Mr. Speaker, there was quite a bit in that statement, not all factual of course.
Speaking of changing one's mind, might I quote back to the hon. member for Markham—Unionville, after the Prime Minister in his year-end interviews warned Canadians that we were headed for some troubling economic times, that is leadership. We saw leadership in the fall economic update of last year with pre-emptive moves, and I will get back to that to address the hon. member's question.
However, when the Prime Minister warned Canadians with great leadership capabilities, he was not trying to frighten Canadians as the opposition members are trying to do, gleefully gloating that we are losing jobs, gleefully gloating that other economies are in trouble. We should not take pleasure in economic turmoil around the world.
This government is trying to do its best to not frighten Canadians, but when the Prime Minister publicly stated there will be some difficult economic times, let me read the quote from the hon. member for Markham—Unionville. This was somewhere around January 1. He said:
--the [Conservative] government is overstating the risks because many experts expect the Canadian economy to grow by up to 2.5 per cent this year--
It is shocking. We all change our minds, even the hon. member. When the hon. member talks about economic stimulus I cannot help but think back to last fall's economic statement, when in fact the Minister of Finance put in place measures that reduced Canadians' taxes by $31 billion this year alone. That is an incredible amount of money.
However, let us put it in perspective. When the hon. member mentions that it is a pittance compared to other countries, the IMF is encouraging all countries to provide an economic stimulus of somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2%. If we do the simple math, the $31 billion that we left in Canadians' pockets, that we did not take to bring to Ottawa as play money, March madness money that some of the former Liberal governments did. We left that in Canadians' pockets and let them decide what to do with it. That $31 billion is 2% of our gross domestic product.
We did that a year ago and we would have loved to have the support of the opposition parties at that time but we also encourage them to support this. This is not a budget. The opposition should not misconstrue this to be a budget. I know it is disappointed. I know it is expecting spending that it could criticize. If we offered incentives to some industries, I am sure it would have found a way to criticize that too.
We will get to that, but as the Minister of Industry stated in the House several times this week, we will not put money into an industry until we understand that is the best use of taxpayers' dollars, that it is coordinated with whatever our largest customer, that being the United States, is going to do in that same sector, or we could lose all those taxpayers' dollars.
I know it may not be that important to that side, but it is incredibly important to us. That is why we have put in measures to show leadership from this party. We are encouraging leadership from all members of the House to cut back on our spending: our spending as members of Parliament and our spending in our own budgets. In fact, we are planning on legislating caps on wage increases to the public sector.
The President of the Treasury Board will speak to that later today in more detail. That is leadership. That is the kind of leadership that elected the Prime Minister to lead this country. We expect nothing less from the opposition than support in a difficult economic situation. Let us not play partisan politics with the future of Canadians.