Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-15, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016 and other measures.
I would like to begin by noting that I will be splitting my time with the member for Saskatoon West.
Budgets should reflect priorities, and the priorities of any government governing at this time in history ought to be the growing inequality in our country.
Over the last 30 years, we have seen the gap between the rich and everyone else grow. The richest 100 Canadians now hold as much wealth as the bottom 10 million combined. Just this week, Statistics Canada released a study that showed that over the last 30 years it has been getting harder and harder for Canadians to move up the income ladder, but it has been easier for the wealthy to hold on to that wealth.
This did not just happen. It is the result of decades of successive Liberal and Conservative governments that have chosen not to support the middle- and low-income Canadians in our country. This budget is sadly no different.
Early into the Liberal mandate, they prioritized the so-called middle-class tax cut. However, a study from the parliamentary budget officer proves the Liberal tax plan will give nothing to 60% of Canadians. The biggest breaks will go to the top 30% of income earners, and those making $200,000 or more will receive the maximum amount. This is on top of no action to help minimum wage workers earn a fair living.
Another broken promise to Canadians made by the Liberals in the campaign that we have now seen is not taking any action to close the stock option loophole for CEOs, a loophole that costs the public $800 million a year.
When we talk about the growing inequality in our country and the kind of crushing poverty we know to exist, I think many of our minds go to the experience of first nations. Let us talk about first nations youth. Half of all first nations children in Canada live in poverty. In Manitoba, my province, 62% of first nations children live below the poverty line.
What about this budget? We saw the Liberals choose not to live up to their promises to first nations children. This budget shortchanged first nations education by $230 million. Following a historic ruling by the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, first nations child welfare saw $130 million less than was promised.
There is also no money for first nations health care, Jordan's principle, or mental health supports, while many isolated first nations, including communities in my own constituency, struggle with suicide crises.
We have also seen the Liberals choose to break their promise to invest in health care. After promising $3 billion over the next four years to help Canadians access high-quality home care, this budget has nothing.
We have also seen the way the Prime Minister, the self-appointed Minister of Youth, came up $170 million short on his commitment made to young Canadians. The millennial generation needs more than a selfie to help them grapple with the challenges they are facing: skyrocketing student debt, out-of-reach housing prices, and a labour market that is flooded with precarious, unstable, low-paying work.
Unfortunately, this is another missed opportunity by the Liberal government to reduce inequality.
When we look at the history of growing inequality in our country, we know that the 1990s, under successive Liberal governments, was the period of time in which the trend around inequality began to grow the fastest. We have heard from those who have studied that trend that one of the major contributors was the cuts to employment insurance.
On that note, let us look at the recent changes that were made to EI. The system left in place by the Conservatives was nothing less than devastated. However, let us be clear. The system the Conservatives inherited was already deeply troubled. The Liberals plundered countless billions of dollars, in fact $54 billion, from the EI fund for political purposes, and supervised the biggest and most thorough attack on our social safety net as of yet.
If the Liberals believe that the only reason the EI system is in shambles is due to the Conservatives' reforms, I recommend that they look into their own history and uncover the real reasons why a majority of Canadians who are out of work today are left without access to EI. In fact, regarding the changes implemented by Bill C-15, we can see that they do not go far enough.
We know that while some extensions were made, areas like Edmonton and southern Saskatchewan were completely left out of the government's relief measures. When we asked the government why, the reply was blunt and brutal. It was because of “cold, hard math”. Those words are certainly cold comfort to Canadian workers out of a job.
The cold, hard math rhetoric they are basing their policies on has apparently come out of thin air. When we have asked for references to studies and government reports, we have seen nothing. We call on the minister to correct this mistake and to include Edmonton and southern Saskatchewan in the targeted regions immediately.
The broader picture, though, is the failure that the regional thresholds have met in trying to achieve more fairness for the EI system. The regional thresholds have been described as inadequate by countless stakeholders. We in the NDP will continue to advocate for a universal 360-hour threshold that would be fair and adequate for all workers.
Canada's social safety net is broken. The government likes to place the blame squarely at the feet of the previous government, which certainly did its share of damage, but the Liberals should take a look in the mirror. What they are now framing as a victory for workers is actually a return to a difficult time that bears the scars of damage done to our social safety net under Chrétien and Martin.
I would like to talk about the term “social safety net”. What does that represent? In our current economic context, the professional lives of a growing number of workers are hanging by a thread. When that thread breaks, the social safety net can prevent people from crashing to the floor. When it works, the social safety net enables people to pick themselves up, dust themselves off, and start all over again.
The safety net has made it possible for many workers to get back into the job market relatively unscathed, but over the past few decades, more and more workers have been slipping through the holes in the net. Government after government has failed to ensure the integrity of our social safety net. Worse still, successive governments have come to power brandishing their scissors and cutting all kinds of holes in it. They seemed compelled to cut swiftly and indiscriminately.
The holes in our social safety net are well known. One of them is the notorious black hole that swallows up so many seasonal workers. The government could easily have enhanced the employment insurance system by renewing a pilot project that added five weeks of benefits, but it forgot about those workers, and they are once again slipping through the holes in the safety net. We are disappointed but not surprised.
People can count on the NDP to keep protecting workers' interests from the old parties' attacks.
Before I conclude I also want to spend some time talking about how this budget left out major promises to my own constituency, including a commitment that the Prime Minister made during the election to partner on the construction of the east side road.
The east ride road is a legacy project that would have allowed 11 first nations that are currently isolated in my constituency to access something that so many Canadians take for granted, a road.
Climate change has made their existence in isolated communities more difficult and more precarious. We are talking about communities that have as high as 80% of the population on welfare. We are talking about communities that are struggling day to day.
On September 29, 2015, the Prime Minister, when asked if he was going to be a partner on the east side road, said, “The full answer is yes, the federal government will be the partner Manitoba needs in order to deliver the infrastructure that is required”. Sadly, there is no such commitment in the budget. Therefore, whether it is on the east side road or whether it is on the other broken promises, we will remain vigilant.
Much work needs to be done on the budget to understand exactly what it covers.
I would like to seek unanimous consent to move the following motion: That, notwithstanding any order or usual practice of the House that Bill C-15, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 22, 2016, and other measures be amended by removing the following clauses: (a) Clauses 80 to 116 related to the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act; (b) Clauses 126 to 168 related to bank bail-ins and the bank recapitalization regime; (c) Clauses 188 to 191 related to the Old Age Security Act; and (d) Clauses 207 to 231 related to the Employment Insurance Act; that the clauses mentioned in section (a) of this motion do form Bill C-16; that Bill C-16 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Veterans Affairs; that the clauses mentioned in section (b) of this motion do form Bill C-17; that Bill C-17 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Finance; that the clauses mentioned in section (c) of this motion do form Bill C-18; that Bill C-18 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities; that the clauses mentioned in section (d) of this motion do form Bill C-19; that Bill C-19 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities; that Bill C-15 retain the status on the Order Paper that it had prior to the adoption of this order; and that Bill C-15 be reprinted as amended and the law clerk and the parliamentary counsel be authorized to make any technical changes or corrections as may be necessary to give effect to this motion.
We are proposing this motion in order to give the full scrutiny that is required by parliamentarians on behalf of Canadians.
