Mr. Speaker, when the Parliamentary Secretary said they are lowering taxes, she made reference to pockets. What we need to recognize is that a tax is a tax. If they start charging people money to park in a parking lot at a hospital, or charging money as a tariff, that is all money coming into the government's pocket.
Yes, in the other pocket, they might be lowering some of the taxes, but when we net it out and ask how much tax the government has collected versus how much it has cut back or given back to citizens, we will find that the government has actually increased taxes by hundreds of millions of dollars over the last few years. That is the reality. The Conservatives might want to say this is a government that does not believe in taxing people, but in fact the opposite is true.
The reality is that the government has more taxes today and is charging more tax today than it has in the last few years. It continues to grow, just in a different form. The Conservatives need to recognize that.
It is about the economy. Canadians are concerned about our economy. Quite often, we find individuals who have been let go from the manufacturing industry, let us say for the sake of argument, where they were being paid a reasonably well-deserved salary of $30 an hour. These people find themselves unemployed and, more often than not, we see that they have to readjust. Part of that readjustment often leads to a lower wage.
In fact, the gap between the rich and the middle class is widening. The rich have been able to become richer under the Conservative regime. It is the middle class on whom we need to spend a little bit more time. We appeal to the Minister of Finance to start focusing more on the middle class here in Canada and the types of issue it has to deal with. Those issues may be personal debt, housing or adjusting to the new working environment. That is where the government needs to put a higher priority.
We talked about overall performance, one of the things we really need to be concerned about. I remember a number of years ago, before the Conservatives were in government, back in 2005 or 2006, that we had a huge trade surplus of billions of dollars. When the Conservative government took the reins of power, it took the surplus that was there through the Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin eras and turned it into a deficit.
What is more, the Conservatives like to think they are great traders. The Prime Minister goes to China and brings back a couple of panda bears. Let us contrast that to when former prime minister Jean Chrétien went to China with a team-Canada approach and brought back literally hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. It is a different way of governing. The past has shown that the Liberal Party did exceptionally well in terms of managing the economy. I believe Canadians are starting to recognize that.
The reason the banking industry is doing as well as it is today, which has been pointed out even by Conservative members, is because of good, smart decisions when Jean Chrétien was the prime minister. At the time, we went against what the world was doing in terms of deregulation. We believed we needed to have the status quo in terms of banking back in the 1990s. That was not a popular decision back then, but it was an important decision, and the government today has seen the benefits of that.
One of the first actions the government took in regard to the banking industry was to increase mortgages from 25 years to 40 years.
We addressed the issue in the House, expressed the concerns we had and demonstrated that it was a bad policy. The government had to flip-flop on its position. We applaud the government for changing and reducing it back down to 25 years.
Canadians have priority issues. Is the government really listening? Health care is an important issue from coast to coast to coast. Canadians love and appreciate the health care system we have today. What have we seen from the Prime Minister?
Leaders before him expressed concerns and took action. Pierre Elliott Trudeau brought in the Canada Health Act. He recognized the five fundamental principles of health care, which Canadians believe in today.
It was Jean Chrétien who established a base of health care transfers; in other words, cash going to the provinces. It was that prime minister who stopped the tax point shift, where provinces were shifting their reliance from cash to tax points. That would not have been good for the longevity of health care in Canada. It would have taken more of the federal government's responsibility out of Ottawa and put it into different regions of the country. We believe in a national health care program. That is why Jean Chrétien took that action.
When Paul Martin was prime minister, we negotiated the health care accord. When Conservative members stand in their place and say their government gives more toward health care than any other government, that is because of Paul Martin and the health care accord that was achieved prior to the Conservatives taking office.
That was a commitment, and we have demonstrated that commitment through different prime ministers in terms of what we believe in with respect to health care. We know it is a high priority for all Canadians.
What has the Conservative government done? The Prime Minister has not even met with the 10 premiers. He has said he will meet with them one on one. If the Prime Minister believes in health care and believes in the important issues Canadians have to face today, then he needs to do a lot more than just pick up the phone and talk to one premier here and one premier there. We need leadership.
A first ministers' conference needs to be held in Ottawa, my home city of Winnipeg or any other jurisdiction. The point is that the Prime Minister needs to sit at the head of the table and work with the different stakeholders, in particular the premiers, working out some agreements that are absolutely critical to Canada's future. He needs to deal with issues like the social health care accord that needs to be renewed. It is not good enough for the Prime Minister to tell the provinces to trust him, that the government will continue to give annual increases. That does not cut it. It is an issue of priorities. What are the government's priorities?
I have seen absolutely no hesitation with respect to money heading over to the department responsible for advertising. Advertising costs have gone through the roof. There is no doubt that all political parties advertise, but their advertisements are not as partisan as those put out by the Conservative government. We have huge student unemployment. We could hire 30-plus students for summer jobs with one 30-second ad on this so-called economic action plan.
The Conservative government spends an enormous amount of tax dollars in areas in which it is not necessary. At a time when the Conservative government is cutting back on the civil service, it has decided to have more members of Parliament. The government had a choice. It chose to have more elected members of Parliament as a priority and cut back on the size of the civil service. What kind of priority is that? The residents of Winnipeg North do not want the Minister of Finance to create more members of Parliament at a time when the Conservatives are cutting back on civil servants. It does not make any sense.