Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from the New Democratic Party for his intervention. He may not have heard ideas he agreed with, but if he had listened closely he would have heard some ideas. I suspect the New Democratic Party is not with me on this capital tax elimination proposal.
That being the case, he is absolutely right that a low Canadian dollar certainly jeopardizes our sovereignty. We have seen our forestry industry effectively taken over. We have seen companies such as MacMillan Bloedel taken over by Weyerhaeuser. We have seen our petroleum industry largely taken over, with huge levels of takeover and unprecedented levels of acquisition by U.S. companies.
The hon. member's solution would be different from my solution. His solution would be to put up artificial barriers and try to pretend that Canada can live insulated from the pressures of a global economy.
However I would suggest that the best way to address the issue of the Canadian dollar or the best way to address the question of our economic sovereignty or the threat of a U.S. takeover of our Canadian economic interests is to strengthen our productivity. The best way to address that is through major, broad based tax reform, addressing capital taxes, capital gains taxes, those taxes that pummel investment, that punish initiative and those taxes that hold Canadians back when the rest of the world is moving forward and seizing opportunities that we simply do not have here because of the visionless government that continues to dilly-dally as other governments leap further ahead.