Madam Speaker, I listened with quite a lot of interest to the member's speech. At the very end of his speech he said that Canadians support the budget.
I would just like to ask him a question based on a letter that I have received from one of my constituents dated February 11 with respect to the budget. My constituent says: "Last October I was lucky enough to receive a $300 per month raise in pay. My wife and I consider ourselves fortunate and looked forward to being able to remodel our kitchen in the new year. When my end of January pay arrived, there did not seem to be any extra money available. Closer examination reveals that from my original $300 raise, $162.60 went to increased income tax and $129.96 went to increased CPP and UI deductions which left $7.44 on my cheque". When that was combined with some additional increases in natural gas and so on, he calculates that he is actually $14.56 worse off in January 1997 than he was in January 1996.
At the end of the letter he says: "I do hope that you have enjoyed using the extra $1,951.20 of income tax that my raise produced in your budget this year".
I would like to ask the member whether he thinks it is productive that the tax creep that has been encouraged by the government's actions has actually created a situation where people are worse off a year later than they were in 1996. Why is he so proud of his budget when all it has produced is more hardship for Canadians?