Mr. Saxton obviously wasn't listening to what I was saying, but he needed to defend the idea that small businesses might be firing employees to achieve this tax credit. That wasn't actually one of my criticisms here. I think that was something that Mr. Hsu may have commented on, but the fact that Mr. Saxton seeks to defend it begs that he doth protest too much.
“He doth protest too much” is when someone defends something that they're worried about being true. It's an old expression.
But in terms of the effectiveness of the program, our concern is that the government has chosen to outsource their policy-making to a lobby group. The question then begs itself that if the CFIB, which is engaged with small business, is who the government wants writing policy for them, then I assume that student groups would be the next ones to write educational policy for them, and certainly the labour community, which is familiar with workers.... They could also outsource that.
The challenge that the Conservatives have is that they have again here decision-based evidence-making. They've decided to make a decision based on some politics. That's fine. They brought no evidence to support it.
The PBO sat at this committee and presented his estimate of 800 jobs created over two years at a cost of $550,000 per job. None of my Conservative colleagues across the way could actually poke any holes in that estimation, none at all, and neither could the finance minister when he appeared.
All this is to say that the Conservatives can certainly, and they will continue to, pretend that this program is going to do something that it doesn't. That's for them to defend. We try to rely on the facts that come before us. We relied on the Parliamentary Budget Officer because there was no better estimate done on the lack of effectiveness of this program before this committee, and my friends across the way know that.
So on we go with more Conservative ideology into the economy.