Mr. Speaker, yesterday NDP candidates met for what one journalist called a “festival of economic illiteracy” during their first leadership debate. The topic was supposed to be the economy, but few positive ideas for improving the economy were heard. Instead, the candidates offered lavish spending schemes that would push Canada completely off track.
The candidates proposed high taxes on job creators, on consumers, on investors, on families and on banks, and even proposed a carbon tax that would drive up the price of gasoline, energy and everything that Canadians buy. No candidate was prepared to challenge the NDP's determined opposition to all free trade agreements, and some leadership candidates even called for the halt of the development of the oil sands, an action that would kill billions of dollars of investment and hundreds of thousands of good Canadian high-paying jobs.
This is just another worrying example that demonstrates that the NDP is simply not fit to govern.