I challenged this on the floor of the House of Commons when opposition members stood up and said, when we were running unprojected $13 billion and $14 billion surpluses, that this was flexibility. In my mind, that encouraged very poor spending habits on the part of the government and drove inflation. When you put this off into a separate account, first of all, the money isn't gone. I think this is the suggestion by labour, and it's the suggestion by business. I don't recognize the money as being gone. The money has gone towards paying down Canada's national mortgage. That's where the money has gone.
Now, people can argue whether that was ethical. I am sympathetic to that argument. I didn't like, as an employer, paying into a massive fund a tax that I paid whether I made money or not. You correctly point out that employers do pay a higher share of that. I think that's often forgotten about.
The money isn't gone. The money went towards paying down Canada's national mortgage. I think it's more the ethical side that you're taking it up on. The government should have been honest and said that this is nothing more than another tax we're charging. Is that accurate?