Mr. Speaker, the issue of trust is really being flushed out with the member for Newmarket—Aurora. At least as New Democrats we negotiated a deal as a party position under what we stood for as Canadians but Conservative members are now crossing the floor to join cabinet positions. We stand by our principles in terms of the things that we fought for at election time to make a better Canada. We are very pleased with what Bill C-48 does.
The fact is that this is a better balanced budget and it is also one that is very reasonable. We were very pleased, for example, to take the opportunity to extract corporate tax cuts to the largest corporations and redirecting that elsewhere. We think it will be very successful for the economy. For example, we think there will be a housing boom for many of the different construction industries. We do know that many people need affordable housing which will then put that money back into the system as opposed to having to pay rent at a higher level which makes it difficult for them to be able to sustain families. We believe it is very much a family issue.
The government has historically over the last 12 years, via major surpluses, underestimated the budget, so we are quite confident. Our party did due diligence with different economists, those in the party system and outside of our party system, to ensure what we were doing was reasonable and was achievable. That is something that we believe will see fruition and that is important for Canadians.
When we went to the break week, while the leader of the official opposition said that he would talk to Canadians about whether to go to an election and then consider voting against the budget because his party did not vote against it when it first came forward, we did not sit around and wait to see whether the Conservatives and the Bloc would team up to bring this country to an election or, alternatively, live with a bad budget. We voted against it because we believed it did not represent the views of our constituents.
We sought to make changes to make Parliament work. We negotiated something that is of benefit to Canadians, something that makes me comfortable as an individual and something that is above board. We did not do it in a way that was disrespectful of the House. When we came back from the break we had a position that we could now support. As New Democrats, that was better than sitting around waiting to see if the other parties would bring this to an election or have to eat a budget that did not suit the needs of Canadians.
This budget still has a lot of holes in it and is not as good as we would like it to be but it is balanced and fair. It is a compromise for some of the things that we have asked Canadians to support us on. We will be proud to hopefully get those achievements into our communities to have a better Canada for all of us.