Mr. Speaker, the member for Windsor West is absolutely right. Before I was elected to Parliament, I was a financial administrator. As it is with most New Democrats, the way ordinary Canadians manage their households is by being careful to spend money on the essentials. That is why one wants to put a budget in the hands of ordinary Canadians to be managed best, not by the high-flying, elite Conservatives, and certainly not by what we saw from the Liberals in the past. It is simply a matter of making the crucial decision the way Canadian families do every day and putting the money into essentials.
A $650,000 vase is not an essential and nor is it a priority to have $2 billion for a 72-hour meeting, because the Prime Minister got carried away and decided to build fake lakes here and cover over other lakes there, and nor are the tens of billions of dollars shovelled out the back of a truck for corporate tax cuts.
That money is going offshore because the Conservatives have not even put any valuation mechanism in place for them to know whether the money is actually being used for job creation. That is why 600,000 full-time jobs were lost and we got back 400,000 part-time, low-paying jobs, and yet they say it is a wonderful thing. They lost 200,000 jobs generally and the quality of the jobs they have created is much poorer than the quality of the jobs they have lost.
What is essential is putting in place programs for youth. The member for Windsor West identified the record levels of student debt and that we need programs in place for youth to make sure they are given alternatives. What have the Conservatives done? The member for Vancouver Kingsway will address this in a moment as well, but they have gutted the youth gang strategy and crime prevention programs and the supports for our nation's youth. They are simply incapable of putting in place a strategy that is effective. It is all about partisan politics. If they really want the election they are pushing so badly for, I think their time of judgment by the Canadian public will come.