Mr. Speaker, I rise to oppose the budget because it does not address the serious problems that Canadians are facing.
Over the past 20 years, the NDP has brought into the House the point that for most families in Canada, their real income has decreased. We have had a slow and quiet economic crisis in our country. For 20 years, incomes have continued to fall for the middle-class, for the working-class, for the poorest of Canadians. They are earning less now than they were 20 years ago. The NDP has been pointing this out, yet the Liberals and Conservatives have simply refused to address any of the economic realities.
That crisis has continued and, more recent, has become a full-blown economic crisis, which shows that the economic policies of the past 20 years have certainly not worked and have not provided a foundation to withstand this full-blown economic crisis.
The Conservatives support corporate CEOs. They support banking CEOs. They support corporate lawyers. These are the only people Conservative members are really worried about. They are giving lots of money in corporate tax breaks to the profitable banking sector and to other profitable sectors. They say that they are addressing these economic fundamentals. At the NDP end of the House, which overflows on both sides of the aisle because of our recent increase in the number of seats, we fundamentally disagree.
When a worker in Chicoutimi is earning less now to keep a roof over his or her head than he or she was 20 years ago, that is a fundamental economic problem. When Alberta families see their farm receipts go down, that is an economic problem. In fact, Alberta farmers have had the worst level of farm receipts than farmers anywhere in the country. All Canadians should share these problems. When a softwood lumber worker is laid off because of the government's ill-thought out and irresponsible softwood lumber sell-out, that should concern Parliament.
For 20 years, we have been sleepwalking with right-wing economic policies, whether it has been Liberal government or Conservative government policies. Nothing has really changed. They are similar. It is very difficult to tell them apart. Conservative and Liberal speeches might be different, but on the fundamental economic issues those members have exactly the same approach.
While governments have been sleepwalking for 20 years, the NDP has been warning them that the problems would come to a head, and they now have. We have seen the collapse of our economy in many parts of the country. Thousands of jobs have been lost across the country in the softwood industry, after the softwood sell-out. In the last 90 days, a quarter of a million families have lost a breadwinner.
Each one of these individuals is not a statistic. They are real Canadians. They are real human beings who are suffering because of the absurdly ideological economic policies of the government, rather than putting into place sensible economic policies that would help families sustain jobs in our country.
I represent the riding of Burnaby—New Westminster, one of the epicentres of foolish Conservative and Liberal policies. The softwood lumber sell-out has led to the closure of three softwood mills in my riding and in my community. Hundreds of softwood workers lost their jobs because of the softwood sell-out. They can be added to the tens of thousands of Canadians across the country who have their job because we have no manufacturing policy in place, no real export policy in place, aside from an ideological rant around free trade, and no sectoral industrial strategies in place.
All of those foolish decisions, the deregulation that Conservatives and Liberals have put forward, have led to the crisis we are facing now.
Since we are not talking about statistics but real people, let me read an email I received from one of my constituents, talking about employment insurance. He says, “I'm a 49-year-old licensed heavy duty mechanic who recently got laid off in my line of work. I was at my local Canada Service Centre in Westminster this morning trying to fill out my reports for benefits”.
He talks about another older worker, a 60-year-old truck driver, who tried to electronically make an application for EI medical benefits. He has cancer in his eye. He has never used a computer in his life. The guy helping him had to leave him on his own. Later on in the email, he talks about it being virtually impossible to talk to a human being.
On top of all that, those workers, half of them being laid off, will be unable to access employment insurance. That is a fundamental tragedy. How Liberals and Conservatives could work together to pass a budget that does not give a single Canadian, of that quarter million who have lost their jobs in the last 90 days, access to employment insurance is a fundamental tragedy.
The budget does not help those Canadians. It does not provide a social safety net. It continues the gutting of the social safety net because successive governments, Liberal and Conservative, have favoured big banks and banking CEOs rather than those people on Main Street who pay their salaries. They has completely forgotten about ordinary Canadians. Shame on them.
The budget provides a smoke and mirrors approach to economic stimulus. Essentially, as we well know ,virtually all the money is tied funding. Taxpayers at a city and provincial levels have to cough up first before the government will provide any sort of economic stimulus.
Contrast that with President Obama in the United States, who is putting forward federal funding first. He is saying that, under the buy America act, it has to be spent on an American workers.
In Canada we have this ideological right-wing whacko theory that we cannot protect Canadian jobs and we cannot invest in Canadian workers. Any of the stimulus package that does come out will go to foreign firms, foreign workers. It is absurd.
Half of the taxpayers who have paid their taxes with diligence and who have paid for employment insurance for years in the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression of 1930s are essentially cut out of getting employment insurance. Whatever stimulus that grudgingly comes out of the government will go to support foreign workers overseas.
We certainly cannot trust the government for reasons that I do not need to go into. It said that it would not nominate senators and it has put 18 of them in the senate. It said that we would have fixed election dates. It broke that promise, too. The government is a serial promise-breaker.
If there is any funding that comes out, if it does not break the promise again, essentially that money will go to support foreign workers overseas. There is no buy Canada provision in place, unlike in the United States where it has put in place buy America provisions.
This is the real tragedy of the principle around this budget. Liberals, for the 50th time tonight, will prop up the Harper agenda, a right-wing agenda. Yet the Liberals have gall to go back to their constituents and pretend that somehow they are fighting that agenda. They are not. They are the major contributing party to the agenda. They are ones who, for 50th time, have allowed the government to continue many of the former right-wing Liberal policies, running roughshod over the lives and quality of life of ordinary Canadians.
What is in the budget? We are the only party that has read the budget implementation bill. We are the only party that brought it in. If Conservatives and Liberals have read the budget implementation bill, why are they in agreement with gutting environmental assessments?
Are they in agreement with gutting pay equity for women, essentially eliminating that right of the majority of Canadians to press for equal pay for work of equal value? Liberals are supporting the gutting of pay equity.
Foreign ownership will be increased, as set out in the bill. Canada student loans will be bludgeoned. Students who are highly in debt will be pursued by the government because of new powers. Collective agreements will be gutted.
For those reasons, we are voting against this act.
