Mr. Speaker, two announcements in the past week demonstrate that the government's approach to reducing the deficit protects the rich and punishes the poor.
The Minister of Human Resources Development picked the pockets of unemployed Canadians to the tune of $1.9 billion, yet all the top banks in Canada have announced billion dollar profits for the last year. Clearly the federal government is forcing the burden of paying the huge debt, which it and the Conservatives have created, on the least affluent in Canada.
The federal government provides absolutely no funding for the UI program and one wonders what moral authority it has to attempt to reduce the deficit with money contributed to the UI fund by ordinary Canadians. Ordinary Canadians are being forced to do more than corporate citizens to reduce the deficit. With obscenely high bank profits, the government is not taking any measures at all to ensure that they too are paying their fair share of the deficit.
These two contrasts simply show how natural it is for the Liberal government to look after its corporate friends. Maybe some day we will have a government for the people, by the people.