Mr Speaker, since we came to power, we have made real improvements to make Canadians’ lives more affordable, and these investments are helping Canadians now, despite inflation.
It was our government that introduced the Canada child benefit, which will give Canadian families almost $7,000 per child in benefits in the coming year. We also expanded the Canada workers benefit to support an additional one million Canadians, which could represent $1,000 more per year for full-time workers. We are also the government that increased the guaranteed income supplement maximum benefit for single seniors by 10% and decreased the age of eligibility for old age security and the GIS from 67 to 65.
Conservative members should bear in mind that all our major government benefits are indexed to inflation, including old age security, the guaranteed income supplement, the Canada child benefit, the GST/HST credit and many others. That means that benefits increase with inflation.
The Conservatives have attempted to block, at every turn, our support for Canadians. The Conservatives voted against our tax cut for middle-class Canadians and are now proposing a tax cut for the oil and gas sector, which is making huge profits. We will continue to put forward real, progressive policies that will support real Canadians.
Let me just take one example from our most recent budget. We all know that seeing a dentist is expensive. In fact, a third of Canadians do not have dental insurance, and in 2018, more than one in five Canadians said they avoided getting dental care because of the cost. This is an affordability issue that we are tackling head-on. We are investing in order to support Canadians and in order to help them pay their bills. There are numerous other examples in the budget.
As I am almost out of time, allow me to mention briefly the fact that our budget is tackling the housing crisis. Our budget is ensuring that we are supporting Canadian families by subsidizing child care. I could go on and on. These are real policies helping real Canadians, and I would invite the Conservatives to vote in favour of the budget rather than presenting a motion that is clearly void of any tangible economic policy to help Canadians.