Debates of March 2nd, 2009

Budget Implementation Act, 2009

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, it is a wonderful question from my colleague, one of the most knowledgeable members and parliamentarians in this place.

The fundamental question right now is how the government feels about what it is doing. I am not sure the Conservatives even look at mirrors any more. I know the Kool-Aid containers need new Kool-Aid. They have all swallowed the lines over there. However, those guys do not believe in government. They love power, but they do not like government. They hate government. Now all of a sudden they are forced into doing something. They are saying today that we have to get it money out the door faster. A couple of months ago they did not need anything, everything was wonderful.

That government does not believe in government. It believes in power. It wants to shrink the federal spending power through tax cuts and other things so it does not have the opportunity to help those most in need.

When the Liberal Party of Canada takes power again, we will take care of those who need help. That is what we were sent here to do.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Madam Speaker, how can the member support legislation that takes away a woman's right to equal pay for work of equal value, that takes away unions' rights to bargain collectively, that attacks the environment by removing the essence of the Navigable Waters Protection Act?

Two of those three things were in the fall statement on which the Liberals were ready to defeat the government. The only thing that has changed this time is the Liberals got their party financing back.

Is this not the definitive proof that the only principle the Liberals believe in is the principle of their own—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

I would like to give the hon. member for Dartmouth--Cole Harbour a brief opportunity to respond. He has 30 seconds.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, my colleague is asking me about pay equity, the environment and the public sector. In the next election Canadians will have a choice. The government after the next election will either believe in pay equity, the environment and the public sector or it will not.

We believe in those things. We will stand up for those things and ensure that they are done the way Canadians want them to be done.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I rise with incredible sadness, disappointment and concern again today. It is really hard to sit in the House and to hear from Liberals that they find certain elements in the budget bill absolutely repugnant and reprehensible, yet they are able to look themselves in the mirror and vote for it.

The Liberals suggest that it is the Conservatives who should look in the mirror and try to face up to what they are doing. The irony is we know where the Conservatives are coming from and we are trying to change their minds. We know from statements of the past that they do not believe in equal pay for work of equal value. In fact, they are clinging to the concept of the fifties of equal pay for equal work. We know they do not respect the work of women in our country, women who have for the last 30, 40, 50 years struggled for equality. We know they do not understand what is at stake for women who desperately want to achieve in their lifetime that goal of equal status. Therefore, we understand what we are up against and we are using every tool we can think of and find at our fingertips to try to bring them to their senses. While they may agree with those antiquated regressive statements and positions, the majority of Canadians do not. Therefore, we expect the government of the day to reflect the majority will of Canadians.

However, for the Liberals, I cannot begin to find any rationale at all in the statement just made by the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, that they can justify standing up and saying that they believe in something as fundamental as pay equity, but they are going to let the government do what it has to and that they are going to just hold their noses and let it happen.

Where do they draw the line? When do politicians stand up for what they believe in? When does it count? Why did we get elected than but to stand for something we believe in and fight for it?

Pay equity is unlike all the other issues we are dealing with right now. It is a fundamental human right. It is a right that is being totally eliminated in Bill C-10. Members should read the bill. The government is taking away the right of women to go to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. There is no reprieve, no avenue through our courts to seek that fundamental right entrenched in the charter.

Instead, the government is putting in place legislation that does not honour the concept of equal pay for work of equal value. In fact, it does not allow for a comparison of jobs between men and women so we can get rid of women in ghettos where they are underpaid and undervalued.

Interestingly, nowhere in the entire legislation, in this so-called equitable compensation act, is the word “men”. How can we have pay equity if there is no way to compare? The legislation is not proactive. It takes away a fundamental right. It is the loss in one fell swoop, in an instant of everything for which the women's movement has fought for more than 30 or 40 years.

The Liberals can stand in the House and say that in the interest of avoiding an election they will let it go.

[Randy Hoback]

Smart people.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

My Conservative friend over there suggests they are smart people. I guess by a Conservative definition, that is being really smart. That is intelligent, is it not? Do not stand for principles. Do not stand for what one believes in. Do not be committed to why one got involved in politics in the first place. Principles go out the window. Expediency counters all commitment to principles. It does not matter. Is that smart? Is that intelligent? That is not what the voters want. They want us to stand up for something in which we believe.

We are not looking at this from the point of view of whether it is going to cause an election. We are simply saying this is fundamentally wrong.

The Minister of Justice, the Attorney General of this land, is wrong. He is not being forthcoming. He is not telling the truth to Canadians. We have only a few opportunities to say that and to try to convince somebody in the House, besides New Democrats and the Bloc, to stand up for their principles. We do not have any time left.

The Liberals need to think about what they are doing. They need to realize what this means in the country. They need to understand what they are doing in terms of destroying a legacy, of destroying something women before us fought for and won. They should not think about themselves; they should think about the women and others who fought for pay equity before us.

There are other parts of the bill that are up for debate this afternoon, and I want to touch on another one. This group of amendments deals with the national securities regulator. Again, I want to let all members of the House know why we are opposed to the national securities regulator. In fact, this does not come from a group of New Democrats but from many Canadians who are very worried about savings that may be lost or who are feeling the pain of having lost their life savings.

Whether we look at our seniors or our small business investors, one thing is clear. They have all told us we cannot simply put in place a national regulator and expect the world to be fixed. This will not mean anything unless the government decides it really wants to get tough, in terms of financial abuses, and wants to crack down on fraudsters and those who take advantage of others through criminal means.

I want to refer to a well-known activist in this area. The Conservatives will know the name of this person, I would hope. It is Stan Buell, president of the Small Investor Protection Association. He says very clearly that we can consider the idea of a national securities regulator. However, we know that unless we proactively work in this area to protect seniors and others from those who take advantage of them, all the national securities regulators in the world will not mean a thing. Regulators, he says, requires someone who believes in taking power to do just that. This area requires investor protection, not just regulation. He says that we have to have action that allows for whistleblowers to come forth under protective and proactive legislation.

He says:

For Canadians across Canada to receive adequate investor protection, there must be a paradigm shift in the approach to regulation.

I want my Conservative friends to listen to this very clearly so they will know where we are coming from and what we expect of them. He says:

Whether Canada moves to a NAFTA regulator, moves to a harmonized system with passports and Uniform Securities Laws, or retains the status quo, investors will see no improvement if the regulatory system remains based on prescriptive rules that enable the industry to circumvent regulations and to develop new products faster than rules can be changed.

That is what is at stake with respect to this part of Bill C-10 and why New Democrats are fundamentally opposed to a provision in the bill that now suddenly, out of the blue, moves toward a national securities regulator. For all of these years, nothing was done by either the Conservatives or the Liberals before them, to the point where the provinces put in place the passport system, which has been serving our country well in the face of a vacuum.

It makes no sense for the government to now proceed without indicating to Canadians that it is prepared to crack down on fraudsters and con artists who take advantage of people and their life savings. No one in the country will be assured through this budget of any kind of help or assistance on the part of the government if there is no set of protective measures put in place that will give Canadians the confidence that someone will be there when a fraudster operates and when consumers are taken advantage of. That is putting the cart before the horse, and we object to that.

[Jack Harris, NDP, St. John's East, NL]

Madam Speaker, I have a letter from the president of the Newfoundland and Labrador Federation of Labour, Lana Payne, addressed to me. I assume the six Liberal MPs from Newfoundland and Labrador have also received a copy of the letter, because she is asking all opposition members to take whatever steps are necessary to remove the Public Sector Equitable Compensation Act from the budget implementation bill. We will have a chance to do that later today, so I hope the Liberals from Newfoundland will help to try to defeat this.

I do not know if there has been enough attention given to one of the things she complains about in the letter, that in the budget implementation legislation there is a provision that says that if an individual woman in the public sector files her own complaint through the Human Rights Commission, if a union supports and helps in that effort, the union will be fined $50,000 for helping one of its members apply to the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

I wonder if the member for Winnipeg North would care to comment on the fact that a government would impose a fine on a union for helping a member file a human rights complaint. Is that something she has ever heard of before? I know I have not. I do not know everything that has happened in this country in the last 50 years, but this is a real shock to me.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, that was a shock to all of us. We knew the Conservatives were dead against something as progressive as pay equity and were going to try to do whatever they could to kill it, but on top of that, to fill up this legislation with slings and arrows and to suggest that anyone advocating in the labour movement on behalf of an employee to get the employee's rightful access to pay equity would be penalized to the tune of $50,000 is just beyond comprehension, beyond belief.

I have never heard or seen anything like this in my 20 years of elected political office, nor in my 40 years of working in the political movement, especially in the women's movement where we have fought for so long to have pay equity in the first place. We cannot stand here and allow pay equity to be killed in one fell swoop without doing everything we can to stop it. Everything about this legislation is wrong, wrong, wrong, and I would urge the Liberals to rethink their position.

Just today in the press we noted that the Minister of Health, a woman in the cabinet of the government, has come out in full support of the Conservative government's legislation preventing female federal public service employees from filing pay equity complaints, and supports the notion that a union would be fined $50,000 if it gave support to an employee for pay equity. That is shameful. That is unacceptable, and I would hope that if we cannot convince the Conservatives, at least the Liberals will stand up and help us separate this part of the legislation out of Bill C-10.

When it came to equalization, the leader of the Liberal Party somehow managed to give all the members from Newfoundland and Labrador dispensation from voting against equalization. Now we are simply asking, if the Liberals really believe in pay equity and understand it is a fundamental right, will they be given dispensation to vote against Bill C-10 and stand up for the women of this country and stand up for pay equity?

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Madam Speaker, when someone says the contrary to the truth and does not know the facts, it is a misstatement. When someone knows the facts and says something that is contrary to the truth, of course it is a lie.

Day after day in the House, the President of the Treasury Board has been standing and saying things that are contrary to the truth. In light of the fact that he was an attorney in Manitoba and should know, what his party is doing here, removing women's rights to equal pay for work of equal value, is not what happened in Manitoba, and he keeps saying the contrary.

How would my colleague qualify the statements of the President of the Treasury Board?

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Winnipeg North, of course without unparliamentary language.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Madam Speaker, I know that to give the President of the Treasury Board the name of what he really is doing would be unparliamentary, so I will not do that at this point. I will say there is not a shred of truth in anything he is saying about a resemblance between this so-called pay equity—more likely inequity—legislation and what Manitoba did.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Madam Speaker, on behalf of my constituents of Don Valley East, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-10, the budget implementation bill, but before I speak to Bill C-10, I would like to respond to some of the comments made by the member for Winnipeg North.

I would like to remind the member not to be so sanctimonious. She talks about principles. What principles does the NDP have? It has zero. What did it give up in 2006? It gave up Kelowna, Kyoto, the agendas of citizens and communities, and early learning and child care.

The NDP leader said “Lend me your vote.” For what? He then got into bed with the Conservatives. The NDP members talk a good talk when it comes to the vulnerable, but when it comes to the real fight, the real nuts and bolts of supporting the vulnerable, they are nowhere to be seen.

So I really do not need any lessons on principles from the member or from that party.

Going back to Bill C-10, this has been a strange week in Ottawa, with an admission from both the Prime Minister and the finance minister that Canadians should somehow expect that rushing the stimulus package out the door will result in a budgetary boondoggle by the Conservative government.

This is a remarkably frank admission by the Conservatives, considering that the money has yet to be approved by Parliament. It is defeatist language coming from the Prime Minister, who presented a self-inflicted political crisis in December when his fledgling government was forced to withdraw its November 27th economic statement that was drafted by some zealots in his office.

Last November should have been the government's first opportunity to present a stimulus package, when the whole world was aware that we were heading into tough economic times. Instead the Conservatives, who lack all impulse control when it comes to partisan games, brought in an economic statement that had more to do with political tricks than economic management.

In the fall, during the last election, the Prime Minister falsified information. He claimed that there was no economic crisis, and that if there were a recession, Canadians would already be in one. The Prime Minister even joked about the opportunity to buy stocks. This is the Prime Minister who does not have any regard for the countless Canadians who have lost their jobs.

The solution they provided in their November economic statement, which was the most absurd solution—

[An hon. member]

And toxic too.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

And toxic too.

Madam Speaker, the solution they provided attacked the most vulnerable. It attacked pay equity, the labour unions, et cetera.

Therefore, the Liberal opposition forced the government back to the drawing board, over the holidays, to come up with a meaningful budget to help stimulate the economy and protect the vulnerable from adverse effects.

As the official critic for national revenue, I sit on the public accounts committee, and the responsibility of public accounts is oversight of government spending. We have seen a number of areas where the government has not been accountable or transparent, and it has shown total incompetence in fiscal management. This does not span only the financial area; it deals with federal-provincial transfer payments, the health and safety of Canadians, the environment, et cetera.

There are positive things in the budget that we had asked for, and there are areas of concern. For example, we are concerned about the management of the home renovation tax credit. This tax expenditure has the potential for disaster, and we will insist on proper accountability.

It is because of this kind of dismal performance, the government's dismal economic performance—getting rid of the $13-billion surplus, going into a deficit, not being able to manage the economy—that the Conservatives' allies at the National Citizens Coalition, once headed by the Prime Minister, disparaged the government for poor management. In fact, the head of NCC has called on grassroots supporters of the Conservative Party, many of whom are already tapped out, to withhold political donations until they see some form of improvement on the part of the government.

The chief economist for the Toronto-Dominion Bank and a former senior finance official, Don Drummond, specifically pointed out that the home renovation tax credit looks like one big black hole with few safeguards and little room for accountability. Therefore, I sincerely hope that the Minister of Finance will consult carefully with his officials at the Department of Finance to make sure we do not end up with a Swiss cheese stimulus package that is full of holes.

The Canadian people deserve better leadership, and as the leader of the official opposition has indicated to the government, the Liberal caucus has put the government on probation. This stimulus package will be reviewed at regular intervals to ensure it is effective and accountable and that the money does move out to projects that the budget claims to support.

There are many parts of this budget that the Liberal Party fought for and are urgently needed by Canadians—for example, the national child care tax benefit, doubling tax relief provided by the working income tax benefit to encourage low-income Canadians to find and retain jobs.

We also asked for and strongly support a provision that will reduce the minimum withdrawal rate of RRIFs by 25%. As I mentioned before, the leader of the Liberal Party has indicated that Liberal support for this budget is conditional and that we will be reviewing the government's use of taxpayers' dollars quite closely.

There are some measures we welcome. These are the $400 million for construction of social housing; $75 million for the construction of social housing for persons with disabilities; $400 million for first nation reserves; and $200 million over two years in social housing. However, we have to have transparency and accountability.

The Conservatives have a habit of announcing and not delivering, especially in the infrastructure area. They have announced it in three budgets but have never made the money available. It is important that this money be delivered.

In consulting with my constituents of Don Valley East, they made it clear that any stimulus package must contain measures to protect the most vulnerable in our society, to secure jobs that we already have and to prepare the economy for the future. Canadians demand fiscal responsibility, and that is why we are granting conditional support.

Just today, Statistics Canada released data, and now the Minister of Finance is asking Canadians to prepare for a substantive drop in GDP. Economists are predicting a 3% to 4% drop in GDP, but this should not have come as a surprise to the government or to the Prime Minister, who claims to be an economist.

The stimulus package should have been done in October 2008, right after the election, but the Prime Minister was busy telling Canadians to buy stocks. There can be only two reasons the Prime Minister did that, either he was totally misleading Canadians or he was totally incompetent and does not know the economic environment and does not have an economic vision for the country.

If the Prime Minister and the finance minister were serious about the economic situation in Canada, they would not have called an illegal election for October 2008 and broken their own election law. They should not have been so neo-conservative in their economic statement, which had nothing, no stimulus package, and they should not have prorogued Parliament.

If the finance minister wanted $3 billion without accountability, the Liberals could not give it to them. The government needs to grow up and take responsibility. Without a vision or accountability, it is rudderless. That is why I would like to ask my colleagues across the way what pay equity has to do with a stimulus package. What does attacking the most vulnerable have to do with a stimulus package? What does the Competition Act have to do with a stimulus package? What do navigable waters have to do with a stimulus package?

I would like to let the Conservatives know that we have put them on probation and that they cannot put a whole hodgepodge of items in the budget and expect it to go through.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, this is another opportunity for me to speak to Bill C-10, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 and related fiscal measures.

This is probably one of the most important bills that we will have before us in this Parliament, although I also believe it is vitally important that the Conservative government bring forward legislation as soon as possible to deal with the unfortunate crimes that are taking place in different parts of our country. I do not want to name provinces or cities, but crime is crime is crime.

This has come to my attention because during the election there was a shooting in a school in my riding. I was asked to speak on the radio which I did. The attorney general was also on the radio. He said everything and nothing. I said to him then and I will say it again now that he should not just do the talk, he should do the walk. He should bring in the legislation. We will be there to support him. We will support good legislation that will help fight crime.

Everyone remembers that the Liberals brought in the anti-gang legislation which helped address the problems that were occurring in Quebec with the biker gangs. It helped us address problems with gangs in the greater Toronto area. I am asking the Conservatives to put their money where their mouths are and bring forward that legislation.

On the budget implementation bill, Bill C-10, my colleague, the member for Don Valley East was so eloquent in her speech. She pointed out the main reasons the Liberals are supporting the bill. We had discussions with our constituents and they told us to support the bill for various reasons.

One reason is that the economic downturn that is taking place in our country needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

As well, as I responded to the NDP members when they questioned me as to why I am supporting the government, the last thing Canada needs right now is to dish out over half a billion dollars for an unnecessary election. Our support for the bill has conditions. There is a caveat. We want to make sure that the government does what it is supposed to do.

For the last little while we have been listening to Canadians and to other parliamentarians who bring their views from their constituencies. There are some things in the budget that are merely cosmetic as far as I am concerned. For example, on the home renovations allowance of up to $10,000, Canadians today are worried about keeping their jobs, not about fixing their basements or adding on an extension. Should Canadians go out and borrow money or use some of their savings to add on an extension, to do a kitchen renovation, to replace windows or put on a new roof so that they can get a maximum $1,350 tax credit?

We had a similar program in our platform in the most recent election. Our program was that if Canadians wished to renovate, they would be able borrow up to $10,000 interest free for those renovations. I do not think Canadians paid that much attention to it. They were buried by all that propaganda put out by the Conservatives. The Conservatives spent tens of millions of dollars in advertising to defame our leader at that time, to talk about the so-called carbon tax and the green economy that we wished to bring forward. Who is talking about the green economy today? President Obama. Who agrees with him? The current Prime Minister. I listened to the Prime Minister on CNN on Sunday. If my TV screen had been blank, I never would have imagined it was the Prime Minister, the leader of the Conservative government, who was speaking. Nevertheless, that is what we are dealing with today.

An unemployed auto worker, a gentleman by the name of John MacDonald, in talking about the retrofit program stated, “ You're not going to retrofit your house if you don't have a job”. He is right.

The most important thing today is how to get Canada moving, how to make the right investments. Most important, the budget talks about putting billions of dollars here and billions of dollars there, but that money has to get to the specific areas. We talk about shovel-ready programs. That is the new term nowadays, shovel ready. That means the shovel is ready to go in the ground. Great. If we assume that is the case, then let us explain to Canadians what the delay is in getting the money for a new recreation centre, or for upgrading a road, or for repairing a bridge. What is the delay? Proper due diligence should be done, and I think the system is there to make sure that is the case.

The Conservative government knows very clearly that we on the Liberal side are prepared to support this budget bill. We are standing here expressing our views constructively to ensure that Canadians understand why we are behind this budget bill. Canadians are applauding what the leader of the Liberal Party and the entire Liberal team has said, which is that we need to look after the nation today given what is going on. We are putting our differences aside and we are working for the good of the nation. We are stepping up to the plate.

As I said earlier on the crime and justice issues, it is very important to all of us, or at least to us on the Liberal side, that we ensure that the legislation is brought forward as soon as possible. The Minister of Justice stood the other day and a lot of hot steam came out of his mouth, which is fine, but bring forward legislation. Nothing is stopping him. I can tell him right now that the Liberal team is here to stand and support good legislation.

I also have a concern. When we talk about shovel-ready programs, moneys have been allocated in previous budgets, but to this very day, these moneys have not been delivered. I want to put some figures into the record. The Conservative government, for example, has left unspent $88 million that was meant for two specific areas. The government had allocated $140 million for disaster relief, but $76.4 million is unspent. The big sheriffs from the west want to fight crime. The government allocated $43 million in its last budget for crime prevention. The government has spent $19.3 million and $24 million is still sitting there.

[An hon. member]

No, it's gone. It has been re-spent.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Oh, it's been re-spent, Madam Speaker. Where did it go? It could not have gone to the arts. It could not have gone to our cultural communities, because the government cut them as well. It could not have gone to our cities, because the cities are having to raise levies. For example, there is an increase of $60 per car registration in the city of Toronto. A young person who wants to go to a swimming pool has to pay an extra levy. Property taxes have gone up in the city of Toronto by almost 4%. How are the seniors going to afford it? The government is not spending the money where it should. These are just some examples. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which we all support, is complaining and saying to give the municipalities the money to do the work.

In closing, we have to change the system because there are cities, towns and other areas that cannot afford to put in their one-third share. We have to find ways and means to help those areas get their share of infrastructure funding.

[André Bellavance, Bloc, Richmond—Arthabaska, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to ask the member, who just gave a passionate, heartfelt speech about the Conservative government—with some criticism, of course—what he thinks about a very recent story in the weekend media.

During his speech, he said that he and his party are standing up to defend good legislative measures. I have my doubts because as recently as this weekend, Saturday to be more precise, more than 100 unionized public service workers demonstrated in front of a Halifax hotel where Liberal Party members were meeting. The leader of the Liberal Party of Canada was there to speak. But the crowd was not there to demonstrate against the government, but against the Liberal Party, which supported Bill C-10.

According to the representative of the Public Service Alliance of Canada, which was also present, Bill C-10 contains three poison bills, namely a public service wage cap, a rewrite of the federal pay equity legislation and a complicated new employment insurance process.

I would like to hear my colleague's comments on this.

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, between 1993 and 2006 when the Liberals governed this country, I do not recall one demonstration against the government by the group the hon. member talked about. Why? Because we worked with them.

With the previous Mulroney government we all remember demonstrations. We all remember what happened with the seniors. We all remember the Prime Minister meeting with Mrs. Joyce Carter, the widow of a veteran, and how he, in essence, misled her. I cannot use the word “lie”; I will just say that he misled her.

The Liberals have a record to stand on. When it comes to pay equity, we know our record. It is there, but I do not have time to go into the details. When it comes to the civil servants, we had harmony, we had dialogue, we found ways to solve our problems and we did not have one demonstration.

[Linda Duncan, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member remonstrates about the lack of attention in the Conservative budget to support for renewable energy development and implementation and to energy retrofits rather than simply building decks. Around the world the International Energy Agency, the European nations and now the Obama administration are shifting their budgets over to the development of green energy. Why on earth is the member voting for the budget which includes none of that?

[John Cannis, Liberal, Scarborough Centre, ON]

Madam Speaker, we have to look at this given what is happening to our country and given what is happening globally.

I do agree with the hon. member that it is an important issue. It is something we had mapped out, outlined and committed to in our platform in the last election. We are committed to making sure that green policy is part of the Liberal policy.

That is what the Prime Minister was saying the other day on CNN to my surprise. That is what he has been discussing with the President of the United States. To everyone's surprise, all of a sudden, the Conservatives are hugging trees along with everybody else.

The answer is that I cannot speak for the Prime Minister and his government. I can only speak on behalf of my constituents and what I am hearing is that, unlike the NDP, Canadians do not want an election right now. They want us to work things out. They want us to move forward to help maintain and improve the job situation in Canada. They want to make sure our institutions are solid and that our companies are solid.

Today, GDP was down 3.1% or 3.2%, so we have to find a way to turn that around, to bring back the good days of Liberal management and manage the economy well.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Madam Speaker, as it is my first opportunity to talk about the budget, I am pleased to rise to speak not just on the amendments that have been presented but to attempt to capture the budget's themes and relate them to the residents in my constituency of York South—Weston. Hopefully, members will find that there are some similarities with respect to issues across the country because that is why we are here. We are here to extract the best from the provided legislation, the budget in this case, and to criticize the shortcomings.

For those who are watching, this is Bill C-10, the budget implementation bill. There are hundreds of amendments that have been moved to varying degrees, exercising the will of the opposition to impress on the government those shortcomings. The shortcomings in the areas of pay equity and employment insurance have been discussed and commented on much better than I could. I am going to let it rest on the record that the government has been listening. It has listened from the very beginning, when the opposition indicated in the budget overview that there was no response to the kinds of issues that Canadians across this country could see on the horizon.

I would like to talk about 10 areas as briefly as I can. First, I think that it behooves us to talk about the manufacturing sector. There is probably no area in the country that has been harder hit than Southern Ontario. We were told years in advance that there was a crisis brewing within the manufacturing sector in Ontario. I do not need to dwell on this, but a huge amount of the disposable part of the gross domestic product comes from Ontario and that goes toward equalization. We have just been informed that the GDP is dropping very rapidly, notwithstanding the situation in Ontario. If there is a gap between the growth and the GDP, that impacts on our regional ability to contribute to equalization.

That was a case that was made. None of us come to the House with clean hands. That is an issue that was not addressed. My hope is that out of this discussion, the issue with respect to equalization and its impact on Ontario is placed under the microscope of concern. However, the creation of a regional authority providing $1 billion for a community adjustment fund that will look at manufacturing, particularly in Southern Ontario, and attempt to stabilize, reinvest in and revitalize the sector is a step in the right direction.

Small businesses are reeling in my constituency, especially those related to the automotive sector. Those that are not employed by the Big Three but are peripheral to the automotive sector, involved in various used parts and creating new parts for the industry, are being hurt very much. I am encouraged that, with more funds being allocated through the Canada Small Business Financing Program and the Business Development Bank, some of my constituents and the small businesses in the area I represent will find that there is hope in this budget. The sooner we can ignite that hope and bring it from the declaratory stage to the implementation stage the better.

When we talk about a more sustainable environment, we cannot help but look at the transformation that is occurring with respect to industry. We have talked about green jobs and green technology. There is no question that there is capacity built into the budget to develop integrated technologies across this country.

The natural resources committee is looking into this with ongoing hearings. We must begin bit by bit contributing to a more integrated and technologically transformative and green economy, certainly producing climate change results that will excite Canadians and that will begin to be part of this global transformation that is taking place.

I would like to think that in York South—Weston, for example, in the Kodak plant that is no longer in existence, that 60 acres would find an incubating taking place that would see high value added activity on that site, and that it would contribute to the city of Toronto's green plan and to green plans similar to it right across the country.

There is no question that local and community investments in cultural, sports and community centres are part of the budget. In York South—Weston the boards of education have been reeling, along with the city, in trying to continue to rehabilitate their recreational facilities. It is the proverbial caucus race. They are investing but they are falling further and further behind. We now have an opportunity, through cooperation with cities like Toronto and cities and communities across the country, to make a substantive change in retrofitting those buildings and bringing them up-to-date. The legacy from that will be that future generations will benefit.

Investments in federal infrastructure projects through the federal infrastructure programs are high on the list for municipalities but this is where I have one criticism. It relates to the one-third, one-third, one-third that has been discussed. Many municipalities are going through a credit crisis in looking at their fiscally sustainable future and possibly not being able to participate in the programs that have been etched out as partnership programs. The suggestion we would put forward in this regard is that we do have the mechanism, for example, of the commitment of the federal gas tax and the ability to front-end load that by using it and taking hopefully the revenues that might come from it and reinvesting them back in as a revolving form of financing into infrastructure programs that are going to stimulate the economy. There is absolutely no question about that.

The government has to listen to the critiques that are being made of these programs and in the mechanism that has been suggested by the opposition where there are quarterly reviews coming forward. If that part of the stimulus program is not working, then there has to be a recalibrating of that mechanism, so that we can extract the highest value in the shortest amount of time from our partners at the municipal level.

Regarding the whole matter of investments in housing in my area, there are many social housing units. It is a very high needs area and this budget makes it very clear that investment in housing, social housing in particular, and the rehabilitation of old housing stock, is a high priority.

Finally, I would like to talk about students and an aging workforce and what the budget provides, but I want to finish with two issues that are really time-fused issues. That is the issue of private pension plans and the issue with respect to deposit insurance with respect to our banking institutions and so on. These are two areas that the government must take under greater scrutiny because the whole issue of private pensions and deposits will become more and more an issue as the actuarial differences between existing investments and their ability to cover both deposits and pensions is strained to the limit.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my hon. colleague for his reflective and well thought-out discussion, as well as the previous member.

They both talked about companies and housing. Last week I met a taxi driver who proudly told me he had earned his bachelor's degree at 19, his master's at 21, and has since run a construction company and a real estate agency. In the last two months, both of those businesses have failed.

I asked him what we could do to help, and I will put that to my hon. colleague. He wants to know what the government could have done? What would help him is to restore consumer confidence.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Madam Speaker, there's no question that we have a huge potential that is both undervalued and underutilized in our human capital. The government has talked about making eligible loan amounts for small businesses, talked about a different form of capital allowance and how that is charged back, and the taxable chronology within which that has to be paid.

There are many mechanisms that can help small business. There is one that I find is absolutely necessary, and that is to recognize that the support services for a small business, the accounting services, the advertising services, the ability to access provincial and local, municipal support mechanisms, the information that is available, the supports that are available are not there.

The idea of building local business incubators, where those services can be provided, is kind of looking at the national issue but thinking locally. Providing that kind of infrastructure will help those young people and those who have been working with corporations or are having a career change, and help them to start their own business. The capital and the credit access is important, but the actual infrastructure that will help them maintain and carry that business on is absolutely necessary for their success.