Madam Speaker, certainly I do not have enough time to debate the member on the issue of moral determinism.
Let me say that I agree with the member's basic point that fundamentally people make choices. At the end of the day it is my view that the 18 skyjackers are responsible as individuals. They made the choices. We cannot blame what they did on their upbringing.
I also point out that people make individual choices in a context. The context we live in today quite clearly is that many people enjoy a very high standard of living while the vast majority of people do not. While those 18 people may have come from well to do families, I think the conflict of east versus west is at least to some degree rooted in a difference in standard of living. We can debate to what degree it is but I think it is part of the problem. Unless we deal with the fact that we live in a relatively prosperous part of the world and enjoy very prosperous conditions while others do not, we are going to give people reasons to hate us. How it will actualize itself is very difficult to predict.
On the issue of the tax cuts, the fact is that our plan will put $100 billion in people's pockets that they otherwise would not have had. Whether it is in the form of an actual cut that could have been made or whether it is in the form of indexing the tax system against inflation so that people are no longer paying taxes on inflated dollars that are not real, it is still a tax cut.
As for the issue of CPP, I do not think an increase in the contribution to CPP benefits can be considered a tax increase. It goes into a separate fund. It is financed in the market. It is to do one particular thing, which is to pay for people's retirement plans. If people were putting money into an RRSP, that would not be considered a tax increase, nor should a contribution into the CPP fund be considered one.