Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the whip of the NDP. He has a load of questions and I will do my best to answer as many of them as possible.
In response to his last question, which was the most obvious, I most definitely do not agree. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in supporting tax breaks for people who are making millions of dollars. However, what we do support are across the board tax breaks for everybody. That is the issue here. I am glad my colleague brought up this issue. The problem which professional sporting groups are faced with, not only here in Ontario but across the country, is the fact that taxes are too high.
The Ottawa Senators and the Corel Centre pay taxes which exceed the revenues of their ticket sales. They have a 10% selective entertainment tax. Why is the provincial government doing that? It is only hurting the ability of these teams to stay in the country.
We have a fetish of engaging in taxes, whether we are talking about municipal, provincial or federal. The federal government has been offloading its tax burden to lower levels of government.
All we ask is that the federal government lower taxes across the country. We have seen the success of this being done in other parts of the world. We could look at Britain, we could look at northern Europe and we could look at the experience in Alberta, where the taxes are much lower and the economy is booming. That is what we need to do federally.
I thank my colleague for pursuing this initiative because it will be productive. Maybe some day the government will listen to us.