Mr. Speaker, I really am at a loss to understand why the government would want to continue to reduce corporate taxes when in fact corporate taxes in Canada are already lower than corporate taxes in the United States, which is our major competitor.
In fact, the member should know that over the last 10 years between provincial and federal governments there has been a 36% drop in corporate taxes and during that time there have been record profits in this country. While all of this was happening, business spending on machinery and equipment has actually declined. That is the whole reason that the government would want to be reducing corporate taxes in the first place.
As a share of GDP, total business investment spending has declined as a per cent of corporate cash flow. This comes from Statistics Canada and the finance department. Does the member not read this information before he comes out with this budget?