Mr. Speaker, the member knows that our government was elected a little more than two years ago on a promise, a commitment, to Canadians to grow our economy and to strengthen the middle class. It is obvious now, two years down the road, that this plan we put forward, investing in infrastructure and reducing taxes for the middle class, has been and is working.
Over the last two years, the Canadian economy has added close to 600,000 new jobs, most of them full time. Canada's unemployment rate is now the lowest it has been in a decade. Businesses, including small, family-run businesses, are a big part of this success.
Since coming to office, our goal has been to ensure that the middle class and small and medium-sized businesses share the benefits of this economic growth. This is why one of the first things we did as a government was lower personal income taxes for nine million Canadians and raise them on the top one per cent of income earners.
We also brought in the Canada child benefit, which benefits nine out of 10 families, who get more money each month, tax free, to spend on their families. This has also had a very good social and economic impact on our country, as consumer spending has gone up. There is confidence in the Canadian economy now and for the future, as many families now have the means, more so than they did under the previous child tax benefit that the Conservative government had put in place.
That is not all. Our government also announced that it would be enhancing the working income tax benefit by $500 million starting in 2019. That is a 65% increase since we came to office, and it will ensure low-income workers have more money in their pockets at the end of the month. Our government will also keep taking actions that support the middle class, and we will make sure companies that contribute to job creation and economic growth continue to enjoy a tax framework that works in their favour and is designed to help them succeed. We have opened a dialogue with Canadians on how to proceed going forward, and we are following up on what we heard about the tax reform the member was referring to.
Following extensive consultations on tax planning strategies and the use of private corporations that we held with small business owners, farmers, fishers, professionals, and experts, we made changes to ensure that Canada's competitive corporate tax rates are not used by high-income individuals to gain a personal tax advantage through their private corporation. The government is putting forward an approach that takes into account the feedback we received from Canadians on each aspect of the consultation.
It is also important to remember that we are going to lower the small business tax rate to 9%. We want to make sure the resulting tax advantage will help those businesses grow, create jobs, and innovate, rather than give wealthy individuals the additional benefit of a tax cut that is not available to other Canadians. Our goal here is to add an element of fairness that is currently lacking in our tax system and to keep supporting small and medium-sized businesses. That is why all of Canada's SMEs will get a tax cut from 10.5% to 10% on January 1, 2018, and then to 9% on January 1, 2019. We recognize the importance of small and medium-sized businesses, and we know how much they contribute to the Canadian economy. Our goal is to promote growth for Canada. We have been doing that remarkably well for the past two years, and our growth rate is the strongest in the G7. We will stay on track by supporting Canadian SMEs.