Mr. Speaker, I think the member might be putting words in my mouth that I never said. We are supporting this bill.
What the government has proposed in Bill C-66 is $250 to families entitled to receive the national child benefit, $125 to seniors entitled to receive the guaranteed income supplement, and $250 to senior couples where both spouses are entitled to receive the GIS.
We are not saying that is not an appropriate thing to do. What a lot of my constituents are saying is, “Why is it that every time the government makes these kinds of announcements it never includes us? We are very strapped. We are on a fixed income. We do not make a lot of money. Like other Canadians, we have sacrificed in so many ways and yet these things never apply to us”. They are actually fairly short tempered about the fact that everything seems to accrue to anyone but them. They are really feeling stretched.
If we look at the increases in heating costs for Canadians this winter, even for people who receive something from this plan, it hardly pays for the incremental difference.
The government's own finance department says that this is a very significant program but says that an equivalent amount of money in tax reduction is insignificant. The discrepancy between those two statements does not go unnoticed by Canadians.