Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in this House and address a matter that I dealt with some months ago when I directed a question to the government, more specifically a question for the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon, asking the Liberals and asking the member about how shabbily small business owners in Canada have been treated under the Liberal government's new tax laws.
These tax laws were awful. I had hundreds of emails coming in from small business owners who felt that the current Liberal government that had promised lower taxes was actually breaking its word and making it more difficult for Canadian businesses. Of course, these angry Canadians ran to their MPs. The problem was that some members of Parliament did not actually engage with the members of their community who were concerned about the taxes. One of those was the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon. I am in the neighbouring riding. I had to go into his riding and hold a round table there where angry small businessmen and businesswomen from his riding shared with me how frustrated they were with the Liberal approach to small business. The changes that were being made involved the ability of business owners to sprinkle income—in other words pay money to their children and to their spouses because in many cases the whole family is involved in running the business. The heavy-handed government was coming down and saying they shall not pay money to their children unless the government, the tax department, allowed them to. We could understand why there would be such anger among our small business owners.
The people also had a problem with the fact that money that these businesses would have earned and the profits they would have made would have been set aside by them in a rainy-day fund. Perhaps, if someone in the business got sick, or perhaps the business took a turn for the worse, or perhaps there was an opportunity to grow the business and expand it, there was some cash available to invest in that. Historically, that money sitting there, worked hard for by the business owners, was taxed at a low rate. Now, the Liberals were going to tax that money at 73%. The government members have come forward and said they might make some changes there, they have amended the sprinkling provisions a bit, but they are not going to announce until the budget what they are going to do with passive income.
Small business owners found this out on the eve of Christmas. Suddenly, they were scrambling to find their accountants and their lawyers to make sense of the changes the Liberals were making, and again it was a fundamental breach of trust. That should not surprise us. When we look at the history of the Liberal Party in government, all we have seen are breaches of trust. What we have seen is the breaking of promises on deficits, breaking of promises on balanced budgets, breaking of promises on reducing the tax burden on Canadians. In fact, now we find the Prime Minister and the finance minister entangled in a web of scandal and intrigue that involves French villas. It involves Caribbean islands and the Aga Khan. It involves offshore companies, all being traced back to the Prime Minister and his finance minister.
My question for the parliamentary secretary, or whoever is here to answer this question, is threefold. First, has the government done an analysis of how much extra revenue it will receive by changing the small business rules? Second, will the tax rules apply to the Prime Minister and the finance minister? Third, why did the member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon not conduct public meetings to address these concerns?