Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for this extremely important question, but also for all the work he has done for manufacturers. He is doing something positive by bringing awareness to the actual policies that are killing jobs in his community and in my community. As he said, 39,000 small businesses were lost. There are huge losses in manufacturing.
At the end of the day, this is about Canada's and Ontario's competitiveness. This is where the big contradiction is in the House today. I would like to address three important domestic policies that are killing our ability to compete internationally. Number one is the Liberal changes to the CPP. This is $2,000 more per employee that business owners are going to have to pay, $2,000 more than individuals.
Second is carbon taxes and the uncertainty that is totally the responsibility of the Liberal government. We have this horrible carbon tax in Ontario, increasing the cost of heating, electricity; and just-in-time delivery of fuel, at 5ยข per litre more. Now the federal government wants to add on top of that.
The third thing I want to talk about is the high energy costs. What scares me is that we have lost 300,000 jobs in Ontario because of these irresponsible policies. Moving forward, in the next few months the federal Liberal Party is parroting these exact policies that have killed so many jobs. We are starting to see those effects. We need to ensure that domestic and international policies jive and that we are all working toward the same goal.