Madam Speaker, you are quite correct.
Given that the hon. member's party has recently suffered from its own brain drain with a member moving from the Progressive Conservative Party over to the Liberal Party of Canada, I will take that as an example of the hon. member having more personal experience about brain drain than I have.
The hon. member talks about the issue of higher taxes here in Canada as compared to the United States. Everybody knows that. Everybody knows that our personal income taxes are higher, approximately 10% I believe it is. He may correct me on that. However, it is also known that our payroll taxes are much lower than those of most of the countries in the G-7, including the United States if I am not mistaken. I may be corrected if I am mistaken.
It has already been announced. The Minister of Finance already discussed the economic outlook for the next couple of years. I believe it is clear there will be a lessening of the personal income tax burden. There already has been.
Over the last couple of years $16 billion has been cut from personal income taxes. That is where the 10% comes in. It has come out to approximately 10% lower income taxes paid by the average Canadian. There has been a steady decrease in personal income taxes.
In the last budget we removed the 3% surtax which the Progressive Conservative Party established when it formed the government. That in itself is a major impact. We will be reducing taxes. However, we will not do anything which will put into peril the health of our economy and put us back into a deficit position.