Mr. Speaker, there are a couple of issues here. When we are talking about investing in skills development, I came from a university/college background, so I absolutely support investing in skills development. However, one of the challenges with the existing programs is that they are often narrow in scope. They are often fairly complicated procedural mechanisms for people to access. They are not often seated in the reality of many people's communities.
They tend to be a one-size-fits-all cookie-cutter approach that do not recognize the needs of the fishery workers in New Brunswick, the forestry workers, and the fishery workers on the west coast. So, yes, we should invest, and yes, we want to have investments and contribute to a healthy economy, but we need to be more flexible in our approaches around this.
On the issue around reducing taxes, although I would applaud reducing taxes on people who earn less than $20,000, we often look at tax reduction as a simplistic approach to fixing a complex problem. Unless we seek those kinds of measures within the context of a broader social strategy, they will fail.
People pay minimum taxes on $20,000 as it is. However, we must look at initiatives like affordable housing and education. We need that comprehensive strategy in order to ensure that people have a way of getting themselves out of poverty.