Mr. Speaker, if we looked at it, we would see that the words of the day would be “middle class”. It is the phrase that is likely being used most often. If we compared this time to a couple of years ago when we had budget debates, I suggest we would find it was rarely being used. It was not until the member for Papineau became leader of the Liberal Party that we started to talk and focus more attention on the middle class, recognizing that the middle class has in fact been neglected to the degree that today we are focusing a great deal of time on it. We in the Liberal Party are very happy to see the Conservatives and the New Democrats finally coming on side, recognizing that we need to focus more attention on the middle class.
The member made reference to the issue of the government making the decision to hand out a $2 billion income split when less than 15% of the population would benefit. It was the leader of the Liberal Party who came out right away indicating that we do not support it and we would reverse it. Perhaps the member could expand on what her party's position is on it and why it took them so long to adopt the Liberal Party's position on the income split policy.