Mr. Speaker, the 3% surtax was put on by the Conservative government ostensibly to bring down the deficit. What it in fact did was it kept the deficit going up and up and up. We had promised to take that surtax off and it has now been taken off. That is going to affect 83% of taxpayers. The 3% may not be a lot of money to some people in this House but for some of my constituents it represents a great deal of money.
When we talk about bracket creep and taxes going up, the member is not taking into consideration the middle income Canadians who are going to be helped by this measure.
It is very fine to talk about other people who have balanced their budgets, but we are speaking here about the federal government. We are the ones who inherited a $42 billion deficit.