Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Minister Flaherty, for coming here today.
As a finance committee we have been seized with a number of forecasts over the course of the day. The first was from the Governor of the Bank of Canada, who has indicated an economic slowdown this fall. We've had the Parliamentary Budget Officer indicate that in many respects we're already in a slowdown.
The original plan of this government was for an austerity budget and to bring in significant additional corporate tax cuts--billions of dollars--on January 1. We've been hearing as a finance committee that there are needed investments.
With some of the other figures that have come out--for example, the disturbing figures around food banks and record usage, with nearly a million Canadians depending on food banks to make ends meet, and two million unemployed in this country--it's fair to say that we can't really look at the economic situation with rose-coloured glasses.
I was in this Parliament when we were on the boundary of a recession in early 2008, and I recall that your comments were very positive. You said on June 3 in Parliament, “The Canadian economy is strong.” You said on August 15, “I anticipate that over the course of the year we will have positive economic growth.” Of course, we were entering a recession at that point.
Given all of these disturbing indications that we're in an economic slowdown, will you revise the approach that seems to be based on austerity on the one hand and significant additional corporate tax cuts on the other, and work with the opposition to build the kind of job plan we need to see to get through this slowdown?