Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to talk about the government's wonderful plan to make sure that we have tax fairness in this country.
When my colleague across the way from the NDP spoke just before me, he indicated that he did not want to answer the question about raising the GST. Here is why. The NDP has made up all this fearmongering dialogue about tax increases in budget 2013. There are no tax increases in budget 2013.
Let me explain for Canadians exactly what the NDP has done. The general preferential tariff, which is what today is all about, is about tax fairness. This foreign aid program was created in the 1970s to give special treatment to help companies in poor countries. That was the crux of what that general preferential tariff was intended to do. However, this program had not been reviewed or thoroughly looked at since the 1970s. That meant that companies in countries such as China and South Korea, whose economies are booming, were receiving privileged access to our market when competing against our Canadian companies, our Canadian businesses. That clearly needed to change, and that is exactly what we did.
Tax fairness is what this government is about. A high-tax agenda is what the NDP is all about. It wants to increase the GST. It wants a 45-day work year. It wants a $21 billion carbon tax. It wants to increase corporate taxes by about $34 billion.
Today we are going to address some of those very disturbing policies of the NDP. I am proud to stand here today against that high-tax agenda of the socialists, or are they now known as the social democrat members of the NDP? This weekend we saw a shocking display in Montreal at the NDP convention. The NDP, despite the fact that it debated countless far-left policy resolutions that would nationalize nearly every industry in Canada, raise taxes on every Canadian and rip up every trade deal Canada has ever signed, tried to hide the socialist roots it has entrenched in its party.
The NDP can play around with the words all it wants. It can paint its house with a brand new coat of paint, but it cannot hide the fact that it is big government. It believes in big government, and it believes in high-tax socialist policies. We know it. The NDP knows it, and Canadians know it. The NDP does not believe in capitalism. The NDP does not believe in free markets. The NDP does not believe in low taxes.
In the words of the well-regarded commentator Brian Lilley:
[The] NDP leader...doesn't believe lower taxes do much of anything.... Since when did we all have to start asking for permission to keep more of our money? Since when did we need to justify having our money so that we could keep it rather than hand it over to government?