hospital than it does in a hospital in Quebec. At that rate, we would go bankrupt if Ottawa was responsible for health.
Second, the provinces can barely keep their heads above water. While the federal government is spending $50 billion to build ships, and is also thinking about buying F-35s, Quebec universities are thinking of cancelling their subscriptions to scientific journals just to save a few pennies.
Nevertheless, I am convinced that if we were to ask the people of Quebec to choose between a good education and an F-35, the choice would be obvious. Unfortunately, they do not have that choice because the system for sharing tax revenue in Canada is broken and because the federal government has enough revenue to poorly manage its own jurisdictions and to stick its nose where it does not belong.
Since Canadians control the joint account, they claim the right to decide how Quebeckers will organize their own society even in areas where we are already supposed to be sovereign under the Constitution. That is a serious problem that is only going to get worse.
Since it is Quebec that will have to foot the bill for the aging population, our government, like all other provincial governments, is at risk of crumbling under the weight of the health care system, unless it brings in permanent austerity measures and shrinks the government.
The federal government will not be affected, and it will start raking in an obscene surplus. The parliamentary budget officer and the Council of the Federation have stated that, 20 years from now, Ottawa will have paid back its entire debt accumulated over 150 years, but the provinces will all be virtually bankrupt. It is clear that from a taxation perspective, Canada is not working at all. This is creating tension and pointless quarrels, and it is depriving my people of the freedom they need to grow and flourish.
There is obviously one government too many in this equation. We think the superfluous government is the federal government. We will have to tackle this problem one of these days, and the sooner, the better. We have put off the inevitable long enough. The Bloc Québécois will make sure it happens.
