Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague for receiving the Maclean's Parliamentarian of the Year award for being a mentor. It is certainly well deserved.
However, on this particular issue, I am not sure I want her to be mentoring anyone. There were a number of things she totally ignored in her comments. She ignored the fact that this budget will increase our debt. In fact, the interest costs alone will rise by $9 billion per year to $33 billion a year by 2021. She talked about not having personal tax advantages for the rich. I am wondering if she was including the finance minister and Prime Minister in that. It does not seem like it from some of the questions that have come up. She talked about the small business tax cut. My colleague and all of her colleagues know that there is no way that would have happened were it not for the immense pressure put on them by the opposition and hundreds of thousands of Canadians who protested the proposed tax changes that were going after so-called tax cheats. Because of the pressure by the opposition and Canadians who were going to be negatively impacted, the government capitulated and reduced the small business tax credit, which is a good thing. However, to imply that the government members it out of the goodness of their hearts is a little rich.
Finally, my question relates to infrastructure. She commented about the infrastructure they are investing in, but the problem they are not talking about is where they are investing in infrastructure, namely Asia. There is nearly $500 million, almost half a billion dollars, being invested in the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which Canada will have about a 1% say after investing that money. We know that the infrastructure investments that bank will be making will benefit Canadians, but will cost Canadians all kinds of money. How can she really honestly support that kind of spending?