Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have an opportunity to discuss this motion. In fact, I want to read it into the record so that those who are watching are fully aware of exactly what it is that we are discussing today. We are discussing the following motion:
That, in the opinion of this House, while reducing personal taxes and significantly reducing corporate taxes to make the economy more competitive, and reducing debt, the government must also drive greater Canadian productivity by making investments in things such as:
physical infrastructure, new technologies, research and development, better access to post-secondary education, making it easier for immigrants to use their skills and increasing the number of skilled workers in Canada; and the government must avoid making mistakes such as breaking its promises not to tax income trusts, eliminating interest deductibility and proposing to end prudence from the federal budgeting process.
All of those are very important issues that we on this side of the House want to make sure we bring to the attention of the Canadian public.
My speech today is going to be twofold. First, I want to take the opportunity to remind the House and everyone watching at home, including my constituents in York West, of the outstanding progress that the Liberal government made on so many of those very files during the nearly 13 years that it was in office. Then, if I have any time left, I will attempt to summarize some of the many breaches of trust and broken promises to which the minority Conservative government has subjected Canadians.
The Liberal government struck a fantastic new deal for cities, which I was very much a part of and on which I worked very hard. Our cities across Canada were very much in need of that. We pledged $5 billion over five years in gas tax revenues to help cities and communities, something they are currently enjoying because of the Liberal government. This would have risen to $2 billion annually thereafter. We will have to wait to see if that is still on the agenda.
As part of the new deal, the Liberal government also committed to investing up to $800 million to improve public transit nationwide, something that we continue to hear about. We know how important it is when dealing with a variety of environmental issues.
We signed 12 provincial and territorial gas tax agreements. More than 95% of Canadians living in municipalities would have benefited from $600 million in funding in 2006 alone.
The Liberals' budget 2004 included a full GST rebate for cities and communities, freeing up $7 billion for municipal investments across Canada over the next 10 years, something they very much needed. Our budget 2005 also committed to renewing the $4 billion Canada strategic infrastructure fund to continue to give municipalities the funding they needed to improve local infrastructure and for local investments.
We know that the cities are the hearts of our communities and certainly need the ongoing support from all of us in the federal government. I have yet to hear any of that in the throne speech or in any of the intentions of the government today.
In fact, the Liberals designed infrastructure programs that delivered over $12 billion in funding from 1993 to 2005. The Conservatives have tried to reannounce our projects and all kinds of funding, but Canadians are not fooled. I asked the Minister of Transport last session how many buses and railcars we could buy with his empty promises. There is still no answer on that one and there are still no more buses or railcars.
We all know that research and development is critical to Canada's future. The Liberal government had committed more than $3 billion for research and regional development and pledged to invest $810 million over six years in ideas and enabling technology, which is Canada's future and its strength.
The Liberals' investments for the three federal granting councils, federally funded research universities and hospitals and genomics research are helping to position Canada as a world leader in research and development. These investments continue to be critical for our country to continue to be a leader in R and D and to attract and retain the best and the brightest.
The Liberal government pledged $200 million in sustainable energy, science and technology, and more than $2 billion to help strengthen Canada's ability to prosper in a global knowledge-based economy, with an increased emphasis on new funding for university-based research.
While we are speaking of universities, the Liberal government knew how important it was to invest in Canada's future through post-secondary education. Many of us have met with students who have their lobby week here on the Hill and they have stressed to us just how important it is for more investment.
We Liberals know that we must invest in our students and ensure that they have the tools they need to succeed in life. In fact, in our 2006 election platform we had proposed to expand Canada access grants to cover all four years of study.
We also had proposed to develop a fifty-fifty plan which would have paid for half of the tuition of all Canadian students for both first and last year of study, and to conduct a comprehensive review of student assistance in order to ensure that everyone has access to a university education to help build our great country. We also committed to provide additional funding for Canadian students studying abroad and to make a 50% increase in funding for graduate scholarships.
These Liberal initiatives were very popular in my riding of York West where I am proud to say I have the great York University, home to many students who are really leading the way here in Canada.
Just this week I had the opportunity to meet with students from York University through a meeting set up by the Canadian Federation of Students. They were clearly concerned about, “the lack of needed attention given to post-secondary education by the current government”. Two students from York University, Ben Keen and Fuad Abdi, also drew to my attention the need for a new grants program to replace the millennium scholarship foundation, which will expire in 2009.
What is the Conservative government currently doing to help post-secondary students? I went through the throne speech and it was shocking to find that the words “students” and “post-secondary” do not even appear in the government's document. I guess that was just another oversight on its part.
The Liberal government was acting to help students. Here are some additional examples. In 2004, my Liberal government established a new Canada learning bond to help lower income families save for post-secondary education.
In November 2005, we also committed $550 million to extend Canada access grants to 55,000 students from low income families in all years of undergraduate studies. For graduate students, we had committed $210 million to increase the number of available Canada graduate scholarships.
We had committed to investing $2.2 billion over five years for student financial assistance to address access, affordability, debt management, and service delivery. Members can tell where our priorities clearly were.
To support the capacity of Canada's universities and colleges and to provide high quality post-secondary education, we earmarked $1 billion for post-secondary infrastructure, another high pressure item that we were hearing about from all universities across Canada.
We were also investing more than $10 billion in programs to provide better opportunities for Canadians, including $4 billion more for post-secondary education. But the Conservatives have turned their backs on post-secondary education.
Students are not the only people the Conservatives have turned their backs on. Many seniors have also suffered at the hands of this government and the Prime Minister and his trusty sidekick the finance minister. The Prime Minister promised that his government would not tax income trusts, and that is exactly what he did, thereby costing seniors and other people $25 billion in lost income.
I am glad to have had an opportunity to get some points across on how important our productivity agenda is and how important it is to continue to build Canada and to invest in Canada.
