Madam Speaker, I want to return to the issue of whether we call this a tax or not.
Part of what Canadians are going to work for is not just wages for today, they also want to retire eventually. Their pension package is part of the wage package. To call the CPP increase a tax increase would be the same as calling their wage a tax. When such a broad definition of taxation is used, it just kind of stops making sense. If every cost incurred by an employer is a tax, that would not make any sense at all.
Canadians are going to work. They want to defer some of their wages in order to be able to take their retirement. This is a sensible way of doing that. I do not think calling it a tax adds anything to this debate. In fact, I think it really obfuscates what Canadians are going to work for. I do not think the debate is moved ahead at all by referring to the CPP increase as a tax, just as debates about wages would not be advanced if we suddenly started calling people's wages “taxes”.
I wonder what the member thinks about that.