Mr. Speaker, it was a good half idea, insofar as it was universal. That is the good part. It was not such a good idea with respect to taxing the benefit, because that actually diminishes the benefit of the benefit, as it were.
I think income testing it is not such a bad idea. It is a pretty simple way to do things, because what we want is for the money to be in the hands of the people who need it the most. For people who are earning significant sums of money, this is just free money, and in some respects it becomes dead money because it goes into savings accounts and places where there is not economic activity, or postponed economic activity. As the study in the United States showed, of that $100, the first half goes directly into economic activity and the second half goes into asset building. In this instance, the government has taken what is half an idea and turned it into a whole one.