Mr. Chair, I would be pleased to answer the question about why balanced budgets matter.
A balanced budget matters because it allows the government to cut taxes even more for hard-working Canadians, creating jobs, growth, and long-term prosperity. It means less debt for future generations, ensures that taxpayer dollars go toward important social programs like education and health care rather than debt repayment, and it gives the government more flexibility to respond to a crisis like a recession or war or natural disaster. It preserves our triple-A credit rating, the top credit rating that a country can have, allows for international shocks, and it prevents passing on more debt to our children.
What is also important is how the budget is balanced. In our case, it came from strict fiscal discipline. Unlike the Liberals, we will not raise taxes or slash transfers to people, provinces, and territories. Our government has cut taxes every year since taking office. Over 180 tax relief measures have been undertaken since 2006. What is the result? The result is that Canadians now benefit from the lowest overall federal tax burden in more than half a century.
These benefits of balancing the budget are so important that we are proposing a law with pay cuts to ministers and top bureaucrats if the government falls into deficit in normal economic times. We believe that Ottawa is capable of doing what families have to do every day. That means setting priorities and making choices. We will propose that if a government posts a deficit outside of extraordinary circumstances, an automatic operating freeze would go into effect and there would be a cut in salaries for ministers and deputy ministers by 5%.
Our government will balance the budget and continue to ensure that hard-working Canadian families have more money in their pockets when they need it most. Our government has paid down $37 billion in debt since 2006, prior to the great recession that rocked the world economy. That forward thinking helped Canada to achieve the lowest total government net debt to GDP ratio in the G7, and made it affordable to boost growth through federal spending without compromising our top-notch credit rating.
Responsible fiscal management and firm control over direct program spending put Canada on a predictable path back to a balanced budget by 2015, providing consumers and businesses with the confidence to invest and grow the economy. As the The New York Times recently reported, after-tax income for middle-class Canadians, substantially behind in 2000, now appears to be higher than in the United States. In fact, the Canadian middle class is among the richest in the developed world. Bloomberg has ranked Canada as the second-most attractive place in the world to do business.
Our approach is working. Since the depths of the recession, over 1.2 million net new jobs have been created, overwhelmingly full-time, well-paying, and in the private sector.
However, these are tough economic times around the world. It is not time for risky, high-tax, high-spend Liberal initiatives. In a fragile global economy, we must continue taking action to create jobs, growth, and long-term prosperity. Our government plan would do exactly do that by fulfilling our long-standing commitment to balancing the federal budget.
