Madam Speaker, sometimes when mini-budgets or economic statements are being debated they seem a bit abstract. They may seem as though they are about big figures which are hard for people to identify with. Let me tell the House what choices of the government are reflected in the budget statement.
For a single mom living on an income of $15,000, the tax cuts announced by the government will amount to $350 a year, probably enough to pay for a prescription drug for a couple of months because the government has not put in place the promised pharmacare program.
For the bank president or the big corporate director on an income of $750,000 with stock options of say $23 million, the choice that the government has made represents a tax saving of literally millions of dollars.
It is important for people to realize that a budget is about choices and those are the choices that the government has made. The Liberals went to the electorate and told them they would do something about child poverty. What they have done is pump up the incomes of the wealthiest Canadians.
The Liberal government went to the public and said it would introduce a universal child care program, it would do something about home care and would do something about pharmacare. Not one cent in the mini-budget introduced yesterday advances those commitments. What have they done instead? The Liberals have said that tax cuts a la reform alliance are the only thing that matters.
When did a tax cut ensure safe drinking water for working families? When did a tax cut repair an education system that is tattered because of the federal downsizing and downloading of financial responsibilities? When did a tax cut hire nurses who are desperately needed throughout the health care system?
Canadians can see the choices. Canadians can see that this is a government absolutely firmly in the clutches of the corporate elite who last night slurped champagne and pigged out on caviar, not in celebration of the leader of the reform alliance, but because it considers itself to have won the battle to ensure that the finance minister and the federal Liberal government are squarely in the clutches and in the corner of the corporate elite of this country.