Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the comments the member opposite made regarding a New York Times article and Canada's middle class. I would like to quote a few excerpts from that article.
Members of the middle class in Canada worry about whether they can afford college for their children and whether their children will find jobs afterward. Housing costs are a major concern, as are everyday costs for transportation and mobile-phone plans. Middle-class Canadians worry about inequality.
It goes on, and it does not describe a very happy middle class in this country, I might add. To get a sense of how those trends are affecting people, they talked to a number of them. One person, Deborrah Mustachi, said:
When you have a family to raise and you are middle class, you are on a treadmill. It’s very difficult to save when you have to live for today.
She means paycheque to paycheque.
The article goes on to add one last comment about the fact that Canadians credit labour unions for giving them a decent pay raise. Those are interesting comments.
If that is the information the member opposite wishes to cite as evidence that the government's plan is working, can he explain why The New York Times talks about so much anxiety, so much fear, so much stress, so much struggling, and why the budget addresses none of it?