Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on that point.
The government has told me when they do their polling and focus groups, a lot of their supporters love the notion of consultation. They should ask a more specific question about meaningful consultation. If we remember the actual history of the small business tax proposal, it went out for weeks and even passed the deadline, with the minister saying, “We did it the way we intended to do it.”
It was only when other controversies began to arise, such as when reporters discovered the French villa that had not been disclosed to the Ethics Commissioner, for which the finance minister has now been fined, and when we found out about his numbered companies and a cloud of concern and suspicion started to grow over his head, that the Liberals suddenly developed some humility about what they had been proposing.
The irony is that the loopholes the finance minister had accused small business of using were not loopholes in a legal sense, but were intended to allow for succession, and the finance minister was employing other ethical loopholes and had arranged his own affairs to avoid taxation by putting his assets in numbered companies and moving them to Alberta. It is an interesting way for him to conduct himself.
My question is this. The Liberals campaigned on a promise to close a stock option loophole that exists. However, it only applies to the 1%, generally speaking, this loophole that allows someone to be paid in stock options and to pay a much lower tax rate. The Liberals campaigned and said they would shrink and close that loophole. When I looked through the 300-plus pages, I do not see that happening. I do not see that promise being kept. I am wondering, if not now, then when? Will it take a little more scandal and controversy to bring the finance minister and the government to fulfill its promise to Canadians?