Mr. Speaker, as I said very clearly in my speech, the first basic tenet should be “do no harm”. Rather than the serious cuts the government has already made, which are impacting Canadians across the country, the cutting of services and taking people, who currently get more benefits, to a position of reduced or, in some cases, no EI benefits, we should stop doing that. We need to continue to invest in the services and programs that Canadians want and need.
Yes, we do need to deal with reducing the deficit but we do not need to be as aggressive and accelerate even the government's own measures and own timeframes for deficit reduction. We are seeing that is increasing inequality. Ultimately, if the government uses those gains to create new tax measures that benefit only the people at the top, it will increase inequality.