Mr. Speaker, our friends in the Liberal Party have been trumpeting the middle class in their rhetoric a lot lately. In fact, they included a fancy chart in their recent budget to talk about the incomes of middle-class people. In it they claim that for the last 40 years, the middle class has not had a real after-inflation raise.
I was surprised to hear that, because Conservatives had produced a lot of data to show that in the last decade alone, middle-class incomes had skyrocketed. How could both of these claims be true?
I looked at the underlying data that Finance Canada used to produce this chart in the Liberal budget. I found that when Liberals say that Canadians have had almost no middle-class income increase over the last four decades, they are telling the truth. When the Conservatives say that there has been a very large increase in middle-class incomes in the last 10 years, we are also telling the truth. How do we reconcile both of those things?
We can look at the chart. We can go back to 1976, the beginning point of this chart that the Liberals put in their recent budget. It demonstrates that, at that time, in inflation-adjusted dollars, Canadians were earning just over $46,000 on average, and then suddenly, over the following six years, incomes plummeted by 6% after inflation.
That drop was the biggest of the last half-century, and it was presided over by Pierre Elliott Trudeau, whose policies of high taxes, spiralling debt, and taxpayer give-aways to large corporations sent our economy reeling. It caused a massive national recession and enormous job loss, particularly in western Canada, but caused a job-loss contagion that spread right across the country and led us to the biggest pay cut for the middle class in a half-century. It then took 30 years for incomes to recover to the level they had been back in 1976. It just so happens that recovery occurred under the previous Conservative prime minister.
What happened in the last 10 years then?
According to data right out of page 11 of the Liberal budget, incomes for middle-class Canadians rose by a staggering 11% after inflation, from $44,700 to $49,602, which is a $5,000 after-inflation increase in median incomes. In fact, the pay increase that occurred under our most recent Conservative prime minister was larger than income growth under Prime Ministers Trudeau, Clark, Turner, Mulroney, Campbell, Chrétien, and Martin combined, again, according to data right out of the Liberal budget.
Let us break it down further. The government has said that it is a big champion of women in the workforce. In fact, the Prime Minister likes to brag that he is a “feminist”. I would like to look at the data that his budget presents about incomes for women.
Anybody who does look at that data, which again is found on page 11 of the recent Liberal budget, will find that women enjoyed a $5,234 pay increase after inflation during the most recent Conservative government. This is an increase of 14%. In other words, female incomes grew even faster than the average income during the last 10 years.
It is also worth noting that the annual rate of income increase for women during the most recent Conservative government was five times the rate it was during the first Trudeau government, and five times as fast as during the Chrétien and Martin governments.
In other words, women, middle-class women, had their biggest pay increase in a half-century under the most recent Conservative government, according to the Liberal budget.
Where do we go from here? Ironically, this budget, which contains this valuable information, seeks to repeat the exact same mistakes that caused Pierre Elliott Trudeau to tank the middle class four decades ago. It is unfortunate, but history does seem to repeat itself. This Prime Minister is enacting the same high-tax, big-debt, costly government strategy that his father did to destroy the middle class when he was in office not so long ago. We would think that the Liberals would learn. We would think that they would understand that trickle-down government harms the middle class even though it is particularly good for the wealthy and well connected.
We talk today about a budget that would make changes to the income tax system. Far from helping the middle class, if people earn $150,000 as Liberal MPs, they would save almost $700 in income tax as a result of changes in the bill before the House right now. If people earn $45,000 a year, they would get absolutely nothing. The question of social justice can always be answered with the following two-part question: From whom, to whom?
The costs of the bill would be borne by people who earn $45,000 a year and the maximum benefits would go to those earning $150,000 a year. That is not social justice. That is not a defence of the middle class. That is a wealth transfer from the working poor to the wealthy and the well connected.
So it is so often the case when government gets big and expensive. Those who can afford the lobbyists to pressure government and the accountants and lawyers to gain the rules of government always do so much better when there is more government. That is what we are seeing today, a government that is on the side of the very rich, that is increasing the cost and the burden on the shoulders of the working poor, and that is reversing the very impressive middle-class gains that our country enjoyed over the last decade.
Now we hear speculation that the current government may give one billion middle-class tax dollars to Bombardier, a company of billionaire owners and millionaire executives. This is a company, in fact, that just paid $8 million to one executive alone, while it was simultaneously asking middle-class taxpayers in Quebec and Canada to bail it out. This again would be a massive wealth transfer from the working poor and the middle class to the wealthy and well-connected, which is so common under left-of-centre governments like the current one. This is the insider economy or crony socialism at its very worst.
By contrast, our official opposition will continue to fight for working people who get up every day and put in a hard day's work in order to earn their incomes. We will continue to fight for those who want to save a bit more through their tax-free savings accounts, keep a bit more from their income tax bills, and hire a bit more through their small businesses. In so doing, we will champion the underdogs in Canada and fight for the people who are the backbone of this country.