Mr. Speaker, I had the privilege of attending and speaking at a tax rally alert last night in St. Catharines sponsored by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The event drew an overflow crowd of some 800 concerned taxpayers with a strong message for the finance minister: "No new or increased taxes". Several of those in attendance spoke about where they felt spending cuts could be made and how important it was for the government to understand it has a spending problem and not a revenue problem.
As a result of this addiction to tax and spend, our debt clock this morning was $549,892,000,000.
The crowd's reaction to the reported comment of the revenue minister that the government will not be influenced by protests was one of the loudest of the rally, second only to a demand for cuts, not scrapes, to our MP pension plan.
You choose to ignore the people we work for at your peril. No longer are Canadians prepared to roll over and take it from politicians who are not listening.