Thank you, Mr. Chairman. With respect to this bill, as a lot of Members have already stated, there is never anything popular about taxes. As a matter of fact the saying goes that there are only two things for sure in life, and those are death and taxes; two very unpleasant things that go together it seems. Mr. Chairman, I think that taking this out to public consultation would not have been a bad idea. I am not sure that we would have been able to get an opinion of consensus from the public. It is a very complex issue. I have already stated in the House that I think the advantage of consultation would have been to create awareness, and I think that even after we pass the bill it is not too late to make the effort to create that awareness in the public about what we are trying to do and what direction we are going in with these taxes. I would suggest that where an opportunity arises or where Members would like to have that discussion in their regions, that they invite the Minister there to do that. Because it is a complex issue, I concur with people who have expressed the opinion that we have to place some confidence in our senior officials, and in our Minister here on this. I will quickly conceive that they know a lot more about this complicated regime in how it relates to our formula, and our funds that we get from the federal government than I will ever be able to absorb I'm sure. So I will give them the benefit of the doubt on that.
As for the corporations, 500 or so that will be affected, a lot of them didn't come here yesterday. They were probably here before when the rate was 14 percent and they saw a decrease to 12 percent. They enjoyed the benefit of that for a short window of time, and now all we are doing is going back to something that was the status quo previously. So in that sense I don't see it as being that big of a hardship. Certainly, when we talk about the strain on our program services, particularly our infrastructure, which we are struggling as a public government to maintain, I think that some of the industrial activity that is taking place is in some part, although it is very welcome, contributing to that stress and our ability to keep up. So in terms of the way this tax is directed and
the history of the rates that we have seen in the past, the fact that the Minister has agreed to consult and talk to people about it after the fact, I would like to say that I will be supporting this bill. Thank you.