Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Finance.
This past weekend the minister met with several prominent economists, business people and ordinary Canadians to discuss the issue of deficit reduction. The vast majority of participants believe that the key to deficit reduction is through spending reductions rather than tax increases. Yet the government continues to float ideas about increasing tax revenues by limiting RRSP contributions.
My question for the minister is this. Will he treat the deficit problem as a spending problem and immediately set targets to reduce and limit spending or does the minister regard this as a revenue problem? Will he then tell the Canadian public what his
real plans are to increase their taxes and how much this will cost individual Canadians?