Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to stand in this House today. I feel privileged because I will be one of the members who will have the opportunity to speak on third reading on this bill. We know that most of the members will not be able to speak on it because, as we are well aware, the government has brought in time allocation, more commonly known as closure, the guillotine measure, and so I am privileged to have the opportunity to say a few words today.
I also would like to congratulate my colleague, the member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, for a terrific speech this morning. I think he touched on a lot of the issues that I would probably normally touch on. They are also the kinds of issues that I know my constituents certainly can relate to.
And of course, as always, the member for Calgary Shepard is an eloquent speaker. I just wish I could have done as well when I was his youthful age.
When I was thinking about my remarks today, I got thinking back to when I was a young person, growing up in Saskatchewan. That would have been in the sixties. We had a Liberal premier in Saskatchewan named Ross Thatcher. Of course, everyone knows that Saskatchewan is sort of endless skies and, in some way, endless roads. There was a saying back in the sixties, when the Liberals were in office in Saskatchewan, under Ross Thatcher, “If it moves, tax it; if it doesn't move, pave it”. It kind of reminds of this particular budget. In fact, in Saskatchewan, when they did pave it, they were known as “Thatcher's patchers”.
What I think I would like to hear in 2016, again, is “If it moves, tax it; if it doesn't move, we'll call it infrastructure”.
I just wanted to put that on the record.
What I would like to do, though, is talk a bit about where we are. I guess it's six months, now, after the government introduced this particular budget. There were some statistics that were released in the last few days. I know the Liberals were twisting their arms, trying to pat themselves on their backs with the November job numbers: 10,700 new jobs.
There used to be a guy on the radio called Paul Harvey. He had a program that was called The Rest of the Story. I think that is pretty applicable, as well, to this particular situation because of those 10,700 new jobs, 18,000 are part-time. I know even the Liberals' math does not quite equate when we divide 18,000 into 10,700, but what it really amounts to is the fact that we lost 8,700 full-time jobs in the last month.
That now brings the number of full-time jobs that have been lost in this country, in the last year since the government took office, to over 30,000 full-time jobs.
A lot of those jobs are in the member for Calgary Shepard's riding, my riding, and other Alberta MPs' ridings. Calgary has just, I think, hit an all-time high in the unemployment rate at 10.3% for the month of November and as my colleague, the member for Calgary Shepard, made the point, that is only what Statistics Canada is able to measure. We all know that there are a number of others that simply do not fall into those statistics.
Also, the government members were trying, last week, to pat themselves on their backs for a slight increase in GDP in the third quarter.
The Minister of Finance, in answer to a planted question from one of his backbenchers, stood in this House and said that one of the reasons the GDP increased in the third quarter is because of the rebuilding in Fort McMurray after the fires. That minister should stand in this House and apologize. Not only was that the wrong answer, in terms of how we are creating GDP, but he had the facts wrong.
The reason the GDP increased in the third quarter was because oil production from the oil sands resumed. I know the anti-oil government cannot quite accept that fact, but the third-quarter GDP numbers were specifically attributable to the fact of the resumption of oil out of the oil sands. The Liberals have no reason to take credit for anything.
It is one thing to say that the government should be doing something, but it is another thing to say what could it be doing that it is not doing. We all know about some of the things the government did not do, like keep its election promise to reduce the small business tax rate. That is evident. That would have significantly helped a number of small businesses in Alberta. Again, we have to remind the government that small business in our country creates jobs and not government. I know government does not believe that, but that is a fact.
Another thing we have mentioned is that if the government had allocated some of those dollars in budget 2016 to a program to clean up abandoned oil wells in Alberta, that would have been good for the environment and it would have put thousands of laid-off oil field workers back to work immediately. We are all pleased that the government has finally made a decision on Trans Mountain, but the reality of it is that construction, at the earliest, will not start for another year, and that is provided we do not have protestors and environmentalists holding up that project.
Those are a couple of examples of what the government could have done.
It is typical for the parliamentary secretary to government House leader to rant on about the budget deficits under a Conservative government. I would like to remind the government that one of the first things the Conservatives did when they took over as a government was to reduce the GST from 7% to 6% and then 5%. The Liberal government does not quite remember that. It should take a lesson from when the Conservatives took over government some 11 years ago. Their intent was reduce taxes on the taxpayer, not increase taxes as we see from the Liberal government.
I will just conclude with a couple of comments, and will try to encapsulate what I have said today. Statistically, real earnings in our country from a year ago are down 1%. The Liberals can talk all they want about bringing folks out of poverty and working on behalf of the middle class, but in reality real earnings are down 1%. Again, 30,000 full-time jobs have been lost since the government was elected a year ago.
I will repeat, again, that the Calgary unemployment rate is at 10.3%. What did the Liberals do? They said that they were going to give Alberta a one-time equalization payment of $250 million. That is in contrast to Alberta contributing some $20 billion to equalization for the past 10 years. It is nothing more than the proverbial spit in the bucket.
I will conclude with that. I look forward to any questions that may come as a result of those comments, and will try to elaborate in response to questions.