Madam Speaker, the party of big business, the Conservative Party of Canada, has indeed raised taxes, whether it be payroll taxes through increases in EI premiums or through actual, direct, straightforward, indisputable increases in the personal income tax rate.
The Conservatives brought the personal income tax rate in this country from 15% to 15.5% when they took office. The Conservatives did so by saying that they simply cancelled the tax cut and did not actually raise taxes. To use their logic, they are definitely raising taxes.
One of the biggest fallacies of this entire argument is what the Conservatives never ever want to talk about, what they will never spend government advertising talking about, and that is the fact that they are raising revenue on the backs of those who can least afford it.
Cutting seniors pensions the way the government has done time and time again, consistently showing contempt for Canada's seniors, is probably the worst thing to happen to this economy. Money is being taken away from those who earned it and who earned it through hard efforts over the course of a working lifetime. They are being told, as the Conservatives are doing it, that secretly, quietly, unabashedly their seniors pensions will be shaved off to help the government pay for its problems.
The Conservative government has a lot to answer for.