Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague for Lac-Saint-Louis gave an excellent speech and I thank him for sharing his time with me. It is very generous of him.
This is actually a very good budget. I realize that may not be a universally held position and possibly is really bad for the opposition parties and for the Conservative Party's propaganda machine, but it is a very good budget. It is a very good budget in terms of economic fundamentals.
I would encourage members to go to page 26 of the budget where it talks about our debt-to-GDP ratio and the progress we have made literally over a great period of time. I am looking down at the end of the chamber and I see the hon. member for Kenora who arrived here in the bad old days when our debt to GDP was at its highest, which is 69% of debt to GDP. It climbed steadily from around 30% back in the 1980s through the Mulroney years until the election of 1993 and the Chrétien-Martin period. The New York Times had described Canada as an honorary member of the third world because our debt was out of control. While our Conservative colleagues might wish us to believe that at this point, unfortunately this chart and these facts do not support that contention. It is unfortunate for them but very fortunate for us and our nation.
Since 1993 when both Chrétien and Martin worked on reducing the debt and actually paid down something in the order of about $100 billion of debt, we, meaning the nation, had worked this down around 2006 when it actually dipped under 30% of GDP. After that, we kind of limped along a little above. Certainly, in the 2008 financial crisis, there was a bit of a bump. The Conservatives at that point ran a deficit of $56 billion claiming it was entirely due to financial turmoil. In fact, in part, it was also due to mismanagement with respect to fiscal instability and reduction of revenues coming into the government. Thereafter, economic conditions settled down and when the Conservatives left office, it was in and around 30% of GDP.
If members think this is simply luck or that we are just a blessed nation, which we are, I would invite members to think again. If we compare, again in the same chart, our fiscal performance to any other G7 nation, members will notice that, for instance, Italy and Japan run debt to GDP well over 120%. Even the United States, which loves to lecture everyone about debt and fiscal responsibility, is running its debt to GDP around 90%. We are around 30%. There is a broad consensus among Canadians of all political stripes that we do need to maintain fiscal discipline in order to be able to provide the services and programs that Canadians rightly are concerned about.
I have heard previous speakers say that we are out of control with respect to the deficit. It is true that there was a promise, a commitment made in the election to run a modest deficit. At the time, that was quite radical because the opposition parties, the Conservatives and the NDP, were promising a balanced budget. At this point the leader of the day decided that Canada's economy needed a stimulus. The stimulus, as it turned out to be, went from $10 billion, as was set out in the election, to an estimate of $30 billion. However, if we look at the charts, it actually comes in at less than $20 billion. The interesting part is that we ended up with a growth in the Canadian economy.
What my Conservative colleagues fail to mention when they talk in those numbers, namely, 10 becomes 30 which actually ends up as 20 and is projected to decline over the next two or three years, is that at the same time, our unemployment rate went from a high of 7.1% in 2015 to a historic low of 5.9% in 2017. It poses the interesting and nice question as to what it is that we want. Do we want to have a balanced budget at all costs and run the unemployment rate at 7.9% or do we want to provide a stimulus, possibly a larger stimulus than was originally promised but still a stimulus, and run the unemployment rate down to 5.9%?
I know that all governments say the same thing, that it is because of their fiscal management and brilliance that the economy is just humming. The problem for the opposition is that the economy is humming. My hon. colleague from Lac-Saint-Louis referenced the speech of the Governor of the Bank of Canada at Queen's University. The governor said there is still some space in the economy to improve without inflation, which is the dream of every central bank governor. Right now, the Canadian central bank governor has the most envious job in the world. He is running an economy without inflation, with low unemployment, with a debt to GDP that is well within a manageable range.
Again, looking at the charts on page 22, the average real GDP growth since 2016 Q2 is 3.2% in Canada, 2.4% in Germany, 2.4% in the United States. Apparently making America great again has not quite worked. In fact, if one wants to live the American dream, one should move to Canada.
All of these numbers probably in some respects make some people's eyes glaze over, and probably my wife is one of them, but they have to be for some purpose. One of the purposes has been the redistribution of income, or of wealth, if you will, across the income spectrum.
Probably the most significant income redistribution that has happened under this government has been the re-profiling of the Canada child benefit. In the budget at page 38, there is a commitment to raise the amount that is available for an income of $35,000 from $7,500 or $7,600 to almost $11,000. That is enormous. For a family income of $70,000, it is raised from $4,000 up to $6,700.
In a riding like mine, Scarborough—Guildwood, where there are a lot of children and a low level of income among a lot of people, that is a significant and huge impact. In Scarborough—Guildwood, that means something in the order of $100 million comes into the riding each and every year.
We can talk about tax cuts. For those of us who have a good income, tax cuts are very attractive, but the beauty of putting $100 million into a riding like Scarborough—Guildwood is that the money gets spent. It gets spent on transportation. It gets spent on food. It gets spent on clothing. It gets spent on education. It is money that goes into the bank accounts of the constituents of Scarborough—Guildwood and immediately, because the incomes are low, gets turned around and ends up in the economy.
The government has initiated, literally, a fiscal revolution under the Canada child benefit. Unfortunately, I am not going to get a chance to talk about the other revolution, which is the ability to redistribute, under the working benefit.