Madam Speaker, I welcome my colleague to the House.
A curious option has been raised in all the choices the government has been making over these last several weeks and months. When asked what economic analysis had been made of the various choices the government made, the Prime Minister celebrated the cutting of the GST, while every economist in the country derided it. Did my colleague's government at any point take a step back and make choices based on an assessment of the best investment to shore up Canada's economy, or was it simply politics over policy?
Did the government choose to say that offering a corporate tax cut to companies that were already profitable was a better choice than investing in small businesses or in the green economy that we need? When cutting the GST, did the government rely on any assessments that it is willing to make public?
That is my question for my dear colleague. Did the Department of Finance or his department or any other department conduct any assessment before making these enormous choices involving billions of dollars to the Canadian people, any assessment that can be offered up in this place so that we can have a fair and clear understanding of why some of these horrendous and politically motivated choices were made?