Mr. Chairman, the honourable member is threatening to draw out my libertarian side.
I agree with much of the premise and with many of Marco's comments. There are arguments for and against the expansion of the Canada Pension Plan and the liberalization of EI, but these expansions are certainly not growth-enhancing measures.
Beyond that, there are things that government can do. Mostly these have to do with ensuring that we have stable finances in the long haul. At the federal and provincial levels, that involves not spending a lot more than we take in. It would be very encouraging to see the federal government plotting a trajectory to get itself back to fiscal balance in rather short order.
The impetus for infrastructure spending grew out of a financial and economic crisis that is long since past. The message that interest rates are very low and that, therefore, it's a great time to borrow and to spend on infrastructure is tantalizing. However, it is a seriously misleading message, because infrastructure investments can only be worthwhile to us collectively as a society if the returns on those investments are, one, complementary to private sector activity and productivity growth and, two, exceed the carrying cost of the debt that's incurred.
The carrying cost of that debt is not just the interest that is required to be paid on the debt: it is the cost of public funds associated with taxation that necessarily is required to support that borrowing or to pay down borrowing in the future.
The message that we can borrow money at 1% or 2% rather fundamentally misrepresents the cost of current investment in public sector infrastructure. We should think about this very carefully when we make our spending allocations.