Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to answer this question because what she said is true. It is not just the NDP that has said so. Most serious Canadian economists have shown that if stimulus and economic recovery were the goal, lowering the GST was probably one of the least effective ways of achieving it.
The Conservatives should have lowered income taxes, but we did not have that debate. Cutting taxes would have been a much more effective recovery measure. Decreasing the GST from 7% to 5% reduced federal tax revenues. This contributed in great part to the fact that, between 2006 and 2011, we slipped into the red: the federal government went from a $13 billion surplus to a deficit even before the recession.
Cutting the GST was probably the worst measure that this government could have adopted. It was a purely political move that did nothing to stimulate the economy or promote recovery.