Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the Conservatives' 2014 budget for the remaining five minutes.
We now have 300,000 more unemployed workers than we had before the recession, and the Conservative government is just marking time with the budget it tabled. While thousands of families struggle to make ends meet, the Conservatives are playing petty politics and postponing the major announcements until next year, an election year, as everyone knows.
Let us start with the environment. Wetlands are very important to many aspects of our environment. They serve as a natural filtration system for water, provide exceptional wildlife habitat and offer a better quality of life for Canadians. The federal government has a responsibility to protect our wetlands. Unfortunately, the 2014 federal budget does not contain a single measure to protect wetlands. Ducks Unlimited Canada had the following to say about this unreasonable situation:
The policies and actions of the federal government, implemented through a variety of federal agencies, have significant impacts on Canada’s landscapes and the environment.
In recent federal budgets...no significant new money has been earmarked for conservation activities.
It is disturbing how unimportant the Conservatives seem to think our environment is. There is no mention of it in budget 2014, let alone of climate change. Everyone knows that the government's record on this issue is poor. It dropped the Kyoto protocol and the UN Convention to Combat Desertification. It cut funding for Canada's Experimental Lakes Area and gave tax breaks to big oil companies. These are just a few examples of the government's lack of leadership on climate change adaptation.
The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has been sounding the alarm about this for some time now:
Canada's infrastructure deficit is significant, and the ongoing impact of climate change is expected to increase this deficit by shortening asset-replacement cycles.
Climate-change adaptation could save Canadians billions of dollars, and position our economy to provide solutions for a challenge that will soon face communities around the world.
Unfortunately, there was no mention of climate change in the Conservatives' budget.
Next I would like to talk about infrastructure. On February 13, the Conservatives finally revealed the details of the 10-year building Canada fund, which was one of the biggest promises in the 2013 budget. However, the spending laid out for the first five years of the program adds up to $5.8 billion less than infrastructure spending for 2013-14.
The Conservatives have made several announcements about the new building Canada fund since tabling budget 2013, but they have been unable to release the promised funds. Municipalities are now worried that they will have to just forget about this summer's construction season. Moreover, the delays are costing our communities thousands of jobs.
Laval was promised over $31 million for a multi-use sports and culture complex in 2009. The Conservatives made a very big deal about that announcement. Later, the government quietly withdrew from the project, sticking Quebec and the municipalities with the bill. Laval is not the only city this happened to.
The federal government is now refusing to fund sports infrastructure projects through the building Canada fund even though the municipalities are in desperate need of that money. Why were the municipalities not consulted about this?
The drastic cuts affect a great many areas. Unfortunately, I do not have enough time to speak to each of them. However, there will be an impact on seniors, the Canada job grant—which is extremely serious—and youth unemployment. There are 1.3 million unemployed Canadians, yet the budget contains no meaningful measures to address the issue. In January 2014, the unemployment rate was 5.7% in Laval. It was 7.5% in Quebec. These cuts will also have an impact on arts, culture and railway safety. In Laval, the trains travel through Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, Duvernay and Saint-François, right through our communities. That concerns people.
Since I do not have much time left and I need to cut my speech short, I would simply like to say that I am extremely disappointed to see that the Conservatives have shifted the focus of the HPS and did not increase its envelope. International co-operation is at a standstill.
To conclude, the NDP is proposing simple, practical, meaningful solutions that would provide some relief to families, such as capping ATM fees, cracking down on payday lenders, reining in credit card interest rates and bringing back the eco-energy home retrofit tax credit.
Canadians deserve better. They do not deserve a government that is just marking time, as the Conservatives are doing. In 2015, voters will have the opportunity to choose the NDP, who will fight for a fairer, greener, more prosperous country.
