Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the Minister of State (Western Economic Diversification).
It gives me great pleasure to rise to speak on behalf of the people of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. The people in my riding of eastern Ontario, like all Canadians, have benefited from the careful, balanced approach our national Conservative government has taken when it comes to running an economy in a modern first-world nation.
Canada is recognized as a world leader in the way we prudently manage our economy for the benefit of all our citizens. There is no on-the-job training for such an important task as managing a G7 economy. Now is not the time to be experimenting with extremist policies derived from some discredited ideology that has proven to be a failure.
There is some question who will end up being the official opposition after the next election, the Socialist International or the socialist light, which sits as the third party in this place. For the benefit of Canadians following this debate, the terms are interchangeable, as are their policies.
Bob Rae was as comfortable piling on the debt in Ontario as NDP premier as he was as the leader of today's third party in this place. Today's supply day motion, as put forth by the opposition, uses a number of terms and phrases that in the mind of a socialist means something very different from what the average middle-income Canadian family understands these terms to mean.
For example, the way this motion uses the term “productivity” ignores the role of human capital and more specifically wages. The fact that the opposition continually calls for an increase in the minimum wage, as if an increase would have no effect on productivity or small business viability, demonstrates the disconnect between the whole approach of our Conservative government, which has taken to managing our economy, as opposed to the ideological left-wing approach we see from the opposition when it had been given the chance to bankrupt an economy the way it has in Ontario.
The same can be said about taxes. Members should make no doubt about it. There is no difference between the opposition in Ottawa and the Ontario Liberal Party in Toronto, which has turned my province of Ontario into a have-not province.
It was a short easy stroll for Glenn Thibeault, the NDP MP for Sudbury, to walk into the embracing arms of the Toronto Liberal Party, the party of the gas plants, eHealth, Ornge and electricity rates, to name a few scandals, the same walk Bob Rae took in reverse. Ottawa has become a refuge for individuals who can copy the same policies that turned Ontario from being the economic engine of Canada into a have-not province. These individuals have attached themselves to the green leader of the third party.
The leader of the third party counts as his principal adviser the unseen author of this spectacular failure average Canadians are stuck with paying, known as the greed energy and greed economy act. This is the showpiece of economic policy of the left in Canada, as it features a carbon tax.
In Ontario, the other name for that carbon tax is the global adjustment and it is on every consumer's electricity bill. Canadians need look no further than the economic mess in Ontario to know where Canada will end up if opposition gets—