Mr. Speaker, in Canada and as New Democrats it is important to recognize something the member for Burnaby—New Westminster has often mentioned in the House, and that is the shrinkage of the middle class. We witness Canadians having to work longer for less. We are seeing an erosion of our quality of life.
That is what I am concerned about, especially when we look at the stimulus package and the elements of the budget. I really think it fails because it provides no legacy push toward where we need to go to regain our middle class.
That is why I use the Navistar example all the time. It is because all those United Way donations will be terminated as people are fired and no longer work. Then we miss out on the civil society measures. Interestingly enough, I commissioned a research paper to see what other countries were doing with regard to their laid-off workers. Germany is actually spending a lot of its money on social infrastructure. It is doing renovations to schools, hospitals and even day care, and it is also adding capacity.
We have had a number of economists claim that investment in social infrastructure will create more jobs. For example, a child care job will create three jobs, in contrast to other types of tax cuts, which would create only one job.
In Canada we have drifted away from our middle-class principles in understanding that we want a balanced civil society that includes social justice and social infrastructure. That is the best way for us to be productive.
I think that when we look at the challenges ahead, the budget fails on that measure.