Well, you can also argue that it went to tax reduction and to debt reduction, but the fact was that it went to general revenues. We were outraged. We told Finance Minister Martin several times when we were outraged, and he knew. Recently we've told Minister Flaherty we are outraged that it continues to grow.
We asked our members, “What would you do with the savings, if you had some tax savings?” You can see, on page 5, they've told us what they would do. They would invest in new equipment, they would increase employee wages, they'd pay down their debt, they'd hire additional employees, they'd do additional employee training. It is counter-intuitive.... This is why we were arguing...and we've pushed this issue for many, many years. It was a tax, a tax on employment. The more people you employed, the more you were taxed. It was outrageous. We didn't agree with it.
That's why we're happy to at least see the tap turned off. We're not happy to see all that money just gone, notionally gone, and then all of a sudden, if there's a downturn, there's only $2 billion. How do we pick that up?
I like what David was saying: we've got to do some more brainstorming on how we can ensure employers and employees aren't on the hook. The worst time to raise rates is during a downturn.