Mr. Speaker, I accept the invitation of my hon. colleague to look at the facts. I am looking at the low income cutoff published by Statistics Canada, which peaked in about 1996, something like 16% of persons, and went down to about 10% by the time the Conservative government took over in 2006. It has gone down a little since then, but most of the decrease occurred after a few years of a Liberal government.
I would like to contest the government speakers who have criticized the Liberal record. In fact, the decrease in poverty that we have seen in Canada has come about during a Liberal government. The speakers on the Conservative side are really distorting the facts and are not looking at them. In addition, they are ignoring that this debate is about income inequality. We should be looking at the Gini coefficient, which is a numerical measure of income inequality. It is a measure of how much the tide is raising just the yachts and not everyone else's boats.
I would like my hon. colleague to retract his criticism of the Liberal government because it is not true.