Madam Speaker, on my way up to the Hill today, I encountered a great young man named Matthew. He works as a landscaper. He is doing some of the landscaping around our beautiful parliamentary precinct. Matthew is a worker, and he is a member of LiUNA. He has the kind of job that built our country.
Waves after waves of immigrants came here and worked in construction to build our roads, build our facilities and, as in the case of Matthew, who is from Winchester, to beautify our communities. They had jobs that could provide them with a good life. If they got out of bed in the morning and worked hard all day, as people like Matthew always do, they could expect to have a home, put good nutritious food on the table and pay the bills for their kids, but Matthew pulled me aside to tell me about the silent attack on him and people like him that has occurred over the last year in Canada. It is the silent tax we call inflation.