Madam Speaker, I am happy to speak to this important issue this evening.
Our government is very interested in helping working Canadians and their families. We are very much interested in providing them with a government that facilitates a healthy and growing economy, which, in turn, provides jobs and prosperity to all Canadians. We have a record of action that we will be glad to stand on.
The member opposite and his party have different ideas, obviously, but our Conservative government believes the best way to fight poverty is to get Canadians working. Thanks to the actions we have taken, that is exactly what is happening. Since July 2009, over 460,000 jobs have been created.
We have said these things before but I will gladly say them again. We made unprecedented investments in skills training, which has helped over 1.2 million Canadians just in the last year. It has helped them to transition into new jobs.
We have introduced the working income tax benefit to make work pay for Canadians who are trying to get over the welfare wall. One million low-income Canadians benefited in the first year of that initiative alone and Canadians who need it will continue to benefit from it.
We have introduced the historic registered disability savings plan in order to help Canadians save for the long-term financial security of a child with a disability.
We continue to pursue our low tax plan so that Canadians have more money in their own pockets to spend on what is important to them and to their families and so that businesses can be more productive, create more jobs and hire more Canadians. Provinces now have access to predictable and growing funding from our government as well.
Our actions have helped Canadians. The actions of the member opposite and his party, on the other hand, have not been helpful. They need to become part of the solution.
Where we introduced help for Canadians who are working or looking for work, the NDP and the member opposite voted against that help. Where we helped students through grants, summer jobs, better tax treatment and improved infrastructure, the NDP once again voted against that help.
Where we improved the tax treatment, increased support multiple times and funded stimulus building projects for our seniors, the NDP voted against that as well. The NDP voted against the working income tax benefit, against our universal child care plan, against increasing help to single-earner families and against the RDSP.
The NDP voted against help during the recession for older workers, for long-tenured workers and against expanded work-sharing measures protecting the jobs of over 270,000 Canadian workers. The member opposite and the NDP in this place have proposed reckless and destructive taxes, spending that will stifle job growth, kill existing jobs, repel investment, lower productivity and increase the very problems that the member opposite says that he wants to fix.
Our Conservative government has and will continue to propose actions that will help Canadians, that will lower taxes, that will attract investment, increase productivity, boost job growth and lower poverty. However, all the NDP seems to want to do is vote against that help time and time again. The NDP needs to begin to treat this seriously and not politically.
I would ask the member and his party to, instead, support our Conservative government's plans which are getting Canadians working and helping them become more prosperous. The NDP really should stop voting against these measures. This is how we will successfully address these issues.