Madam Speaker, I want to thank my new colleague, who has been working very hard on this very issue, and he is absolutely right.
When we look at the global economy and what has happened outside of our borders in Europe and the United States, we see that they are in a debt crisis. It is exactly what the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, had to say in this House last week. They are in a debt crisis because they have overspent. They need to create jobs and bolster their economies. We are glad to see that today there has been an agreement among European nations to move forward with some plans to address some of these problems.
If we were to raise taxes, as suggested by the official opposition, the NDP, a $10 billion tax hike on our businesses would be passed along by way of job cuts, by way of increased prices for consumers, and Canadians would suffer. If we were to raise the GST, the same thing would happen. It is not the time to be raising taxes on Canadians in this very turbulent economic time.