Coming out of Question Period in the House of Commons today, Finance Minister Ralph Goodale said he was canning new corporate tax cuts because he didn’t believe he could push them through a minority Parliament — a Parliament where he’ll need support of at least one, and likely two, opposition parties isn order to get any tax cuts passed. Goodale said, essentially, that he could not trust the Conservative Party to vote in favour of corporate tax cuts:
“Would you trust them after what they did in the spring? For heaven’s sake, give your head a shake. There’s nothing to be trusted in that gaggle of silly people.”
Conservative Finance Critic Monte Solberg, one of the “silly people” sitting opposite to Goodale, had this to say:
“In the spring, when the government was trying to take corporate tax cuts out of its own budget bill, we fought to keep them in. We are there to keep corporate tax cuts in because it means jobs for large employers. We want to see jobs created. Ralph Goodale says he supports productivity. Well, because of our productivity, how can he delay tax relief for large employers in one hand and say he is committed to productivity on the other hand? It is ridiculous. “
Goodale, in the QP scrum as well as in a statement issued later today said his government would not be proceed with the issue of bank mergers and blamed that, too, on opposition parties:
“Earlier this summer, I wrote to the finance critics in the three opposition parties, asking whether we can proceed in a serious fashion to deal with the issue of large-scale bank mergers. After reviewing the responses, I do not believe it would be appropriate to bring forward guidelines on such an important issue in this environment, where it runs the risk of being politicized, “ Goodale said in a statement.