Mr. Speaker, here we are with the Conservative government on its way out. I am sure that the government would have liked to finish its term with a bang, but instead it is fizzling out.
Just about everywhere, the Conservatives are calling the balanced budget a fantastic achievement. Unfortunately, it is not an achievement. How did they balance their budget? Once again they took money from the employment insurance fund. They are not the first to do so. The Liberals did the same thing. I remember the days when the Martin-Chrétien duo tackled the deficit. They took the federal deficit and passed it on to the provinces and the provinces passed it on to the health system. Since then, our health system has has been posting a deficit. The deficit only moved somewhere else. It is no longer in the columns of federal government figures, but it is somewhere else. They are presenting that as a fantastic achievement.
We must not forget that behind all that, what is putting the government in a precarious position is the fact that since 2006, the Conservatives have cut corporate taxes from 21% to 15%. This money has been accumulating in the coffers of major corporations and depriving us of resources. That was a significant source of tax revenue. Unfortunately for the Conservative strategy, it did not work. That money accumulated in the corporations' cash reserves, which means that there are currently $660 billion to $700 billion that were not reinvested. We can look at the situation of our manufacturing production systems. Corporations did not reinvest this money to improve their productivity with robotics or informatics. No, they waited. Why? Because the economic situation was unstable. Consequently, these tax reductions did not help Canada's economic recovery. That is quite the accomplishment.
A government must make choices. In the few minutes I have, I will try to show that the government has chosen to help those who are well off.
Take, for example, income splitting, which our Conservative friends love so much. This measure will not benefit 86% of the population. I did a little calculation. A family that earns $120,000—one person earns $100,000 and the other earns $20,000—will pay $1,807 less in taxes. However, a family that earns $50,000—one person earns $35,000 and the other earns $15,000—will get what kind of tax break? Nothing. It is very clear that these measures are essentially geared towards the wealthy. A government must make choices, and this government made this choice.
Meanwhile, the $1.5 billion that this measure will cost in terms of tax expenditures is the amount it would take to bring seniors out of extreme poverty. Right now in Canada we have seniors who are forced to go to food banks for food because the guaranteed income supplement and their small pension are not enough. The government could have taken this $1 billion and invested it to help bring our seniors out of poverty, but no, it would rather help a small fraction of the population that is already well off and does not need this measure to survive.
The government also made a choice with employment insurance. It is once again dipping into the EI fund. In his report, the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that with this money, the government could have increased the EI wage replacement rate from 55% to 68%. On average, EI recipients receive $440 in benefits to live on.
The government could have implemented another measure on something I have a personal interest in, since someone very close to me has cancer. This person received 15 weeks of employment insurance and is now living off their meagre savings because they are not eligible for last-resort assistance. The government could have implemented some sort of measure to ensure that this person had access to EI throughout their treatment, but no, it chose not to. Instead, the government dipped into the EI fund and is using that money to balance the budget.
They are not the first to have done that. When the Martin-Chrétien duo came to power, 60% of unemployed workers could get employment insurance. We pay premiums, as do employers, to help unemployed workers during their unemployment so they can have the time they need to find work. Back then, 60% of those people had access to employment insurance.
When the Conservatives came to power, the rate was 46%. The Liberals had already chipped away at that margin because they filched $50 billion from the employment insurance surplus. We need to remember that. The election is coming soon.
That funny guy over there talked about the middle class. What does he know about the middle class? When has he ever lost his job and waited a month for his first employment insurance cheque, unable to pay his power bill or his rent? He does not know the first thing about that. The only people who have been through that are the people around me, the people who belong to the only party that stands up for ordinary people who have had actual ordinary people problems.
Right now, what percentage of people have access to employment insurance? It has dropped to 38% under the wonderful Conservatives, who also balanced their budget using that money. The other thing they are going to do to balance their budget is scrounge money from federal employees' sick leave. I think that federal employees have really felt the pinch since the Conservatives have been in power. Some 19,000 jobs have been cut. People everywhere are working hard and burning out, so now what is the government doing? It is taking away their sick leave. That is no great achievement.
What would be an achievement is delivering a budget that cares about ordinary people and helps them get by, helps them get from one week to the next with enough money to cover their expenses. An achievement would be delivering a budget that includes measures to reduce people's indebtedness. Right now, people are going into debt because the big banks are taking advantage of them and interest rates are too high. We have to find a way to get out of the debt spiral, which is not good for anyone.
Now that I have finished my heated speech, I am available to answer questions.
