Mr. Speaker, what Reform has said is not that the pension is a tax but that the premium paid is a payroll tax. This is not just Reform's opinion.
The Minister of Finance has in his department the economic analysis and forecasting division which did a lot of work on this budget. Joe Italiano who is with that division put out a paper on April 25, 1995 called "Growth in CPP/QPP Contributions". In it he defines CPP contributions as a payroll tax. Incidentally he goes on to analyse the impact of increasing those payroll taxes from 1986 to 1993 and concludes that they killed 26,000 jobs. This is not me speaking; this is the finance minister's own department defining CPP premiums as a payroll tax.
The government gets a lot of statistics from Statistics Canada. A number of officials in Statistics Canada put out a paper in the Canada Tax Journal a short while ago. They identified payroll taxes and listed what they were and the list included CPP and QPP contributions.
Last night Judith Andrew of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business was discussing the minister's budget. She referred to the hike in the CPP premiums as a payroll tax. If there is any group in the country that would know a payroll tax when they see it, it would be the CFIB because of course these are the people who are actually paying it.
Reform says it would be very appropriate for the minister, since his department acknowledges it, Statistics Canada acknowledges it, economists acknowledge it and business people acknowledge it, to acknowledge that the CPP premium is a payroll tax. When it is increased by 70 per cent, that has extremely negative effects on employment.