One member is saying “Hear, hear!”
Even when the Province of Quebec had a curfew, Conservatives were still advocating getting rid of mandates or mandatory masks. The Province of Quebec just got rid of mandatory masks. Are those health experts also wrong?
This is the type of focus we see from the Conservatives. Maybe it is because of the leadership convention that there seems to be a vacuum within the Conservative caucus today. There is no consistency.
When we take a look at the policies being brought forward from this government, whether they are legislative initiatives or budgetary initiatives, we see that they are having an impact for Canada from coast to coast to coast. Look at some of the numbers.
Conservatives will criticize us. It is truly amazing. The Conservatives will say that we are spending too much money, but in the last federal election they committed to spending more money than what we committed. They criticize us on the deficit, yet the Conservatives were projecting more, and that was only a number of months ago.
What is the actual reality? When looking at the reality, one needs to do a comparison and take a look at it. As we continue to receive and spend tax dollars, how is Canada actually managing? Canada has the lowest debt-to-GDP ratio in the G7, and the G7 includes some pretty important countries, including the U.S.A.
We have actually recovered 115% of the jobs that were lost as a direct result of the pandemic. Again we are doing much better than the U.S.A. We have been able to do this because we worked with Canadians and stakeholders when going through the pandemic and in planning the budgetary expenditures that formulated our estimates so that we would be there to support them in real and tangible ways.
I have given many speeches in the House giving examples of that support. Is there any wonder that we have been able to recover 115% of the jobs lost when we actually supported small businesses? We did this by providing rent subsidies, wage loss subsidies and better access to loans.
I would ultimately argue that because of the actions of the government in working with the different stakeholders, we prevented many companies from going bankrupt. We allowed for small businesses, which are the backbone of the Canadian economy, to be in a better position to hire back when the opportunity came.
A lot of the expenditures for which the Conservatives will criticize us were there to support people in having disposable income, whether it was supporting the poorest seniors in the country through the GIS or individual seniors 65 and older through the OAS, not to mention the literally tens if not hundreds of millions that were allocated to non-profit organizations that support our seniors.
We can also take a look at students and the doubling of summer jobs for young people and a continuation of that program within this budget. I remember the Conservative days when they cut back on that expenditure.
These are the types of initiatives that the government worked on, from the Prime Minister to the cabinet to the individual members of the Liberal caucus. We did that because we believe it is important to take the ideas and thoughts from our constituencies and bring them to Ottawa to ensure that the budget reflects what Canadians want to see in a national budget.
We have been successful by listening. We are concerned about inflation, as my constituents and all Canadians are. Canada's inflation rate is at 6.8% and yes, we are concerned about it. Whether it is the GIS, the OAS or the Canada child benefit, the benefits programs are all indexed to inflation. If people are 75 and older, they are getting a 10% increase in the OAS.
We are concerned about the 6.8%, even though it is actually less than the United States' inflation rate, which is 8.3%, or the U.K. inflation rate, which is 9%, or Germany's, which is 8.7%, or the OECD's, which has an average of 8.8%. Just because our rate is lower than all of those countries does not mean we are giving it any less attention. We understand that it is hurting pocketbooks, and that is why we see a number of budgetary measures that are going to help provide some relief.
We constantly see Conservative members vote against all of those measures. On the one hand, they talk about cutting taxes, and cutting more taxes, and looking at ways to cut tax. As a side point, when we provided them with a chance to do that by cutting taxes for Canada's middle class, they voted against it, but they sure like to talk about it. At the end of the day, they can be all over the map on a wide variety of things and have their focus on two issues in particular that I mentioned, but we will continue day in and day out to focus on the issues that Canadians are facing.