Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to say that I have a high regard and respect for the member for Chatham-Kent—Essex.
I even looked it up, just so I'd be clear. I believe that when you say the things you do, you actually believe that it's the case. But as the previous speakers have pointed out, we're taking $10.8 billion away from seniors. There's a problem. Nobody is arguing that there's not something happening to the generations we're talking about. Agreed, it's $39 billion to $109 billion.
The hole in the government's view of this is very simple: when the numbers are looked at, they're not taking into account the projected growth in GDP between now and 2023. In essence, the government is saying they're not sure their economic policies are going to sustain the growth actually being predicted by the Bank of Canada. If we even got half the GDP growth predicted, this would be less than 1% of GDP. It would take 0.8% of GDP to cover this.
You talked about the need to address a challenge. We're saying to you that we should have looked at things in a more holistic view. There's no rush to be doing this. The reality is that when you take into account GDP growth, this is absolutely sustainable. That's why you have a divergence of opinion between the people who have looked at this—the OECD, the Parliamentary Budget Officer—and the side the government has taken their figures from. That's where your difference lies. The reality is that it's a difference in choice in how that gets addressed.
We're saying, quite simply, that taking two years of income away from seniors is hurting the wrong people. This is the wrong way.
When you look at the amount of taxation capacity that's been removed by this government—the change to the HST is roughly $14 billion a year, the change to corporate taxation is roughly $16 billion a year—that's $30 billion of fiscal capacity to address this situation. When you look at banks and places like that that are giving their executives billions of dollars in bonuses, how do you square that circle? It can't be done. We have to make a better choice than this one.