Madam Speaker, I have quite a bit to say about the motion that the opposition has brought forward. I kind of wish I had more time on it, quite frankly, because there is so much there.
We as a government are very much listening to what Canadians are saying. We are listening and taking action. That is a very important thing to say at the outset, because virtually from day one, we have been bringing forward programs to deal with the affordability issue in Canada. Canada is not alone in dealing with affordability issues. As a government, led by the Prime Minister, we are addressing the issue head-on. I am going to list things we are doing to accommodate that.
Before I get into that, though, I will provide a bit of commentary. I have been around Parliament Hill for a number of years now, much like the leader of the Conservative Party, and never before have I seen this. I do not know how best to describe it. Is it laziness? I do not know what drove the Conservative Party to bring forward this opposition motion. The Green Party leader just indirectly made light of it, but it is true. There really is zero merit to this opposition motion. I like to think that the members of the opposition could be a bit more creative.
Conservatives talk about how long the Liberals have been in government. Let me tell them how long it has been since the Prime Minister was elected on April 28, 2025. That is 500 days. Contrast that to the over 5,000 days that the Leader of the Opposition has been around. If Conservatives want to do a comparison, I will do that. I will provide a detailed comparison so the people following this debate will better understand the degree of silliness and lazy opposition we see across the way and will see that we on the government benches are not only listening to what our constituents are saying but bringing their ideas and thoughts to the House of Commons, and actually acting on issues such as affordability.
I challenge the leader of the Conservative Party on why the Conservatives continue to vote against Liberal initiatives dealing with affordability while at the same time being critical of the government for not taking actions on affordability. The Conservative Party does not make any sense. It really and truly does not. We can stop and think about how Conservatives behave inside the chamber and their voting patterns. On the one hand, they say they are concerned about affordability and are listening to Canadians.
Let me give a good, tangible example. I have raised this one in the past. The Prime Minister and the government made a commitment to the children of Canada, 400,000 children. We are now making the national school nutrition program permanent. That program will provide food for the tummies of 400,000 children across the country. What kind of response have we gotten from the Conservative Party? We have had Conservatives call it a garbage program. We have had them say it is a non-existent program and that children are not being fed, but I can tell the House that it is having a real, tangible impact in every member's constituency.
As I have said before, this is not a new issue. It has been an issue since I was first elected to the Manitoba legislature, back in 1988. We have a Prime Minister who has seen the merit of having this and bringing it in as part of affordability, ensuring that children are able to learn with some nutritious food as a part of their diet. There were many situations, even back in the eighties and nineties, when children were going to school on an empty stomach. We are doing two things at the same time, and the Conservatives voted against them.
Let us look at another initiative to give a break and deal with affordability. There is the program for first-time homebuyers, which got rid of the GST. That is a substantial saving for those individuals looking at purchasing a home for the first time.
It does two things. One is make it more affordable. The other is help build a stronger economy through our construction industry. That means more Canadian lumber and Canadian steel. It means having more engagement with our skilled labour and unionized workers.
I could talk about the dental program and how many seniors on fixed incomes have benefited from that particular program. These are seniors living in every member's riding across the country. That helps in terms of disposable income. It makes life more affordable. As with the school program, the Conservatives continue to vote against programs such as that.
We have the groceries and essentials benefit. It is a program that puts a substantial increase of money into the pockets of individuals who are at the middle and lower-end income levels, more so than the multi-millionaires in our society, to deal with the affordability issue.
Members of the Conservative Party talk about tax breaks. This Prime Minister and this government have delivered on tax breaks. The very first action taken by our Prime Minister was getting rid of the carbon tax. That was the first action by this Prime Minister under a new government following the election results in April last year. If we fast-forward to the spring economic update, there was the excise tax relief on gasoline. There is a great deal of benefit, and it is not only on the issue of affordability.
Canadians have recognized that one of the ways we can support the Canadian economy is by looking and travelling around Canada. Indirectly, it not only helps with the affordability issue but also encourages and promotes interprovincial and provincial travel for vacations and things of that nature.
There are a number of initiatives. I did not mention the income tax break from 15% to 14%, but now I will. There are 22 million Canadians who benefited from that tax break.
Those are initiatives that deal with just affordability, and they are not all of the initiatives, but all of them have taken place since we got a new Prime Minister and a new government for the people of Canada.
A member opposite asked if I just got here. I guess I have a lot of similarities with the leader of the Conservative Party. Both the leader of the Conservative Party and I have been around for a long time. That is why I do not have a problem doing a comparison between the leader of the Conservative Party and the Prime Minister of Canada, who has been around for less than a year and a half. I have no problem at all doing that.
I will now go on to the second stage. I just talked about the issue of affordability. Do members want to talk about what has taken place? With the issue of affordability, we have the short term and the long term. The long term might be, for example, pharmacare or the dental program, or the national food program being made permanent by this Prime Minister.
There is a whole new area with regard to what we are doing to build an economy that works for all Canadians. Again, we have a Prime Minister and a government focused on building a stronger, healthier Canadian economy. Unlike what the Conservative leader says, it is not just words. Just as I illustrated regarding affordability, there are tangible actions putting money into the pockets of Canadians and increasing their disposable income. There are also tangible actions by this government and this Prime Minister that are building a stronger, healthier Canadian economy and society.
This is not by choice. All we have to do is look at the last federal election. If the Conservatives were listening to their constituents, they would have found out what I and every member of the Liberal caucus found out, which is that they are concerned about Donald Trump, tariffs and trade. These are things we should all be concerned about. At the very least, I can assure those who are listening that the government has been focused on them from day one.
I ask members to tell me the last time we saw a prime minister work as collaboratively with the provinces and indigenous leaders collectively, as well as other stakeholders, as we have seen this Prime Minister work over the last 18 months. I have been around, as I said, since 1988, starting in the Manitoba legislature, and there has not been a prime minister who has worked as collaboratively with stakeholders in my time as a parliamentarian. The results are there, and we continue to move forward.
We have been talking about Bill C-39. There has been a great deal of debate on Bill C-39. This bill is a very important aspect of the government's long-term and short-term agenda, because we made a commitment to Canadians that we were going to not only deal with the issue of affordability but build Canada for the future. We are talking about jobs for today and jobs for tomorrow to continue to make Canada the best country in the world to call home.
What have we done? We can take a look at some of the Prime Minister's very first actions. Even before he took his seat in the House physically, he was meeting and talking with premiers and trying to build that sense of collaboration that is necessary to be able to expand trade opportunities beyond the Canada-U.S.A. border.
Let us take a look at the mandate letters. Ministers in our front benches and others, even members of the Liberal caucus in the backbenches, are all on the same page. That page is to look at ways we can expand and grow Canada's economy and at the same time protect our environment, making sure that we are doing it in the right way, protecting indigenous rights and working collaboratively.
The results are there. They are tangible
We took down the federal barriers. There should be one Canadian economy. The federal barriers have been taken down to facilitate more trade between our provinces and territories. Even today, we continue to work with and encourage the provinces to do likewise and take down those interprovincial trade barriers that they need to. That has been a very high priority for this Prime Minister.
We then passed Bill C-5 to allow major projects to get up and running. If we listen to the Conservatives and the silliness that comes over from them, they say we have not built any major projects, but they built 20,000 projects. What a bunch of garbage. Let us think about it. They say they built 20,000 projects. How many of them were over $1 billion? What sort of collaboration took place between the provinces, indigenous people and stakeholders to develop major projects over $1 billion?
When you talk about 20,000 projects, I am working on projects. I want the Seven Oaks General Hospital—