Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member for Lanark—Carleton.
He addressed the issue of the brain drain as being very serious. I know the member. I know he is serious about it and is concerned. I wonder how that squares with his government's record on a lot of these issues and the reasons for the fact that our society has this brain drain. The conference board two weeks ago came out with a report which said that Canadians are falling back in terms of innovation and that we are losing some of our brightest people to the United States. That is a fact of life we all know about.
When our committee on international trade asked small and medium size companies why they did not export outside of Canada, they said that too much government regulation was a serious inhibitor to doing business in Canada. Taxes, including payroll taxes, were a deterrent. There were interprovincial trade barriers. I noticed the premier of Ontario on the weekend said that it was easier to do business with several American states than it is with Canadian provinces.
The government has been in power for the last six years and we still have these serious problems. There is a 50:50 split on how it is going to decide what is going to be spent on spending and on debt and tax relief. Yet we have seen social spending increased so there is nothing left to split 50:50.
What is the government doing? It has had six years to address these issues and nothing much has changed.