The second point I want to start developing is the notion of sustainability. I suspect we'll have a second round, and we might be able to get into it a little more. I actually find the choice of term quite interesting because usually it's used in the context of sustainable development, but here you're using it with regard to the viability of the fiscal framework as it's being put forward.
When you talk about sustainable development, you're looking at three things: you're looking at the economy; you're looking at social aspects; and of course you're looking at the environment. A blind, across-the-board tax cut—the one Ms. Glover refers to and the one she's trying to get you to talk about, whether or not in the long term they're a good idea--by definition, doesn't help a company that didn't make a profit, because it didn't pay any taxes. So if you have a manufacturing concern in Quebec or if you have a forestry operation in Ontario or B.C. that didn't make a profit, you didn't get anything from those across-the-board tax cuts. The money, the billions in question, goes to the ones that had the highest profits, the Encanas of this world in the oil patch and the Royal Bank and the other chartered banks that are making record profits.
With regard to the fiscal sustainability of what's being proposed, you've come to a simple, clear understanding. You say we've got an aging population, a demographic challenge, low productivity, an economic challenge, and we're going to have to increase tax revenue or reduce spending, otherwise it's not going to work, in the simplest possible terms. Isn't part of the solution to start using that fiscal space that we assume is there—because we're having tax reductions—and start targeting those areas of the economy that are the most productive, that are the most forward-looking, that are the most likely to create employment, and that are the most innovative? Isn't that what we should be doing, instead of giving more tax breaks to the oil patch and to the banks?