Mr. Speaker, that was an excellent speech by my hon. colleague. I have a fairly simple question for him.
When the Conservative government came to power it made what I think was a massive financial blunder. It actually dropped the GST, a consumption tax, then raised the lowest tax and also lowered the basic personal exemption. Most economists would say that reducing a consumption tax is one of the most inefficient ways of stimulating the economy. A much better idea is to keep money in people's pockets.
Does my colleague not think a much more intelligent idea that the government should have adopted would have been to reduce the lowest tax rate from 15.5% to 15%, which is what we did, or lower it further and raise the basic personal exemption, rather than the blunder of decreasing the GST, which is a very costly and inefficient way of attempting to stimulate the economy?