Mr. Speaker, while I am always entertained by the hon. member's Yiddish proverbs that he works into his comments, I am less entertained with the argument he puts forward.
The fact is that from the very beginning of our government's mandate we put people at the heart of our plan for economic growth for Canada. Since coming into office, our government has invested in things that actually matter to people like those I represent. These investments reflect the choice that Canadians made to invest wisely in strengthening the middle class and helping those who were working to join it.
One of our first actions was to raise taxes on the wealthiest Canadians in order to cut taxes for the middle class. I note that the entire Conservative caucus voted against that. The fact is that over nine million Canadians are benefiting from this tax cut today. We also introduced the Canada child benefit. Compared to the old system of child benefits it replaced, it is simpler, it is more generous and the benefits are targeted to those who need them most.
Nine out of 10 families are receiving more under this program than they did under the previous system. As a result of this tax cut and the Canada child benefit, a typical middle-class family of four is receiving about $2,000 more in support today than they were in 2015. If we look at the Canada child benefit, in my riding and across Canada, families that received the benefit received, on average, $6,800 tax free to help with the high cost of raising kids. This benefit amount is going to continue to rise with the cost of living since it was indexed to inflation as of July of last year, two years earlier than we initially committed to.
The fact is that we have a plan to invest in and strengthen the middle class and to grow our economy, and the results are showing that this plan is working. Our unemployment rate is at the lowest level in 40 years. Canada has been among the leaders in economic growth in the G7 in the last three years. During this period, more than 900,000 people have a job today who did not have one in 2015. This includes strong employment gains by women, with the pace of job gains for women in Canada more than doubling since November 2015 compared to the previous three-year period.
Not only are there more jobs, but wages have increased, rising in 2018 at one of the fastest paces of growth seen in the past years. Coming tomorrow, if the Conservative Party does not seek to interfere with procedural games, in the 2019 budget, the government is going to unveil the next step in its plan to strengthen the middle class and to grow the economy to give more people real and equal opportunities to succeed. That has been our mission from day one and it has not changed.
I would be remiss if I failed to point out that despite the rhetoric built into the hon. member's question, when the Conservatives were last in government, over 10 years they added $150 billion to that and saw the worst rate of economic growth since the Great Depression.