Madam Speaker, we seem to have picked up on a bit of a theme here today, when time and time again my friends across the way are asked for a simple definition of the middle class. I do not know if cookies are being handed out in the lobby to Liberals who mention the middle class more than anyone else. They like to mention it quite a bit but seem to have some strange difficulty in defining it.
The Prime Minister was asked this question just outside the chamber by the press at one point, and he gave a bit of a ham-fisted answer. He said the definition is those who are able to live on their investments. It was then pointed out to him that people who are retired live on their investments and that might not make them wealthy, so he struggled to find a definition for the middle class. If the entire Liberal budget and this entire bill is somewhat predicated and focused on serving the middle class, in the spirit of openness and transparency, it would do us well for my colleague across the way to simply define it.
I will ask him this as a subsequent question. Once he has defined what the middle class actually is, can he tell us why people earning between $48,000 a year and $62,000 a year are going to receive $50 as a benefit from this Liberal tax scheme, while those earning as much as $211,000 a year will earn 16 times more from this Liberal tax plan? Is that the middle class that Liberals are aiming it: folks earning north of $200,000 a year?