The hon. member says it is taxing a dream. We are also taking 15 per cent out of $1 million which was unearned as opposed to taking over 50 per cent out of the pocket of the person who has to toil all day long in order to earn that wage. Is that the concept of fairness?
I hope we do not approach this from an absolute statistic point of view. There may be certain cases in which only tax increases will give rise to that fairness but we face another problem, as the hon. members know. When we cut federal programs we do not often in the first year or in the second year obtain actual savings.
When we close down a military base and put people on the street do we actually save in expenditures when we have to provide for unemployment, severance, reconfiguring the land, getting rid of equipment and materials and things like this? We do not always have savings in the first two years.
I believe our deficit crisis is such that we have to meet our targets that we have set and we have to meet them within the time limit we set. Therefore expenditure cuts alone, while they will produce the savings we need over the longer term, may not work adequately in the first two years. This is why we may need
a little tax room on a temporary basis during the first one or two years in order to meet those targets.
I hope that Canadians will keep an open mind when they see the program, when they see the budget that comes down. I hope they will come to the conclusion that the single most important thing we must do is meet our deficit reduction targets.
The second most important priority is how we meet them. If we had to have minor tax adjustments in order to meet those targets, in order to be fair I believe that Canadians would say they do not like them, they may not like the cuts we have imposed but they will judge our overall budget package in terms of all of its aspects; who has been hurt through the cuts, who is hurt through the tax increases, minor as they may be, if there are any. We will be prepared to be judged on the basis of that entire package.