Mr. Chair, it is my pleasure to participate in committee of the whole this evening and further examine the budget that was delivered a short time ago.
I am a little disappointed that we have not really had answers to many of the questions that have been posed here tonight, so we will just carry on and see if we can do a little better.
The finance minister is the person in cabinet with the ultimate responsibility for our national economy. The strength of our economy can be measured in many ways but one is how many jobs are created. Unfortunately, job creation has not been a priority for either the government or the finance minister. That tone was set with a throne speech that was all about expanding government programs but made no mention of private sector jobs.
The finance minister followed the Prime Minister's lead by crafting a budget that leaves entrepreneurs, workers, and private sector businesses on the sidelines. Instead of focusing on businesses that create jobs, wealth, and opportunity in our society, he delivered a budget that expands spending on government programs by a massive 7.6% overall this year.
I would like to quote Hendrik Brakel, who is the senior director of economic, financial, and tax policy at the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. He did some research on this budget compared to the last one that the Conservative government presented to the House. In the last Conservative budget, the word “business” appeared 622 times. That is compared to just 87 times in this first Liberal budget. Similarly, in the 2015 budget the word “hiring” appeared 15 times and in the finance minister's budget “hiring” is only mentioned three times and it is mentioned only in the context of hiring more government employees to work at the Canada Revenue Agency. Even as he massively expands government spending by tens of billions of dollars, his budget sets aside just $173 million for business growth and innovation. That amounts to about 1.5% of this new budget spending.
The parliamentary budget officer has shown that the job numbers that were presented in this budget were inflated by some 40%. In addition to that, the finance minister refuses to release any information so that we can understand how he came up with his numbers.
I have some questions for the Minister of Finance about growth and job creation. The first one is the obvious one. Could he explain a little more about how he came up with the numbers for jobs in this particular budget?