Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his speech. However, I most certainly disagree with what he is proposing. As a matter of fact, I would like to quote a member of this House who said:
—we cannot increase corporate taxes without losing corporate investment. If we lose corporate investment, we have a less productive economy.... That means fewer jobs. That means more poverty.
Would members like to know who said that? It was the member for Kings—Hants.
I come from Oshawa, and right now our largest employer, General Motors, is just coming out of a bankruptcy and is restructuring. In Ontario's economy there are many manufacturing corporations that, as we speak, need every ounce of those dollars to reinvest in productivity. They need those dollars to reinvest in pensions and benefits.
I ask the member if he disagrees with Ontario's finance minister, Dwight Duncan, who said that scrapping such a big slice of corporate tax cuts would hurt the fragile economic recovery by raising taxes on the struggling forestry and automotive sectors. He stated:
It is about the most short-sighted, dumb public policy pronouncement one can envision.
He said that just two weeks ago.