The Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Communities wants to yell me down. Canadians should know that when a member is trying to speak and a minister is trying to yell him down, he must be on the right track. I know I am on the right track. The minister is now very animated. I am glad he is entertained.
The fact is the Conservatives promised, during the election campaign, to never tax income trusts. Then they turned around and levied a 31.5% tax on income trusts. This affected about 2.5 million Canadians, many of whom are seniors, and their retirement nest eggs were attacked. That is shameful of the government. Even the Prime Minister, when he circulated a piece of literature during the last election, said that by far the greatest fraud was a promise not kept.
Halloween was a scary night for seniors who did not know whether they would be able to survive on what was left of their hard-earned retirement savings. It was a scary night for those people who did not have anything but those income trusts and all of a sudden their equity was gone. It was a scary time for people who did not know they could not trust the government. They made decisions based on that trust.
The government interfered with the marketplace. It hurt Canadians, mostly seniors. It touched at the very core of integrity and credibility of government. Those are the things of which Canadians should be scared.
That government has a terrible record, whether it is on basic things like saying it actually reduced taxes when in fact it increased personal income taxes or other things. The Conservatives think that just because it was a budget implementation item or a mini budget that it is not law until that implementation bill actually passes.
I can tell them that if they want to apply those kinds of rules, we are presently talking about the 2007 budget implementation bill, and none of it is law in Canada until it passes. They should not take credit for something that is not law.