Madam Speaker, if we include the cheque for $250, the gift from the government to buy people's votes, then this initiative is going to cost more than $6.5 billion.
We have been asking the government to address the inequity among seniors with the old age security pension, but the government said that doing so would cost too much. It would cost $3 billion, or half of the amount we are talking about now. If the government had put $3 billion of this $6 billion into restoring fairness among seniors and the other $3.5 billion into housing, that might have helped. It would have been structural. It would have made a difference.
This is a small, short-sighted government that has no vision. It just wants to get re-elected and minimize the losses.
That is not going to fix the foundations of the economy. There are many challenges. The government is past its expiration date.