Mr. Speaker, the point I was making throughout my entire speech would make it inappropriate for me to answer the member's question specifically on the judges' remuneration because the point I was making is that it is not our decision. As legislators, we should not be commenting on that.
We should not be trying to influence judges one way or another. If people know that a group has charge over their salaries, how are they possibly going to be independent, so I will not comment on their salaries. There are 30 million other Canadians. Someone else should be making those recommendations, not us. We should not be interfering, whenever possible, in those salaries. The Supreme Court set up a mechanism to somewhat preserve that independence.
If the member would like the escalator he was talking about to be a new system to be put in place, there is nothing to stop the Bloc Québécois from suggesting that system. However, I agree wholeheartedly with his point about the disadvantaged people and the seniors trying to get back to work. We had studies on that. For how long did we put in a program? How many seniors are being covered?
The government has attacked the most vulnerable since it came into power. We have income tax cuts and business cuts, which I would have been totally in favour of if they had been even across the board, but the increase in income tax from 12% to 12.5% has hurt the poorest segment of society. Why would it give university students enough for a $70 book when, as a student told me the other day, books cost $200 each? We were offering $3,000. Why, when the government has a $13 billion surplus, would it not, as we did, increase the guaranteed income supplement? Why would it reduce the amount available for the basic deduction for the average person when there is a $13 billion surplus? Everyone should have had the benefit of those extra funds.