Finance  Mr. Speaker, the Liberal plan is to invest, invest, invest. Unlike the Conservatives, we were not left with a surplus. The Liberals left the Conservatives with a $13 billion surplus. They turned it into $150 billion of additional debt for Canadians. We are going to spend to inc

Finance  Mr. Speaker, I was deadly serious. What the people on the other side of the House said was that what they wanted to do was to balance the budget at all costs immediately. What that would mean is that we would have, right now, tens of billions of dollars of cuts, cuts that would i

The Economy  Mr. Speaker, our objective remains a balanced budget, but our priority is to make investments in Canada for Canadians and the middle class. We know that they chose our plan to grow the economy, and that is exactly what we will do.

The Economy  Mr. Speaker, we are starting with a deficit we inherited from the Conservatives. Furthermore, we have an additional $150 billion in debt. That is what we are starting with, but fortunately, we are in a position to invest in our economy because, as a result of the measures taken b

Taxation  Mr. Speaker, we made important commitments to Canadians during the course of our campaign. We said we were going to invest in the middle class. We have already started on that. We told Canadians we want to add a Canada child benefit for the most vulnerable. We also said we were

The Economy  Mr. Speaker, it will be March 22; that is how long. In the last election, Canadians made a choice. They made a choice between a party that said it wanted to make a plan to invest in growth, and another couple of parties that said they wanted to cut at all costs for a balanced bu

The Economy  Mr. Speaker, I would like to repeat to this House what I said before. One month or two months do not make a year. What we can see is that the revenues of the government go down in the last couple of months of the year, and the expenses go up. It is clear to us that the Conservat

The Economy  Mr. Speaker, I would like to repeat to this House that, this morning, we put out an economic update for Canadians to see. Our goal is to be open and transparent, so Canadians understand where we are at today and where we are going. What we have told Canadians is that the Conser

Intergovernmental Relations  Mr. Speaker, I would again like to say that we are working hard to improve our economy for all Canadians. We are working hard to improve the economy for middle-class Canadians who are challenged. We are working especially hard to work with those provinces that have been particul

Intergovernmental Relations  Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to answer this question. We found that Statistics Canada made a change in the way it calculated the territorial financing formula, a change that impacted the northern territories. We worked collaboratively with the northern territories. I would like to

Intergovernmental Relations  Mr. Speaker, again, I would like to say that we will continue to work collaboratively with the territories in the north. We recognize that provinces and territories across this country have challenges when we deal with difficult economic times, especially times when commodity pr

Intergovernmental Relations  Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by confirming again that the territories in the north were dealing with a statistical change through Statistics Canada. We are talking about how we can help people who are facing real challenges across this country, middle-class families across

Finance  Mr. Speaker, Canadians expect us to take actions to make their lives better. We recognize that middle-class Canadians have not had a fair increase in income for many years. The most vulnerable really need to be helped in our society. We have put forward ideas that we know we ca

Finance  Mr. Speaker, Canadians elected us on October 19 because they had confidence that we were ready and willing to put forward ideas that could make a real difference in their lives. We are facing the past 10 years of low growth. We now realize that the economy is more challenging e

Finance  Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the hon. member that we were elected on October 19 by Canadians who elected us on a plan to grow the economy. We made it very clear what we were going to do. We said that we were going to reduce taxes for middle-class Canadians, who needed tax reduc