Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Sherbrooke for his question.
The position of the Bloc Quebecois on this matter is that poorer Canadians are protected by universal social programs. People who want more protection can contribute to a private supplementary plan, and that is what they do. As I was saying earlier, my constituents are mostly middle-class people and they already are the most heavily taxed. By taxing those insurance premiums, the Liberal government would be increasing, in a covert way, the tax burden of middle-class Canadians.
We, in the Bloc Quebecois, are totally opposed to this covert way of taxing even more heavily middle-class taxpayers who already carry most of the tax burden. There has been a lot of talk about tax shelters. Canadians with high incomes can use tax shelters to avoid paying thousands of dollars in taxes.
The disadvantaged are protected by a series of social programs and, often, it is the middle-class people who find themselves in the middle of the social or economic pyramid and who have to shoulder all the burden. As I said earlier, we, in the Bloc Quebecois, are totally opposed to this covert way of taxing even more heavily those who already pay most of the taxes.