Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for his presentation today. I know he did deal with issues about the government freezing the civil service and advertising wildly as it has about how great a government it supposedly thinks it is. But the fact of the matter is we are dealing with the biggest recession since the Great Depression. What did the current government do at that time? It brought in initiatives to lower the corporate tax rate even lower than it is right now, which is already 14 points or 15 points below that of the United States.
This is at a time when the five biggest banks in Canada made $15.9 billion profit last year, which evidently is not enough for the current government, at a time when CEOs of these banks are earning in the neighbourhood of $10.4 million, in the case of RBC and the TD and $6.2 billion in the case of CIBC, and I could go on with the figures for the other banks for the members.
At this time, we have the G7 and the G20 that has developed guidelines to deal with corporate compensation. The question is, when is the current government going to adopt those guidelines? The indication is that it is not going to because the banks have convinced the government that those guidelines are too onerous and that it should let these executives keep earning what they are earning right now.
It is impossible for me to ask a member of the government because, for the last two days, we have not seen one. We have not seen a speaker for the government on its 880-page bill.
So, does the member agree with me that the current government should do something to rein in these corporate salaries and corporate packages that are just totally rampant in this country?