Mr. Speaker, again I will address the CPP question. Because CPP does not flow to government revenues, when references are made to the CPP payroll tax, it is actually an inaccurate statement. Those revenues do not flow to the consolidated revenue fund.
With respect to the increase in revenues, certainly the vast majority of the increase in revenues is as a result of increased economic activity. Certainly it is the same experience I often hear the members opposite talk about, of how the increase in revenues of the Ontario government comes from increased economic activity. It is the same logic.
It has often been said that we need to address the personal income tax challenges we face in the country, that personal income tax is uncompetitive when we compare it to other G-7 countries. We have started to make progress in that area. We have made a commitment to continue in that area to make it more competitive and deal with the issue of bracket creep by increasing the basic exemption. Certainly we realize that and want to ensure we can do that in a very sustainable fashion.
We do not as a government want to make any commitment with respect to tax reductions where we would find ourselves two, three or four years down the road having to reverse a tax decision because the government found itself without enough revenue and had to go back into a deficit. That certainly is not a policy of this government. We want to make sure that anything we do on the tax side is sustainable.
With respect to the reduction in the CHST, certainly the members opposite when they do make reference to the reduction in the CHST, they always make reference to the cash portion of the transfer. They should also make reference to the tax points which continue to grow in transfers to the provincial governments.
We can talk about where we have been but the impact of this debate is really to be focused on where we are going. It is only because of the hard work of Canadians and the commitment of Canadians in supporting the government in making the decisions it has had to make that we are now talking about what should be done and how the government should allocate a surplus.