That is exactly right, as the member yelled across to me. That was the NDP but again, we are seeing exactly the same scenario here.
We want to see how they arrive at these numbers. In the first quarter of this year alone the surplus reported by the Department of Finance was $11.4 billion. There is only one way that the government gets money and we all know that is from our back pockets. The government collects money from taxes. That is one source of revenue. Clearly we have to look at what has been going on.
The Canadian Alliance believes it is time for real tax cuts for working Canadians. They need these tax cuts. There is all kinds of evidence to substantiate this. We can look at the standard of living of Canadians. It has been dropping dramatically over the last 10 years. Today the worker's purchasing power is much less than it was 10 years ago. There are all kinds of reports and statistics to back that up.
We have to get taxes down. Since 1993, the Liberal government has raised taxes over 60 times. It claims it has deducted taxes. I challenge Liberals to to go to the working people in their ridings and ask them to pull out their paycheques from today and compare it to two years or four years ago. Working people have less money to take home. There is only one reason for that. The current government has raised and raised taxes. What are they left with?
The Department of Finance reported a $12 billion surplus. The government has put that on the debt but I am a little curious to see what kind of numbers we will get after the election. Maybe we can go back and look in Hansard when the government comes back.
Again, to back this up, our standard of living has gone down. Let me give a couple of quotes. This comes from the OECD: “One of the most important determinants of the standard of living is productivity which is a measure that attempts to capture the efficiency and productive inputs and technical progress”.