Mr. Speaker, for ordinary, hard-working Canadians, last week's budget is a total failure. It fails to address the growing prosperity gap and throws about new programs and tax credits to the few lucky enough to get a place around the boardroom table where it was written.
Governments, whether Liberal or today's Conservatives, continue to ignore the reasonable demands of a group of Canadian workers, our construction workers. There are no measures for construction workers by trade and apprentices to deduct travel and accommodation expenses incurred by employment away from their homes. People who work from home can deduct certain expenses relating to a home office but people for whom the very nature of their jobs require frequent travel to job sites, the location over which they have no control, there is nothing similar.
The NDP is the only party to put forward a concrete legislative solution to this problem with a private member's bill introduced by my colleague from Hamilton Mountain. The long distance truck driver has an enhanced meal credit program in recognition of the additional expense borne while travelling for work, why not construction workers?
It is long past time--