Mr. Speaker, the member asked some very valid questions and I hope I can answer them to his satisfaction. In terms of trying to have it both ways, I guess that is a legitimate concern. How would we manage it?
We want on one side the government to spend more money but on the other side to pay down the debt and so on, and that is a pretty good argument. However we have to be competitive. For the economy to grow, we cannot be overtaxed because we have to be competitive with those other jurisdictions. Overtaxation is not the way to grow the economy.
We could call it trickle down economics if wanted, republican economics, but the fact of the matter is those economies that have the greatest rates of growth are those economies that have controlled their desire to tax their citizens. Therefore there is a relationship there which I think most of us would understand does exist.
In addition to that, capital cost allowance is something the government has to address so companies can retool and refocus on markets. One of the reasons they do not do it is because we do not have attractive capital cost allowances as they do in the United States. That means if the companies have to bring in new equipment and technology to grow their business, provided there are the tax incentives to do it, they will do it and in the process they will create more jobs, more wealth and a bigger tax base. That is exactly what we are talking about.
On more investment in research and development in Canada, we are one of the worst countries, one of the poorest countries, in that area. We do not devote a lot of money to research and development.
As I mentioned in my opening comments, the other thing is training and retraining of workers on the educational side of it. It is important that we address the future and that means an investment in our young people so they are trained and will be able to compete effectively when they do enter the workplace.
Those are some of the areas the government could address to increase productivity and wealth, growth of the economy and so on. They are quite specific and I think the government has been negligent in some of those areas.