Mr. Speaker, apparently the member for Kings—Hants does not read The New York Times, because if he did, he would have read the huge benchmark study that celebrated the fact, at least for us Canadians, that Canada's middle class has surpassed that of the United States for the first time ever and that we have the wealthiest middle class in the world.
We also have seen a significant reduction in the number of Canadians living below the low-income line. In fact, thanks to our increase in the basic personal exemption and other progressive changes, we have lifted over 1.2 million low-income Canadians off of the tax rolls altogether.