Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity this summer to visit New Brunswick and different parts of Atlantic Canada. People in those areas are also concerned about this proposed CPP increase. I spoke to a lady who is the accountant for a number of small and medium-sized businesses and she said unequivocally that increasing CPP premiums from 9.9% to 11.9% would have a drastic negative impact.
I would love to applaud all of the positive initiatives that my colleague suggested but it is hard to do that when I realize that they will come at the expense of my children and grandchildren. They will be paying $10 billion more in interest per year than what is being paid today simply because of this unbelievable supposedly small but rather explosive $30-billion deficit. If we were not borrowing to finance some of these things I might be able to applaud the government, but under the current circumstances this is not the direction to be going in.