Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's long speech on anything other than the other place, which is the motion we are supposed to be debating at the moment. We are debating the estimates and the motion pertaining to the other place at the moment. We will vote on the larger issue of the estimates later today.
Many Canadian feel the other place is largely superfluous and perhaps is a waste of money. If we have to listen to more speeches like we have from the member, Canadians will start thinking that this House is superfluous. There was nothing but unabashed promotion of what the government thinks it has accomplished for Canadians.
I remember jobs, jobs, jobs as being the cry during the last election. We all remember that. Unemployment is barely less than 10 per cent today and families need more and more part-time jobs, several jobs. It is more difficult for them to make ends meet. They feel more and more pressed as their standard of living is getting squeezed. These are the real facts being published in the tons of paper emanating from government offices. When we look at the fine print we find that Canadians are not enjoying greater prosperity and they do not have all these jobs the government promised.
When we take a look at the deficit we see that it is coming down, but the point is that the deficit has come down strictly because tax revenues have gone up. A $25 billion reduction is exactly the amount of additional revenue the government is getting from the Canadian taxpayer, and government members stand and say what a wonderful job of management of the deficit they are doing.
A month from now the Minister of Finance will have an announcement saying our new target is 1 per cent of GDP. He will not say that it will come down because we will squeeze even more taxes out of Canadians. He will talk about the fact that he has not raised taxes. That is wonderful but he does not say he is eliminating tax deductions for seniors. He proposed in his last budget that the first $1,000 of pension income which used to be tax free would no longer be tax free. That sounds like a tax increase to me.