Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his speech and for the work he does on the Standing Committee on Finance.
I would like to address the income inequality issue that we studied at the finance committee. We issued a report and we talked about the need for support for general measures like health care, education, and social services that our government has funded at 6% year over year and 3% year over year.
We also talked about targeted measures like the working income tax benefit, which I believe has not been mentioned on the other side of the House. I would like members opposite to comment on the benefit of that program that specifically targets low-income working families and individuals to ensure that they get ahead.
I do want to focus my remarks and ask the member opposite to comment on pension income splitting. If I understood him correctly, he was in fact quite critical of the measure brought in by our government in 2006 to allow pensioners to split their income. In fact, he said this was sort of a foreshadowing of what would happen under income splitting generally. Pension income splitting has been a resounding success. I have certainly heard it across the country. Pensioners come up and say that they have been able to keep much more of their income in their pockets.
I would just ask the member to clarify NDP policy on this. The NDP opposed it at the time, but does the NDP still oppose pension income splitting, and would it reverse that policy if it were given the opportunity?