Mr. Speaker, I agree entirely that tax reductions, whether for corporate taxes, personal income tax, the GST and so on, are not the answer to correcting the fiscal imbalance. These are measures aimed at giving money back to Canadians, measures often suggesting that the government is trying to please the population by distributing a little money here and there, but this is in no way a genuine solution to the fiscal imbalance issue.
As for general tax reductions for corporations, I would point out that, in recent years, although tax rates have been considerably reduced for Canadian businesses, there has been no real increase in investments made by businesses. One might wonder where that money went? Where did those freed up assets go, if not into investments? We might assume that they went directly into the hands of shareholders and that, in the end, it was not as beneficial for our economy as we thought.
The Bloc Québécois always tries to take an approach that offers real, targeted measures. Consider, for instance, the refundable tax credits for businesses that are willing to invest in research. In this budget, for example, targeted measures for small and medium size businesses can be effective, such as special tax rates for small businesses that are expanding. However, simply lowering the general tax rates for all big businesses does not have any useful effect on our economy. This would no doubt please a certain lobby, but it would not be very effective and would in no way contribute to correcting the fiscal imbalance.