Madam Speaker, I wish my friend salutations on this day as well.
It is a remarkable thing the NDP have had to do, because what we are doing today is reminding the Liberals about what they voted for already and what they already said they would fix. The Liberals have a bit of a political attention deficit. They make a promise in a campaign. They make it in a second campaign. They make the promise again in the House of Commons when voting for an NDP opposition day motion to talk about closing a very specific loophole. It is a loophole that costs Revenue Canada $750 million per year, on average. It is the stock option loophole, a technique that was designed in our tax system primarily for entrepreneurs and start-ups.
However, for the top CEOs in Canada, a quarter of their pay is in stock options. We know that 92% of all those new stock options used to avoid paying taxes goes to the top 10% of Canadian income earners. That is what they are now used for. They are not for the scrappy start-ups, although they use them in a different way, and the NDP carved out a special consideration for them.
The Liberals promised to close this loophole. We saw a budget come and go, and the loophole was not closed. The problem is that when they take away the $750 million in revenue, there are a whole bunch of things the government can no longer do.
I would like to pause for a moment on the government's so-called tax cut for the middle class. Do my Liberal colleagues know where that tops out? It is for those earning about $190,000. That is where the middle-class tax cut does the best.
My simple question is this. The Liberals promised to close this loophole. They have not done it. The budget is coming. Can we at least expect that promise to be fulfilled after they commit to it a second time?