Madam Speaker, I listened with great interest to my hon. colleague.
The issue between the New Democratic vision of a functioning economy and the neo-con agenda of the Conservative Party is that we understand that if someone is going to run a business, money has to be coming in, which are taxes, and money has to be put out in investments to ensure the business. The Conservative government does not want to make the investments in the key areas. However, the Conservatives government is certainly planning on giving massive corporate tax cuts across the board that serve no useful purpose.
In Ontario, for example, from the switch in taxes, the average citizen now has to pay the share that the banks should be paying and is now paying as a result an extra $800 million a year at the gas pumps from the HST, and yet the banks in Canada enjoyed over $1 billion in tax breaks. How many jobs did those bankers create? Probably zero, because we see them shutting down banks across the country.
It is by shifting tax breaks to where people create jobs that an economy is built.
If the Conservatives are just giving money to the richest companies, which are shipping them overseas and from which we are not getting any return, what does my colleague think the return would be if tax incentives were actually targeted toward the small- and medium-size businesses that are actually investing in communities and creating jobs?