Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the Conservative Party for the question, and I note that he said shifty priorities instead of shifting priorities and I somewhat agree with that. He also said that the previous finance minister is acting like the leader of the fifth party, but then he said sixth party. I am sure he does not want to be the leader of the fifth party.
Of course the previous finance minister was part of the government when all of the issues I mentioned happened. When money was being funnelled into the firearms fiasco quietly and discreetly, who had the cheque book? Who was running the budget for the government? When the HRDC scandal was going on, who was running the finances of the country at that time?
Today we had a vote in the House to ratify Kyoto, with unknown costs and unknown implementation processes. Canadians are left in the dark completely as to what the cost is going to be for each family to reach the goals that the government agreed to today. Once again, the former finance minister voted for that. This is a person who has supposedly been in charge of the purse strings and who has been deeply involved in the past in the failures of the government. Now, through his actions today, he has implicated himself in what is going to be another fiasco for Canadians.
There are shifting priorities. The capital gains tax certainly has to be eliminated and that has been recommended time and time again. If productivity is going to improve in this country and if the gap between us and the Americans is going to be closed, then that is one place where we can start. Investment can remain here in the hands of the people who will do the research, who will build the bigger and better businesses and who will hire people.