Mr. Speaker, times are tough right now in Alberta and they are getting tougher by the day. Unemployment is skyrocketing and it is quickly reaching a crisis situation. Skilled workers are struggling to provide for their families and they are being forced to leave the province to seek better opportunities for employment.
We would think that a situation as dire as this would elicit support from the federal government. We would think the Liberals would be hard at work, identifying solutions and coming up with a plan. Sadly, that is not the case. The Liberals have no plan to create jobs, but that is exactly what our province needs the most right now.
Instead, we are stuck in a tax and spend cycle with the current Liberal government, a cycle that is not working, a cycle that is not creating jobs. In fact, the parliamentary budget officer reported last October that despite the out of control spending and skyrocketing deficits, the Liberals had not created one net full-time job since they took office, not one.
In comparison, while Canada's employment rate has been falling, rates in the U.S., the G7 and the OECD have all risen. It is very clear that despite more than a year of reckless spending, the Liberal plan has done nothing to increase our economy. Not only has the Liberal economic plan failed, the Liberals keep making decisions that will only make things worse.
If we look back over the past year, the Liberals have cancelled family tax credits for sports and for arts classes. They have cancelled small business tax cuts. They have imposed a CPP tax hike and a carbon tax that will cost families thousands of dollars every year. Then they brought in new rules on mortgages that would make it harder to buy a home.
I stand here today because on this side of the House we believe in fiscal responsibility. We believe in a framework for creating a strong economy, and a plan to create jobs and get Albertans back to work.
The energy sector plays an important role in our economy, and pipeline projects create jobs and they create long-term opportunities for Alberta families. Yet the Liberal environmental review process has increased regulatory uncertainty to major transportation and resource projects. The Liberals have imposed arbitrary, political and unpredictable regulatory processes at a time when we urgently need to get our resources to new markets and when we should be supporting our natural resource workers.
Furthermore, the Liberal government rejected the northern gateway project, which would have created 4,000 well-paying jobs. This decision was, to say the least, extremely disappointing, especially for the men and women who are out of work in our oil and gas sector right now.
The construction of pipelines and the development of our oil sands in an environmentally sustainable way is absolutely vital for the economy in Alberta and all across Canada. However, instead of supporting this key sector, we have the Prime Minister making comments about phasing out the oil sands, while giving out corporate welfare to Bombardier. To make matters worse, the Liberals will impose a national carbon tax on the provinces and territories.
The tax on carbon is obstructive to our province's economic growth, and adds yet another expense for everyday Albertans and small businesses that were already struggling just to get by. This new carbon tax will cost the average family more than $2,500 every year, and will increase gas at the pumps by 11.5¢ a litre.
We have small businesses that are suffering, and this carbon tax will add just one more thing on top of reneging on the small business tax rate and all the other promises the Liberals have broken to small businesses. This will further exacerbate their problems and further exacerbate an already high unemployment rate in Alberta.
My constituents are struggling and they are hurting. They are expecting the government to create some immediate and targeted measures to support Albertans. They are expecting the government to create the conditions for businesses to thrive, to help grow the economy and to create jobs, to show leadership, to get our oil resources to market. However, when it comes to creating jobs and helping the Alberta economy, the Liberal government has failed miserably.
The Liberals have broken their promises for modest deficits. Their spending is out of control. This spending and these deficits are being borrowed on the backs of our children's and our grandchildren's futures. As a result, Albertans and many Canadians are feeling abandoned by the federal government. They want and deserve an equal opportunity to compete globally. However, navigating through new and expanding regulatory and political obstacles introduced by the Liberal government only exacerbates the current challenges.
The Liberals' economic plan, if we can even call it that, can be summed up as big on spending, short on long-term planning, light on details and hard on each and every Albertan pocketbook.