Madam Speaker, as usual I appreciate my friend's intervention. He always has a thoughtful point to make. Once again he has made a thoughtful point. I agree with him in part and I will explain the part.
All of us would agree that government expenditures in health care and education are probably tax dollars well invested. I do not think anyone would deny that. Tax dollars spent on canoe museums or dumb blond joke books and so on are probably moneys not well invested. Let us agree that there are useful public expenditures and unuseful public expenditures.
The point my hon. friend makes is if there is a tax cut, is this not good for the economy. There is a lot of talk about tax cuts these days in the provincial election in Ontario. The so-called winners of the Ontario provincial tax cuts which were introduced previously resulted in someone earning $15,000 will save $160 a year and someone earning $250,000 will save $5,000 a year. In other words someone making a lot of money is going to save a lot more.
We can call our economic system a capitalist system, a market driven system or whatever, but it depends on people buying goods or services. As long as people are buying a lot of goods and services our economy heats up. When those consumer dollars are not being used our economy weakens.
When we give a tax break to low or middle income earners, they will likely spend every nickel of that tax break. They will go out and spend it either on buying a new car, on clothing, on food, on whatever. They will spend all that extra money they have in their hands. An upper income earner will take that money and invest it in the international stock market. They may set money aside for investment at another time and they may even start a business.
The point I want to make is that it is more likely that middle and low income earners will spend their money than will a multimillionaire who gets a tax cut. They may not spend the money. They may, but they may not. They may not even spend it in Canada. They may prefer to buy a condo in Florida, the Cayman Islands or wherever.
If we want to get the maximum bang for our tax reduction, can I suggest to my hon. friend that we give some thought to cutting a tax that would be felt the next morning by every single citizen, from a child to the most elderly taxpayer or consumer, and that is a reduction in the GST. That would be felt from top to bottom. Every single person would benefit, as opposed to having selected tax cuts for the benefit of certain people.