Madam Speaker, I hear some Liberals say that it is nothing. I do remember when governments worried about every dollar, dime, nickel and penny that was spent to ensure that they got the best return for the people from whom the money had been taken. It is unbelievable that we have now gotten to a point where $400 million here or a billion dollars there goes into the ether and Canadians live in a more difficult and precarious place than they have in over a decade.
When we look at the stats about the last decade that have been released over the last number of months, we see an incredible story that is heartbreaking to anyone who wants to cheer for this country. The gross domestic product per capita has nearly stagnated over a decade in this country. In the past, Canada's GDP has always kept pace with that of the United States, as our economies are so closely aligned.
We have general commodities that have always been closely aligned to the United States. We have products that they want. They have economies and production of the products that we produce, so there have been a lot of reasons that for nearly a century, our economies have stayed relatively aligned. When theirs goes up, ours goes up, and when theirs goes down, ours goes down. We have always been pretty much linked.
However, over a decade, it has been incredible to watch the stats as our GDP per capita has stagnated while the Americans' has grown by nearly 20%. That has amounted to the average worker in Canada versus the average worker in the United States having a differential of $20,000 in buying power when all things are considered, including the value of our dollar. There has never been such a spread since the Second World War.
We have not only seen our people being paid less over the last decade, but we have also seen unprecedented growth in the price of our food, housing and utilities, our gas and electricity, in this country. What we have now is a situation where, under the NDP-Liberal government, life has become difficult for everybody.
What the government often likes to say is that there are winners and losers in the economy and we just have to balance it out. However, when we look at the entire size of the pie divided by the number of people who need to eat that pie, everybody's slice in this country has gotten smaller over the last decade—