Mr. Speaker, I was listening to my colleague who was discussing the budget, and I am a little surprised.
His speech seemed excellent to me, but there is a question that intrigues me when the Conservative Party of Canada is speaking. I consider that the budget before us is an extremely conservative one. I think that the Conservative Party could not have done a better job. In terms of providing services to the people, particularly to the poorest in society, it appears to me that there is absolutely nothing in the budget in this regard. There are no policies when it comes to services to the poorest.
Let us take for example the guaranteed income supplement refund. When I talk about the refund, I am talking about the full refund of the guaranteed income supplement. We are talking about $3.2 billion that was taken from the elderly over the years. The government is only refunding one year retroactively.
When you owe taxes to the government, it goes back 10 years. Indeed, the government will change the Income Tax Act to be able to go back up to 10 years to collect unpaid taxes. However, when the government owes money to people such as seniors living on a small pension, the retroactive period is one year only.
I would like to hear my colleague's comments on this issue.