Actually, it is $2. It is insignificant. Thanks for the arithmetic help from my colleagues.
The point is that the GST saving for the well-to-do family is $1,000. In my example the saving for the low income family is $2. Tell me what the fairness is there? It is not there.
I am not sure there was one reputable economist that argued in favour of a GST cut. The better thing going forward and the better thing last spring would have been to continue the personal income tax cut that we brought in during the previous year. Then, if the government felt it had resources, it go further with personal income tax cuts.
There is a great debate over whether cuts in consumption taxes are better than cuts in personal income tax. I would argue the latter, that cuts to personal income taxes are a lot more effective, a lot more fair, and on a sliding scale they impact everyone the same proportionally.
We go from a big picture in 1993 where the imperative at the time was to get the books of the country in order. The previous government did that. It took two years and with the help of Canadians it was done. The country had a series of surpluses that have never been matched before in Canadian history.
We now have a government that is very ideological. Canada is a democracy and there is nothing wrong with being ideological. However, if the government is going to be ideological, it had better put a little bit of water in its wine once in a while and consider that there are things that happen between the ideologies that really can help or hurt people.
I would ask the government to reconsider its overall program. Next spring, if it does come up with a surplus, I hope it will deal with the wait times because we are regressing on wait times and there is little, if any, mention by the government of the wait times initiative that it mentioned in the election.
I hope next spring the government will be a little wiser with any surplus that it might accrue.