Mr. Speaker, it is a great question from my colleague, who obviously lives these issues and is hearing directly from his constituents about them.
I come from an energy-producing part of the country. He comes from a part of the country where manufacturing jobs in the auto sector in particular are very important. We see in both of these areas how the imposition of taxes and regulatory changes, in particular the imposition of new taxes, is hurting economic development.
We saw in the past how lowering business taxes led to an increase in business tax revenue. That was because companies were looking at those tax policies and making decisions about investment that reflected those calculations. They were choosing to invest in Canada as a result of the fact that Canada was a good place to invest.
We have many advantages. We have an educated workforce and many things going for us as a country, but the financial dimension of it is obviously critical as well for companies that are thinking about making these investments.
The government's solution to this is to tax more and put the money forward in corporate welfare for things like superclusters. We have seen it has much less effect for the government to pick winners and losers and give money to some of its friends while taxing other people more. It is a much less effective approach than simply lowering taxes for all Canadians, especially targeting tax relief for small business and to those Canadians who need that tax relief at the individual level the most, thus putting them in the driver's seat and allowing them to make decisions to take advantage of the opportunities that result. It is up to the government to give people as much opportunity as possible to get ahead and then to let them do that with their own resources.