Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise today and not only thank the minister for his speech but to inform the House that it is my birthday. I know that in the interest of non-partisanship, the minister wants to bring joy to any parliamentarian on his or her birthday and one way that he could do that is to announce that he will rise and vote in favour of the amendment to keep the Liberal promise to lower small business taxes to 9%. That would make the day of 700,000 middle-class small business owners, who are the leading job creators for our country.
I think that the Liberal Party understands that, because it committed in the last election to honour previous Conservative tax reductions for these great entrepreneurs. There was an unfortunate mistake in the budget drafting, which reversed that promise. I know that he will want to correct it. I wonder if he would rise today and announce that he will support this opposition amendment to the bill so that we can lower taxes for Canada's best job creators.