People in government and public life are being kicked around at a high rate of speed.

Does the owner of the restaurant own his restaurant? Or does the government own his restaurant?

I think if you have a two-story office and you hire someone who's handicapped it might be reasonable to let him have an office on the first floor rather than the government saying you have to have a $100 000 elevator.

All too often government's response to social breakdown has been a classic case of 'patching' - a case of handing money out containing problems and limiting the damage but in doing so supporting - even reinforcing - dysfunctional behaviour.

Government cannot do it all. As we work hard to break welfare dependency and get young people ready for the labour market we need businesses to give them a chance and not just fall back on labour from abroad.

The government's desire to expand global trade may be understandable but we mustn't give away too much. We must tell our elected representatives to at least delay the Canada-China FIPA until it has been examined more thoroughly and to reconsider the inclusion of investor-state arbitration mechanisms in all trade deals.

Look I think the worst case scenario is obvious. I think first of all it doesn't work for very long. It's an unstable government that raises taxes and destroys the image we're building for Canada as a strong place to invest.

I forget what the relevant American rate is but I can tell you that our goal is to have a combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate of no more than 25 percent. We're on target to do that by 2012. We will have significantly - by a significant margin the lowest corporate tax rates in the G-7 and that's our - our government's objective.

I think the American government is now the most corrupt government in the world.

We've got to see a state where the Afghan government can handle its own day-to-day security.