Mr. Speaker, I certainly agree with my colleague that the government keeps talking about cutting taxes and has cut a few, but it never tells us when it raises taxes.
I remember that the government raised the income tax rate back in 2006, but claimed that it had actually cut it. The income tax form that every Canadian filled out made it abundantly clear that the rate had gone up, not down. The government did not seem to know the difference between up and down.
I think the EI premium hike that started at the beginning of the year was $600 million, if I remember the figure correctly, and EI premiums, as we all know, are a tax on jobs. The government chose to increase the tax on jobs to the tune of $600 million. All of the experts agreed that premiums should be raised far more gradually, over a longer period of time, and not increased at this time of what the Prime Minister calls a “fragile economy”.