Mr. Speaker, I rise today to ask my colleague from Elgin—Middlesex—London to imagine with us, to dream with us, just how much better Canada could be if the Conservatives had applied some of the rhetoric that they espouse now post-budget into the actual document.
I would remind my colleague that the sum total of all of the social spending and the goodies, of which there were crumbs from the table that fell into much needed social spending, pales in comparison to the gargantuan $6 billion corporate tax cuts that the government is allowing to go through uninterrupted even though both of the opposition parties have been urging it to reconsider this.
The NDP is not against a tax cut for small business. I would ask my colleague from Elgin—Middlesex—London if he knows what the small business tax is in the socialist paradise of Manitoba? When the NDP took power in Manitoba in 1999, the small business tax was 11%, but incrementally over 10 years we have put it down from 11% to 10% to 9% to 8% to 7% to 6%. Guess what it is now? It is a big fat goose egg, zero.
My colleague should not say that we are against tax cuts for small business or that we are the tax and spend party. When we have the chance we actually give small businesses a break on their taxes but we are vehemently opposed to the largest corporate giveaway since the CP Railroad and this wheelbarrow full of cash the Conservatives are dumping into corporate Canada for no appreciable benefit and for no good reason with no strings attached.