Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-10, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on January 27, 2009 and related fiscal measures. The size of this bill speaks to its largely technical nature.
As its title suggests, the purpose of this bill is to implement the far-right policies of this new government which follows a conservative-liberal axis. This government has been led for three years now by we know who. A few months ago, however, a new player emerged from the shadows to lead the so-called Liberal Party, which really is liberal only by name. That political formation which used to promote social values at the economic and human levels is shifting toward the far right.
Let us start by going briefly over the past three years to see how we ended up where we are today. For the first time in a long time, the Conservatives took power in January 2006. This was a minority government, something they have always found hard to swallow and accept. The fact is that voters sent a clear message. They had had it with the party responsible for the sponsorship scandal, that is the Liberals. They wanted change, but did not trust the Conservatives quite enough, and they did not want to shift the country all the way to the right.
Instead of listening to this message and learning how to deal with the various forces at work, the government stuck to its dogmatic, ideological approach. The worst example of their lack of good budgetary and fiscal sense was the great leap in government expenditures. The Conservatives spent like never before in Canadian history. In their first three years in power, government expenditures increased by 25% or $40 billion a year, with no tangible results to show for it. They continually misled the public, particularly in regard to the cost of the war in Afghanistan. They promised to do certain things, for example hold public consultations on appointments to the Supreme Court, through its various organs. They ignored this promise. They always talked about democratizing the Senate but then took advantage of the holiday season to appoint 18 close friends of the Conservative government, until they reach the age of 75.
Even more shocking, after claiming that it was unfair for governments to have the sole power to set election dates, the Conservatives promised henceforth to have fixed-date elections. That was one of the self-congratulatory pieces of legislation they like to call their ethics package. That too was a lie, because they broke their promise, broke the law in question, and called an election in August 2008. The election only took place in October. Their fondest dream, of course, was finally to achieve a majority government, but they failed.
As soon as the election was called, the current Prime Minister said that if he should be returned with a minority government, he would accept the people’s judgment and learn to get along with the other parties in the House. In actual fact, the Conservatives took 37.5% of the votes in the election. This meant that the 62.5% of Canadians who voted for the more progressive voices—the ones on this side of the House—did not have any say in the government when it continued to act as if it had a majority.
The budget before us today, which Bill C-10 would implement, was passed on January 27, 2009, as indicated in the title. Exactly two months earlier on November 27, 2008, we were confronted with the dogmatic, ideology-driven Conservative reality. They attacked women’s rights, social rights, and the right of labour unions to bargain collectively and use the negotiating power of a strike, if need be. Finally, they attacked the clean party-funding system, which had been established in light of the greatest political scandal in Canadian history, the Liberal sponsorship scandal.
In one fell swoop, they attacked these three things on November 27, 2008. And people across Canada were outraged. Instead of correcting their past mistakes, they went on the attack, and they are still on the attack.
For two and a half years, during their first term in power, the Conservatives rigorously applied their ideology. For example, in the extreme-right Reagan-Thatcher doctrine, the government has no role in the economy. The role of the government must be reduced. As I mentioned earlier, no government in the history of Canada increased government spending as rapidly as the Conservatives, and that was no small feat.
In keeping with their theory that the government has no role to play in the economy, they stubbornly refused to understand a simple fact: Canadians, 30 million people, occupy the second-largest country in the world, after Russia. Since World War II, successive governments have all understood one thing: to occupy and develop this vast land takes a vision that can target certain economic activities in certain regions, to create a stable, balanced economy. On the other hand, those sorts of targeted interventions go against all their economic theories.
For two and a half years, their solution to our economic woes was wall-to-wall corporate tax cuts. The percentage was the same across the board, but that posed a small problem. Any company that had not turned a profit had not paid tax, so the Conservatives' tax cuts did not benefit the companies that needed them most. They made $40 billion in corporate tax cuts. But where did that money go? It went to the most profitable companies. And where, by chance, are those companies located? In the Prime Minister's home province, where most of the members close to him live. This is the province where, contrary to common sense and all the rules of sustainable development, companies are working the tar sands and completely ignoring our duty to consider future generations when making such decisions. The oil, gas and mining companies and the banks got the lion's share of these tax cuts.
I would like to talk about the forestry and manufacturing industries. Most manufacturing companies are located in central Canada, especially Quebec and Ontario. Vast segments of the forestry industry are located in British Columbia. These two industries in particular suffered because of the Conservatives' policies. In fact, during the two and a half years of the Conservatives' first mandate, Quebec lost 150,000 to 160,000 manufacturing jobs. Those are well-paying jobs with pensions.
When we talk about sustainable development, the first thing that comes to mind is the environment, but in fact, sustainable development means that we must not download our responsibilities onto the backs of future generations. When jobs with pensions are taken away, future generations are forced to find the money to pay the way for those people when they retire.
That is what was done when well paid jobs in the manufacturing and forestry sectors were replaced by jobs in the service sector. I do not wish to take anything away from people who earn a living selling clothes at a shopping mall located where a factory once was. But such people work for $12 an hour with no pension, while the other workers earned $30 an hour. They could meet their families' needs, while compulsory deductions were put aside for their retirement.
That is the Conservatives' strategy. They did it deliberately, by applying a right wing theory inspired by Reagan and Thatcher policies, and of course the catastrophic eight years of George W. Bush's administration. That is their model, their inspiration.
After the October 14 election, one might have expected to see a change, but that did not happen; actually, things got worse. On November 27, we saw a full scale attack on the rights of women, unions and the other political parties. People reacted immediately and intensely, both among the public and in the House. However, there was no underestimating the ability of the current Prime Minister to spread hate and divide Canadians through his choice of terminology. When referring to the former leader of the opposition, he talked about “separatists”. He knew what he was doing. He does not have the right to attack people for their language or ethnic origin, but that is precisely what he did by using that term, which he never had the nerve to say in French. In fact, “separatists” in English became “souverainistes” in French, a much softer term. He never had the nerve or the integrity to use the same term in both languages. That revealed a great deal about his character.
Just mention it to francophone colleagues from northern Ontario or Acadia. Following the attacks by the Prime Minister against the so-called separatists, they heard attacks against French Canadians and francophones outside Quebec that had not been heard for a generation. Such was the force unleashed by this sneaky, below-the-belt attack. This does not seem to bother the Prime Minister in the least. He only cares about himself. He does not care if he causes chaos or pits Canadians against one another.
Today, we have before us the implementation bill for the Conservative budget. This budget implementation bill is entirely in keeping with what we saw on November 27. It includes some of the most pernicious aspects of the deplorable document that was supposed to be the November economic update but which proved to be a new ideological attack by the Canadian right in the guise of a budget document.
One of the most reprehensible components is the attack on women's right to equal pay for work of equal value. Many confuse the right of women to earn equal pay for equal work and what I just said, that is the right to earn equal pay for work of equal value. According to the first principle, if we take the job category of truck driver, the man or the woman who drives that truck will be paid exactly the same. That was settled generations ago and people have a good understanding of that principle. The far greater challenge is eliminating the discrimination inherent between employment groups. It is readily understood just by looking at the public service in Ottawa. Historically, when the same requirements are examined, such as the difficulty of the task, the level of education required and other objective factors, employment groups with men in the majority are better paid than employment groups where there is a concentration of women. This has been definitively proven.
Our human rights legislation has always recognized the right of a woman to go to court, represented by others if need be, to obtain equal pay for work of equal value. On November 27, in the objectionable document I just referred to, the so-called economic update that really was not that at all, but rather an ideological attack, the Conservatives took away that right from women. This is exactly what the Conservatives want to do again today. It is written in black and white in Bill C-10. And what makes it even worse is the fact that a party that calls itself Liberal will vote with the Conservatives to take away the right of Canadian women to equal pay for work of equal value.
As if this were not enough—still speaking about sustainable development and our obligation to consider future generations every time we make a decision in this House—the bill creates a new power, under the Navigable Waters Protection Act, that will have an impact on the bed of any navigable or floatable waterway. Again, this will be done behind closed doors, through regulations, without any public debate. The government will remove the obligation to have environmental assessments for projects worth less than $10 million.
Here, the Conservatives are sending the same message as when they take away the right of women to equal pay for work of equal value: it is a luxury that we simply cannot afford in these times of economic crisis. The message is the same with regard to the environment: environmental protection is a luxury that we simply cannot afford in these very tough economic times. That is hogwash. Shame on those who are suggesting that.
Tying the need for an environmental assessments to the value of the project show just how ignorant the government is when it comes to the environment. The mayor of a town who has been dreaming for years of filling in a precious wetland will now be free to do so as long as his project costs less than $10 million. It is so ludicrous it defies belief, but that is what is happening. This is all driven by ideology, certainly not common sense or knowledge. It is obviously not the cost of what is going to be put on a wetland that should be considered but the ecological value of the environment that is going to be destroyed.
We should seize the opportunity provided by the very real economic crisis we are facing to build things that will last and are sustainable, especially those related to green, renewable energy, so that future generations can be paid back. All we are bequeathing them now is the enormous debt we are going to run up. We are also going to bestow a second kind of debt on them. Not only will future generations have to pay back all the money we are spending now in excess of our revenues, but even more despicably, they are going to inherit an ecological debt and deficit that can never be offset.
They are going to destroy our precious wetlands and the quality of our air, and the health of our children will begin to suffer the effects. All this damage will happen because we are destroying the environmental protections that, in the long term, preserve our ecosystems and human health. Once all this damage has been done, thanks to the support of the Liberals, the Conservatives will have achieved what they always dreamed of: attacking the rights of women and attacking environmental protection, always in support of their right-wing ideology.
I really should mention the most important of our immediate needs: employment insurance. The government still has $54 billion that it stole and put in its general revenues, even though this money was paid by working people and their employers precisely for times like these. Instead of abolishing the two-week penalty applied to people who are eligible for employment insurance, the Conservatives are going to retain it, with the help of the Liberals. Instead of extending employment insurance, they are going to keep the same rules.
For all these reasons, we in the New Democratic Party are going to stand up against the narrow, hard-right vision of the Conservatives.
