Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about a topic to which the hon. member devoted only one minute of her 20-minute speech on budget 2013. The question before the House is whether the Conservative government has increased taxes by $8 billion over the past five years.
I assume that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance has read the budget. It is interesting to see that a table on page 331 lists all the budget 2013 tax measures. The table is entitled “Cost of Proposed Tax and Tariff Measures”. The word “cost” applies to the government, given that tax cuts lead to a drop in revenue.
Some figures are in parentheses. For the hon. member's sake, I would like to explain that costs in parentheses are negative. That is the revenue that the government makes from tax measures. Among others, there is a dividend tax credit with an amount in parentheses of $2.3 billion over five years. There is also a measure that would scrap the labour-sponsored venture capital corporations tax credit, with an amount of $355 million in parentheses. Similarly, the general preferential tariff has an amount of $1.2 billion in parentheses. If we add up all the figures in parentheses, we end up with a total of $8 billion over the next five years.
Could the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance tell us, with a straight face, that there are no tax increases, as she said in her speech?