Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Markham for his incisive comments on the issue of tax harmonization.
This bill before the House of Commons is a tax measure. The Conservatives spend a great deal of time talking about taxes, pretending that they are interested only in lowering taxes when in fact we have seen in recent times, in recent examples rather massive payroll tax increases in the form of projected hikes to EI premiums.
I am wondering if my colleague, who served as a senior private sector economist, as the chief economist of the Royal Bank of Canada, and who was a distinguished academic before he ran, as he noted, in 2000, to serve in the House of Commons, could perhaps tell us briefly about the negative consequences of potential tax increases and in particular about the Conservatives' payroll tax increase they are planning to impose on Canadians in the form of EI premium increases.