Mr. Speaker, one person living in poverty is one person too many, and we here should produce policies that free people to pursue opportunity and escape the terrible state that is an impoverished life. That is why I am so proud of the progress we have made in this area. Back in 1996, 15% of Canadians lived below the low-income cut-off line. In the most recent year on record, 2014, that number dropped to 8.8%. That is a spectacular decline, and most of it, by the way, happened under the leadership of Prime Minister Harper.
The reason it happened is that we rewarded hard work, particularly by cutting taxes for low-income people who were entering the labour force. We brought in about $35 billion a year in tax relief, which the parliamentary budget officer said was overwhelmingly directed at low- and modest-income people. We brought in the working income tax credit, a benefit that helped people get over the welfare wall. We raised the personal exemption to take hundreds of thousands of people off the tax rolls. There were people who literally had their federal income tax burden lowered by 100% under the previous Conservative government. We need to continue to lower taxes and create opportunities to make work pay and give people expanded opportunities so that we can defeat poverty once and for all.