Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member carefully and I want to try to address one aspect of his speech. He talked about surpluses that the government had been able to achieve, in fact eight consecutive balanced budgets with a surplus.
First, not once did the member say the word debt in his speech. I would like to explain to him, to the extent that we budget with contingencies and prudence factors, that we assume $3 billion each year for a contingency to ensure that we do not go back into deficit, and we do not want to do that.
Second, the prudence factors are there so if there is a drop or a change in interest rates or economic growth, those also will be covered.
If everything goes as planned, there should be a budget surplus of at least $5 billion. However, the surplus does not necessarily mean that we have been overtaxed. The surplus automatically goes to pay down debt. We have paid down almost $50 billion worth of debt which is a savings of almost $3 billion a year to the taxpayers of Canada. The existence of a surplus is the fact that it is paying down debt. We need to have a balanced approach to this.
That is the issue. If we are to simply say, “Let's give a tax cut to deal with the surplus”, then the member does not understand that the surplus exists for one year. A tax cut exists for every year from the year it is implemented and thereafter. With 14 million taxpayers, even a $100 change in the taxation of an individual is already $1.4 billion. Therefore, the member should be very careful about having simple solutions to complex problems.