Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River has done a really good job of describing the overall problems while particularly focusing on northwestern Ontario, and I thank him for that.
I have two questions and ideas for the hon. member to help us pass along to those who implement this act.
First, the hon. member did a really good job of talking about the burden on tourism. The tourism industry used to get rebates for its non-Canadian tourism customers, who got a rebate on much of their GST inputs. That has been done away with. I would like to ask him whether he thinks it would be a good idea to reimplement that rebate to the tourism clients.
An even bigger question and idea is this: given the depressed state of rural areas such as northwestern Ontario, which to date has had no help at all for the forest industry from the current government, what does he think of the idea of a tax holiday for areas where the forest industry is down? We have areas that desperately need a tax holiday until they are on their feet again.