Mr. Speaker, I could go through the numbers and Canadians could get their calculators out and do it for themselves. Perhaps the Liberals may want to do that as well.
The minister claims over the next five years a $58.4 billion of tax relief. Subtract from that $7.5 billion, which is actually not tax relief but spending on the child benefit. Subtract a further $29.5 billion, which will be increased CPP premiums over the next five years, most of which, if not all, will go to pay off the unfunded liability in that program of nearly $500 billion. Subtract from that $13.5 billion, which were scheduled tax hikes that are now cancelled. It is not a cut of existing taxes. It is simply an abandonment of untenable proposed taxes. That gives us a grand total of $7.9 billion in real tax relief over five years, divided by five equals $1.58 billion. If we divide that by the number of taxpayers, which I think is about 14 million, we arrive at $107.60 per year per taxpayer in real tax relief. Those are the facts. If people want to take issue with those facts they should show us their numbers, but these are numbers from the budget.
Another point the member raised was the so-called lack of progressivity in our own tax plan. Our tax plan would provide real substantial tax relief. I invite people to look at it. We have laid out the numbers. It is transparent. Everyone can look at it.
Taking money from people who work hard to earn money is the last thing we want to do. Productive people assist others. They create jobs. They are consumers and entrepreneurs. They are the backbone of the economy. Somehow Liberal members think that the government creates jobs. I have news for them. It is productive, hardworking, innovative people who succeed that create economic activity.
If the Liberal government would only see that, we would have a country that looked a lot more like Ontario and Alberta than like some of the other provinces that labour under the misapprehensions of Liberal social engineering and bad economic decisions. This is exactly what the budget perpetuates.