Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak on what the priorities of the government should be and what they could be. I would like to thank the citizens of the cities of Burnaby and New Westminster. Many members of the community were emailing me, sending letters or making phone calls about what they believe the priorities should be for this country. I will come back to that in a moment.
Clearly, Canadians are seeing a disconnect between what the current Conservative government is doing, what the former Liberal government did, and what they actually see as major priorities that should be tackled by the federal government of this country.
I should start by talking a bit about the financial situation that Canadians find themselves in. This will be a wake-up call for Conservatives and Liberals who are continually clapping and patting each other on the back and talking about how economic good times have come.
It is an important wake-up call. Since 1989 when the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was put in place, and since this corporate tax cut agenda started with this inevitable drive to the bottom, most Canadians are poorer. It is unbelievable, but Statistics Canada tells us that two-thirds of Canadian families are earning less now than they were back in 1989.
What has happened? When the Conservatives and the Liberals talk about these good times, who are they actually referring to? StatsCan also tells us what has actually happened. The wealthiest 20%, the wealthy elites that the Liberals and the Conservatives represent, and they are the parties of the elites, those two parties, same old, same old, the wealthy elites have actually seen their share of national income go up to 50%. The wealthy elites in this country now take half of the entire national income pie.