Mr. Speaker, I will indeed keep my question very brief. I do not know what happens to people when they become part of a majority government. I will not use any pejorative terms but when the member used to come to finance committee as a witness, he dealt pretty forthrightly with all the facts of the economy. We appreciated him as a witness.
Now he is parliamentary secretary to the finance minister and unfortunately he has joined the mantra of the Liberals in saying things that are disingenuous, if I may quote a word he used. I refer, among other things, to his using the term $100 billion. This is an annual budget. He speaks continuously of this $100 billion tax cut. The motion we are debating today and one of the things that our party took exception to was the report talking about the $100 billion tax cut. It just is not so.
From an annual point of view, because the $100 billion refers to a five year period, it is $20 billion per year on average, not $100 billion. It is $20 billion for an annual budget and it is just wrong for him to pass this off as a $100 billion tax cut. It is not.
Second, even within that $100 billion it is less than that amount because he has failed to take into account that a large portion of the presumed tax cut is simply a failure to collect taxes that were previously announced. If I say I will charge someone $100 for something and then later on say it will be $120, and he objects so I say I will bring it down to $110, have I given him $10? No, I have not. I am still taking $10 more. That is what the government is doing with this spin.
I said I would be brief but I find it difficult. Let us hear how brief the parliamentary secretary can be in his answer.