Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and follow up on a question that was raised in the House on May 17. The more time goes by, the more history repeats itself.
It is worth taking the time to read out part of the question I asked the Minister of Finance on May 17. That day, I told the Liberal version of the story of Robin Hood. It was the story of the Minister of Finance, who invites his rich billionaire friends to pick the pockets of poor Canadian taxpayers. At the time, I said that the minister's recipe was to borrow billions of dollars, to be paid for by future generations of young Canadians, and give them all to his rich Liberal friends, while promising them risk-free returns. I called him the “Robinbank“ of infrastructure, referring to the Canada infrastructure bank.
However, I must admit that I was wrong. The finance minister's role was not to take money from poor Canadians and give it away to his rich friends. It was to keep it for himself. As we have been seeing since Parliament reconvened, the Minister of Finance forgot to disclose certain information about his personal finances to the Ethics Commissioner and the Prime Minister. This allowed the minister to keep amassing personal wealth while serving as a member of Cabinet.
My family and friends would say that it is a coincidence, but I say that there are no coincides, and that this is just history repeating itself. Yesterday, I listened carefully to the speech given by our finance critic, the member for Carleton, who was responding to what the government calls an economic update. That announcement cannot really be called an economic update because all the government did was announce that it was going to continue spending. It is going to continue to try to take all the money it can out of taxpayers' pockets to try to pay off this huge deficit. The infrastructure bank was one way of doing that, but the Minister of Finance thought it was such a good idea that he would personally take advantage of it.
What we are seeing is that the government is continuing to do the opposite of what it says. Speaking of rich Liberal friends and the money the government is taking out of the pockets of the middle class, let us remember that the government was supposed to take that money from the wealthiest Canadians. That is what the Liberals said that they would do, that they would make the wealthiest Canadians pay more. The Liberals said that they were raising taxes for the wealthiest Canadians. However, the member for Carleton was very clear yesterday when he said, “...according to the finance minister's own department, the rich are paying $1 billion less in taxes”. That is the reality.
The “Robinbank” forgot that it is supposed to help the poor and the middle class. Unfortunately, this government has been doing the exact opposite from day one. The result is that the wealthiest Canadians are the winners since they have been paying $1 billion less in taxes since this government took office in 2015.
In short, the “Robinbank” still exists. I hope that the members opposite will understand that it is not by pushing Canadians further into debt that they are going to improve the lives of the real middle class.