Madam Speaker, I want to ask my colleague about a particular piece of wonky government accounting. I am reading from the Caledon Institute report, which talks about how the government is saying that by freezing the premium rates, it is actually saying that it is creating stimulus by doing that.
I want to quote from this report:
The government did this in the 2009 Budget by freezing premium rates for the next two years. Ottawa trumpeted this unavoidable ad hoc arrangement as a $4.5 billion ‘stimulus’.
This approach opens up whole new vistas for government stimulus of the economy: Just announce a 100 percent increase in all taxes and then decide not to implement it. Voila! A $236 billion ‘stimulus’ in the form of tax increases that did not occur.
What does he think of that?