Five billion dollars. And we are told that all the banks together will have to pay $100 million in new taxes over a two-year period, in addition to being able to take advantage of all the existing tax loopholes. If this is the government's effort to make the wealthy pay some taxes, what would it be like if the government did not do anything?
In the meantime, the government targets the public service. I agree that some cuts must be made and the Bloc Quebecois can propose ways of achieving this.
However, who is this budget going after? The public servants, not Paul Tellier. Paul Tellier gets an annual salary of $345,000, plus approximately $50,000 in expenses and has an interest free loan of $400,000 at the Royal Bank, a "friendly" arrangement. I feel so sorry for these kinds of people. These are the people with the gall to say: "Let us get to work. Do not exaggerate; we have to tighten our belts".
We do not touch these people, but we hit the poor public servants. Eliminating 45,000 jobs in the public service represents 14 per cent of public servants. In Montreal, there are 21,000 public servants, more than in Hull, where there are 20,000. Montreal has the second largest pool of public servants next to Ottawa-Hull, which has 104,000. Since we know that there are 20,000 in Hull, that leaves 84,000 in Ottawa. As luck would have it, yet again.