Mr. Chair, I take no lessons from the Minister of Finance. I have won two Consumer Choice Awards for Excellence in Business and was a long time financial administrator. So, yes, we know how to handle money and, in fact, we do it better than the Conservatives do and better than the Liberals do.
Who says this? The Department of Finance did a longitudinal study from 1981 to 2001 and it compared the various governments, the actual fiscal period returns. What did it find? His Department of Finance found that the NDP balanced the budget in the actual fiscal period of time most of the time.
How did the Conservatives do? I know the Conservatives do not want to hear this but two-thirds of the time the Conservatives ran deficits, including the largest deficits in Canadian history. In fact, the only party that is worse at managing finances is the Liberal Party. It was in deficit 86% of the time.
Here we have two political parties that are simply fiscally challenged. They do not understand how to manage money. The NDP, fortunately, does. Who says this? The Department of Finance, under the Liberals and under the Conservatives, says that the NDP manages money better.
I have nothing to add to that. The minister will not contradict his own department.
However, I will come back to the question he refused to answer, either because he does not know or does not care to know. I would ask the minister to please take note that the hourly wage of the jobs that he and his government has lost in manufacturing is $21 an hour.
What have we gained? We have gained service industry jobs, which are time and temporary. What is their hourly wage? It is $14 an hour.
I know the Conservatives are financially challenged but I think that the brightest among them can see that their Flintstone economics, corporate tax cuts being their only approach, when one get two-thirds of the salary in the job created as opposed to the job one has lost, the person is not doing too well, and that is what has happened.
They lost $21-an-hour jobs, good manufacturing jobs in the auto sector and the softwood industry in British Columbia, which we certainly know about, which was as a result of the softwood sellout and other very poor economic choices. When we go across the country, we see $21-an-hour jobs being lost and the $14-an-hour or less jobs, minimum wage jobs, being created.
I will give a softball to this minister since he has not been able to answer any of the questions tonight. It is a very simple question that I am sure his associates can answer. What is the total value of the corporate tax cuts that the government has brought in through 2012?