Unfortunately, Mr. Speaker, the member did not include in his calculations the point that the GST may not go up at all as income to Canada. He did not include the calculation that people have less disposable income to spend on other things so the government loses GST there. There are pensions and GST rebates that are indexed and it will lose GST there. There is less gas purchased when prices are up, so the government loses GST. There is not necessarily an increase to the government in taxes.
My second point is that earlier in the evening, and the member may not have heard this, it was outlined how the attempts to reduce excise taxes in other jurisdictions did not work. This did not get passed on to the consumer. We are looking for a solution that will be passed on, especially to low income people. As imperfect as the last solution was, I think everyone agreed that it was far better that a vast majority of low income people got it even though a few people should not have.
My question to the member is related to the tax regime for the Canadian petroleum industry. Earlier in the evening an NDP member suggested that because the government had reduced taxes to the industry from 28% to 21%, that was not good. I would like to ask the member about this. If the tax regime that the petroleum industry in Canada is in now is competitive with the rest of the world and creates, as was said earlier in the evening, several hundred thousand jobs in Canada, should Canada not have competitive tax rates such as that reduction and the tax regime that the petro Canada industry is now working in so Canada could compete with the rest of the world and keep those jobs in the industry?