Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Winnipeg North for wishing me well.
I was in the member's city a week or so ago with my friends from Interlake and Brandon at the Free Press News Cafe. People were quite open with their concerns about the carbon tax, and the farmers in the Interlake know they will be paying thousands more just for diesel. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses have little margin and the current government is going after their margins. It does not want them to take anything home and put it in their jeans at the end of the day. This is what I heard loud and clear in friendly Manitoba, and I trust he is hearing the same.
What I would remind the member of, and no one reminds the House of good Liberal virtues more than that member does, because he is up quite regularly, is the incessant call for evidence-based decision-making. When the member goes into his caucus this Wednesday, I ask him to stand up to the Prime Minister and say, “Prime Minister, Morneau Shepell's chief actuary has told us that this bill will lead to job losses while only targeting a small percentage of people, fewer than 5% of middle-class Canadians decades from now.”
If that is what we are trying to do, at the risk of potentially losing 10,000-plus jobs, why would we be doing this in the middle of a jobs crisis? It is time for the member to stand up in caucus and ask the Prime Minister to stop waging a war on job creation.