Mr. Speaker, as late as today I met with members from the food bank and listened to their concerns. I certainly have respect for taxpayers. If one wants to talk about the lack of respect for taxpayers, the member should look at the previous Liberal record and the 13 long and dark years of Liberal government.
I am here today speaking on the subject again as I have previously this week, and our government's position has not changed since the last time I spoke. Our government is focused on creating jobs, increasing the safety and prosperity of Canadian families and working to ensure that the economy continues to grow and recover.
We are accomplishing things for Canadians in these areas, whether it be through our low tax plan, our measures to fight crime, or our actions to help Canadians through Canada's economic action plan.
With respect to lower income Canadians and those who were hard hit by the recession, our government believes that the best way to help is to get Canadians working again. Thanks to the action we have taken, that is exactly what is happening.
In fact, since July 2009, there were 460,000 jobs created. We have made unprecedented investments in skills training and helped over 1.2 million Canadians last year alone to transition into new jobs. We introduced the working income tax benefit, which is very popular, to make work pay for Canadians who are trying to get over the welfare wall. There were one million low income Canadians who benefited in the first year alone. The member opposite for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour has praised the government for introducing that particular program.
We have also introduced the historic registered disability savings plan to help Canadians save for the long-term financial security of a child with a disability. We will continue to pursue our low tax plan so that Canadians have more money in their pockets to spend on what is important to them and their family. We have improved social transfers to provinces so that they now have access to predictable and growing funding. These are a few examples, but there are many more initiatives we have taken and introduced to help low income Canadians and their families.
Our record is one of action to help Canadians, whereas the Liberal record is one of empty talk and failure. When the Liberal government was in power it decided to slash social transfers to provinces by a whopping $25 billion. Liberals spent drastically less on funding for health care, post-secondary education and programs that help low income Canadians. They raided over $50 billion from the EI account and balanced their books on the backs of ordinary Canadians. Those cuts hurt Canadians plain and simple. That is what the Liberal record is. That is what the Liberals accomplished.
The Liberal member from Markham—Unionville, a colleague of the member, admitted that those cuts had a devastating impact. He said:
I think, in hindsight, the Chrétien government--even though I'm a Liberal--cut perhaps too deeply, too much offloading, with the benefit of hindsight. And there were some negative effects.
Of course there were. The Liberal finance critic, the member for Kings—Hants, thought much the same thing when he said that the Liberal government made the wrong choices and slashed transfers to the provinces. The provinces are still scrambling to catch up on the lost Martin years of inadequate funding.
Now the self-proclaimed tax and spend Liberal leader is pursuing a campaign to raise taxes on Canadians and job creators. Independent experts have stated that the Liberal plan to raise taxes would kill an estimated 400,000 jobs.
The member from Kings—Hants said:
--we cannot increase corporate taxes without losing corporate investment. If we lose corporate investment, we have a less productive economy. That means lower paying jobs. That means fewer jobs. That means more poverty.
I would ask the member to listen to her finance critic and abandon her plan to raise taxes.