Madam Speaker, I would like to say at the outset that I will be splitting my time with my friend and colleague, the member for Windsor West.
The situation today is unique because we are going to be able to review the Conservative government’s economic policies, and at the same time, because this is a motion by the Liberal official opposition, we are going to be able to recall the leading role played by the Liberals in the Conservatives’ decision to cut taxes for the wealthiest corporations.
We have the former Liberal leader to thank for the Minister of Finance rising in the House to blow his own horn. After giving a speech to the Economic Club in Toronto, the former Liberal leader called on the government to cut taxes for the wealthiest corporations even faster. Overjoyed, the Conservative Minister of Finance cut taxes even faster, while being careful to point out that had it not been for the Liberals asking for it, he would never have dared to cut corporate taxes so fast.
That is what has been done. Today, the Liberals, with as much nerve as ever, are rising to denounce this year what they were clamouring for two years ago. It is pathetic. The list of quotations was a long one: their former finance critic, their former leader, all of them, one after another, calling for corporate taxes to be cut faster.
The Conservatives have made the same mistake since they came to power. They are destabilizing a balanced Canadian economy built up since the second world war. We need to keep the $60 billion figure in mind because it is going to come up three times during my speech. Sixty billion dollars, that is the tax cut the wealthiest corporations have been given by the Conservatives since they have been in power. Why do I say the wealthiest corporations? Because in the speeches today, they are going to say that this tax cut applied to all corporations, all companies in Canada, not just the wealthiest corporations. A small mistake. In fact, a manufacturing company in Beauce, a forestry company in northern Ontario or British Columbia that is making no profits because of the artificially high dollar, and we will come back to that, gets no benefit from it. If a company did not make a profit, or even had a loss, obviously it did not pay taxes and obviously it did not benefit from the tax cuts handed out by the Conservatives. And so where did the $60 billion go? The answer is simple: it went to the big oil companies and the banks.
Therefore, the sectors of our economy that needed help the most, particularly the forestry and manufacturing sectors, got nothing. The sectors of the economy that definitely did not need any help, those that had plenty of money, particularly the oil sector and big banks, got tens of billions of dollars, money they did not need and that contributed absolutely nothing. According to part of their speech, the Conservatives are giving tax breaks to businesses that are creating jobs. Really? We wondered how many jobs the Royal Bank of Canada created last year. Zero. None. Nada. The banks are not creating any jobs, but they are turning profits. Our chartered banks made $20 billion in profits last year, and $10 billion was given to their executives in bonuses. My hon. colleagues heard correctly. No jobs were created, but the banks benefited from tax cuts, which put more money in their pockets. Meanwhile, ordinary people are being fleeced. Every time we take money out of the bank machine, we are forced to give the bank president a two- or three-dollar tip. That is the Conservatives' philosophy.
This brings us to our second amount of $60 billion, specifically, the $60 billion the Conservatives have stolen from the employment insurance fund. The Liberals started the pillaging and the Conservatives have really finished the job this year.
Some may call it a “notional amount”. That was what the former Liberal leader said; those were his words. That meant it was more of a theoretical amount because that money had never existed. It was anything but theoretical.
I remind members of what was said earlier. A company that does not generate a profit did not benefit from the tax cuts because it did not pay taxes. All businesses and all employees had to shell out the money to pay into the employment insurance fund. It is not that this is an amount in the government's books labelled “employment insurance” that was transferred to the government's consolidated revenue fund. That is not the case. It was an amount of money paid by all businesses. A business that was losing money was still required to pay for each of its employees. It is a bit like in China, where a person had to pay for the bullet for his own execution. Here, companies that were suffering and not generating a profit had to pay to free up $60 billion worth of tax room, which was transferred to the oil companies and the banks.
Here comes that amount of $60 billion for the third time. It is the deficit that the Conservatives created last year, in a single year. Since they took power, they have surpassed the inflation rate by 300% every year. In other words, their spending on government programs is three times higher than the projected inflation rate. Why? Because they are terrible managers. The government does not believe in management. Everything is one size fits all. Instead of cutting taxes across the board, it could have come up with something else. In light of the situation that had been created by the artificially high dollar, we needed to help certain sectors of the economy, the ones that created the most jobs, that were the most progressive in terms of creating the green economy of the future and that were the most productive or most innovative. But that did not happen. As far as the Conservatives are concerned, the free market is perfect and can do no wrong, and everything must rely on that market.
They have run up the largest deficit in history. They are dumping it onto the backs of future generations. It is a question of being fair to future generations. Sustainable development is primarily about our obligation to consider the effects that today's choices will have on future generations.
The first choice is to leave them the largest economic deficit in history. The second choice is to leave them the largest environmental deficit in history. Cleaning up the tar sands will be left to them because the environmental cost of exploiting the tar sands has never been taken into account. The result is that the product is being sold at an artificially low price. In addition, we are currently importing an artificially high amount of American money, which has driven up the value of the loonie, the Canadian dollar and makes it even more difficult to export our manufactured goods. And that vicious cycle has been in place ever since they set up camp.
Social issues are also being dumped onto the backs of future generations. Between 2004 and 2008, before the recession, there were well-paying jobs in the manufacturing sector. But 322,000 jobs have been lost in that sector. Salaries were high enough to provide for a family and, more importantly, people had retirement pensions for the future. Hundreds of thousands of people will retire without enough resources to take care of themselves and their families. That is the third element of sustainable development. A social deficit is being offloaded onto future generations.
For all these reasons, we disapprove of and condemn the government's economic policies. For all these reasons, we disapprove of and condemn the terrible hypocrisy of the Liberals, who have the audacity to come here today and rake the Conservatives across the coals for corporate tax cuts even though they were the ones who pushed them to do it. Shame. What hypocrites.