Mr. Speaker, I rise on behalf of Canadians from coast to coast to coast who have been left out in the cold by the government and by the budget.
A budget is supposed to be a government's declaration of priorities. If that is true, then budget 2014 makes it clear that the only jobs the government is interested in protecting are their own.
We have heard for weeks that this would be a do-nothing budget, that the Conservatives had no intention of taking real action on the issues that matter to Canadians, because they wanted to wait until an election year to propose anything.
In this sense, and in this sense only, the budget did not disappoint. There is nothing to help Canadians save and invest for retirement. There is nothing to help create the next generation of middle-class jobs, and there is nothing to make life more affordable for Canadians.
Instead what we have is the most cynical budget in years. What little so-called new spending there is will not get out the door until years down the line, after the next election.
This budget is chock full of empty words and half-measures that will help absolutely no one. With this budget, the Conservatives seem to be telling Canadians: “Sorry, but if we help you now, are we really going to have a better shot at getting re-elected next year?”
Canadians cannot afford to wait until next year. They need help now. Canadians deserve better.
Of course, this should come as no surprise. This is a government, after all, that has repeatedly missed the mark when it comes to responding to the priorities of Canadians. Take last year's budget, for instance. It introduced nearly $8 billion in new taxes, increasing the price of thousands of goods and services that Canadians rely on every day.
Budget 2013 promised what the Minister of Finance called the largest and longest federal infrastructure plan in Canadian history. However, it took just a few days for the Parliamentary Budget Officer to expose that this so-called investment was a sham. The PBO found that the budget was nothing more than a shell game, that it delivered $5.8 billion less for infrastructure funding over five years. Instead of increasing funding at a time when our cities and towns are in dire need of support, the Conservatives actually cut it.
Who can forget the dead-on-arrival Canada job grant? It was a $300-million cut to provincial skills training that still has provincial leaders up in arms. I hear from community organizations in my riding about this, and I am sure members are hearing about this across the country. Instead of listening to provincial ministers' recommendations, the Conservatives steamrolled ahead with their own agenda, more or less like they do in Parliament. A year later, what do we have to show for it? There is nothing more than a $2.5-million advertising campaign for a program that does not even exist.
This is the Conservative economic record. What a waste of taxpayers' dollars: reckless cuts, missed projections, and utter mismanagement.
Budget 2014 continues down the same path. It fails to tackle Canada's stubbornly high unemployment rate, which is especially high for young Canadians, who are graduating with tens of thousands of dollars of student debt. It proposes to balance the books on the backs of workers and employers by raiding the EI fund to pad its surplus. Now, Canadians know this story. Successive Liberal and Conservative governments have stolen $57 billion from the EI fund to pay for corporate tax cuts and to mask deficits.
The budget also continues the attack on public servants, by cutting billions of dollars from retiree health benefits. These are benefits that people had planned for. They had retired hoping that they could count on them. However, once they are out the door, once they are retired, suddenly the rules of the game are changing. This is a disgrace to the public sector. It is a disgrace to working people.
The budget also delays billions of dollars of procurement spending to boost Conservative fortunes.
The fact is that 320,000 more Canadians are unemployed now than before the recession. Those who have found work are often left juggling two, or even three, part-time jobs. Others are working contracts, split shifts, often with barely enough time to see their kids as they head from one job to the next, especially with the gridlock in many of our big cities. Speaking of which, in Toronto alone, a staggering 50% of people cannot find full-time stable work. It takes them hours to criss-cross the city, often for low wages. There is nothing in this budget to help them.
There is nothing to tackle household debt. Despite the fact that the Bank of Canada calls it the biggest domestic risk facing our economy today, there is nothing to tackle this household debt.
Last month, the Governor of the Bank of Canada Stephen Poloz warned that our economy will continue to struggle for at least the next two years. He suggested there is little else that the bank can do to help. That is because the current Conservative government has presided over the largest expansion of household debt in Canadian history: 166% of disposal income. From Surrey to St. John's, household bills are piling up, and household budgets are stretched like never before.
We learned just this week that consumer debt is up by more than 9% in the last 12 months alone, to a staggering $1.4 trillion of household debt. With already historic low interest levels, the Bank of Canada is stuck between a rock and a hard place, and yesterday's budget will not help one bit.
This budget has absolutely no proposals to stimulate the growth of small businesses. It has absolutely no provisions to help seniors retire in dignity or to help veterans deal with the closure of nine Veterans Affairs offices.
There are no proposals to deal with tax evasion; no proposals to deal with social inequality, which is reaching levels we have not seen since the great depression; and there are no proposals to help the 1.3 million unemployed Canadians get back into the job market.
Instead, this government has chosen to continue along its road of austerity, even though more and more economists are coming together to tell us that it is doing us more harm than good.
According to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, by 2017 direct federal program spending as a percentage of Canada's GDP will have fallen to its lowest level since 2001. At this pace, federal spending will have been slashed a whopping $90 billion between 2010 and 2017. These are services; things that people want to count on. These are safety inspectors. These are the people who staff service counters, whether it is Service Canada or veterans services. These are the people who help us access government programs.
As Tim Harper wrote Monday in the Toronto Star:
Continued government austerity has thrown into question whether Ottawa can, or more importantly, wants to continue to provide services Canadians expect.
I guess that is still an open question. We are talking about services and benefits that Canadians have relied on for generations, that we have come to think of as defining us as a nation.
Time and time again, the government has told Canadians that we have to accept less and that our children have to accept less. When it comes to health care, employment insurance, old age security, and services for veterans, we all have to accept less, even though our country is richer than ever before. All these services have met the government's axe.
Budget 2014 fails to strengthen any of these services or reverse any of these disastrous cuts. Instead, once again, it chooses ideological dogma over common sense. It is future generations, our kids and our grandkids, who are going to pay the price.
Clearly, some are sheltered from the Conservatives' budget cuts and inaction. Like the Liberals before them, the Conservatives are continuing to give tax handouts to business. While the middle class is being told to tighten its belt yet again, friends of the Conservatives and the Liberals are helping themselves to the goodies. It is clear who they are working for.
We New Democrats on this side of the House know who we are working for, and Canadians know it too. They know that New Democrats, unlike the Conservatives and the Liberals, are working for them, for all Canadians.
Just last week, the International Monetary Fund warned the government about the very same reckless austerity that we saw in yesterday's budget. The IMF stated that, “fiscal policy should strike the right balance between supporting growth and rebuilding fiscal buffers”.
It went on to highlight some serious threats to our economy, from skyrocketing household debt to continued fragility in the U.S. and Europe. Those are the very sorts of risks that unchecked austerity leaves us exposed to; in other words, we are not getting the right balance. We now see that the government has ignored that warning.
That is not all. The government has ignored the fact that Canada's economic outlook has been repeatedly downgraded by the IMF and others. According to the Conference Board of Canada's report last month, our fledgling dollar is a sign of Canada's lack of growth prospects.
Despite all this, despite the warning from financial experts and the struggles of middle-class Canadians right across the country, the government has chosen to introduce a do-nothing budget.
If all of this sounds familiar, it should. We must remember that this is the same government which insisted in 2008 that there would be no recession in Canada, even as the global economy teetered on the brink of collapse. This is the same government that refused to act until it was forced to act by the opposition, and thank goodness for that. It helped get the country out of the recession.
Canadians are tired of waiting for the government to get its act together. We do not have to accept less. We can and should strive for more. New Democrats are ready to do something about it.
While the Conservatives continue to twiddle their thumbs and ignore the concerns of Canadians, we New Democrats are proposing practical and specific solutions to help Canadians.
We know that Canadians work hard and that they deserve a break. This is why New Democrats have established a clear plan to protect consumers and make life more affordable. We plan to limit the ATM fees that Canadians have to pay each time they want access to their own money.
We plan to fight the abusive practices of payday lenders, who are charging interest at rates that can go as high as 1,000%. We plan to put an end to scandalous gas prices and to ensure that all Canadians have access to low-interest credit cards.
These simple measures would help to alleviate Canadian household debt and would not cost the government a cent. All across the country, Canadians have told us that measures like that would have a very positive impact on their family budgets. However, just a few weeks ago, the Conservatives voted against an NDP motion that would have limited ATM fees to 50¢. The Conservatives voted against a motion designed to make the lives of Canadians more affordable, while bank profits continue to rise.
The Conservatives can talk about being more consumer-friendly, but when it comes to taking real action, Canadians know where they stand.
New Democrats have also called on the government to reverse the disastrous cuts to old age security, and to take immediate action to strengthen retirement security. Far too many seniors in this country are going to be facing a retirement crisis. In the past two years, the current government has really broken faith with Canada's seniors, seniors who have built this country and who now deserve to retire in dignity.
The Conservatives have hiked the retirement age from 65 to 67 years; they have turned their back on a plan to expand the Canada pension plan and the Quebec pension plan, Canadians' best and surest hope for a secure retirement; and as many as 5.8 million Canadians, nearly one-third of our workforce, will see a sharp drop in their standard of living when they retire. This is the retirement crisis so many people are referring to.
Provincial governments, labour unions, and pension experts have called on the Conservatives to move forward with plans to increase our public pensions. Even the chief executive officer of CIBC has spoken out about the need to involve government in finding a solution to this retirement security crisis. However, as we saw once again yesterday, the Conservative government still refuses to act.
Unlike the Conservatives, New Democrats also focused on creating good middle-class jobs right here in Canada instead of shipping them overseas. We have put forward ideas to help small and medium-sized businesses create high-quality jobs. We know this is a priority for Canadians, and the current government is letting them down.
We have called for a youth employment tax credit to help make sure that we give the next generation of Canadians the same opportunities that our parents gave us.
Canada is among the most entrepreneurial countries in the world, and more and more businesses are being started by young people. Even through the recession, Canadian small businesses continued to thrive and multiply, but for far too long, too many of our small businesses have stayed small. Since 2006, the number of small businesses in this country has grown by more than 44,000, but the number of medium-sized businesses has actually shrunk. That is a trend that cannot continue, and that is why we are going to work together with Canadian businesses, especially small businesses, to help them grow and prosper in the 21st century. We want to see them grow and to be the best that they can be so that they are investing and creating good-quality jobs right across this country.
These are the kinds of solutions New Democrats were hoping to see in this budget. They are the kinds of solutions Canadians were hoping to see.
While the government has failed Canadians once again, I can tell members this. These are exactly the kinds of solutions that Canadians can expect from the New Democratic government in 2015.
All across the country, those in the middle class are having to tighten their belts like never before. They deserve a government that is committed to focusing on their priorities. At the moment, they have to put up with a government that tells them that they have to go it alone and that they had better get used to it.
This is not the Canada that our parents left to us and it is not the Canada that we want to leave to our children. That is why the New Democrats will vote against this budget and why we would like to propose the following amendments:
I move, seconded by the member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques:
That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: this House not approve the budgetary policy of the government as it: a) Fails to take any meaningful action to create jobs while 1.3 million Canadians are unemployed; b) Refuses to work cooperatively with the provinces on federal transfers, skills training, and infrastructure funding; c) Does nothing to cap ATM fees, crack down on payday lenders or rein in credit card rates; d) Does not introduce a youth hiring and training tax credit to combat soaring youth unemployment; e) Threatens to unilaterally impose the Canada Job Grant over the unanimous objection of the provinces; f) Pushes ahead with office closures and cuts to veterans' services; g) Repeats previous governments' misuse of EI funds; and h) Slashes billions of dollars from the health care plans of Canadian public service retirees.
