Mr. Speaker, I appreciate hearing from the hon. member for Kamloops. He always provides thoughtful questions. He has asked me a number of questions.
First of all, I too have scoured the throne speech and I have yet to find the reference to the EH-101 helicopters. It just is not in there. Perhaps it was a typo.
Perhaps, on the other hand, the government is going to announce new programs each and every day which cannot all be included in this document unless it expands it dramatically.
The member also asked about tax reform. Tax reform is extraordinarily important. Canadians have talked about it for a long time. It is not in this document. I do not see it anywhere in the throne speech. It is not in here at all.
When we go to town hall meetings people often ask why we do not have a flat tax in this country, why the taxation system is not simplified. It is not in here at all.
My hon. friend has asked me about the GST, a very important issue. I think it is notable by its absence from the throne speech. Obviously the government is somewhat reluctant to talk about the GST. It has had its problems with it in the past, and we need not go over that. That is well known.
Suffice it to say my party believes very strongly that should we one day decide to balance the budget in this country, we hold out the option of reducing the GST in stages as we go along. It is part of our blue book policy. We leave that open for Canadians to tell us to do that.
That is part of our consultation. We have talked about a number of different tax reforms in our document. One that I think would have perhaps even a greater advantage than reducing the GST would be raising the minimum exemptions. Then it would truly help low income Canadians. In the election campaign we argued that we would take 1.3 million Canadians completely off the tax rolls by lifting up those minimum exemptions. That is the Reform approach to helping low income Canadians.