Mr. Speaker, I will make good use of whatever amount of time I have left, as the last speaker.
I am pleased to be on my feet again to address it. Many of our colleagues have spoken at length to various issues of a bill on which it is most unfortunate that again we have had to see closure; especially on things like the omnibus bills being passed, which are actually massive in volume. No matter how much work all of us do in this House, we can never get through it enough to find all of the bits and pieces in this omnibus bill that are nothing short of a bunch of poison pills that are going to have huge effects on the Canadian economy and on the Canadian people. However, the Conservatives have their majority and they are going to do with this what they do with everything else, which is to implement time allocation and drive it through in order to achieve their agenda and do what they want.
I am using my valuable time to speak to this issue, on the things I think are important to Canadians and things we should be talking about more. Issues like jobs, infrastructure, household debt, youth unemployment and government waste are too important to simply be lumped in with many non-budgetary measures such as court reform, which the government is hiding within the budget. They put things like court reform and other things that have nothing to do with a budget bill into an omnibus bill. They bury them in there with the hopes that nobody in the opposition will be able to find them because they are overwhelmed with the bill from the beginning anyway and do not have enough time. Normally we would have had several months here, and we are lucky if we have several days.
Let us talk about jobs first, and quality jobs, which are at the heart of any healthy and growing economy. Without adequate employment, Canadians cannot enjoy dignity and quality living, no matter what the GDP says. On this front, of course the government has clearly failed.
Too often, the Prime Minister has droned on about the GDP without giving consideration to the impact around the kitchen tables of the nation. He says the economy is growing, but the reality is that more and more Canadians are falling farther and farther behind. Instead, the Conservatives are repackaging existing programs, taking more money out of the economy and calling it an economic action plan. This budget clearly has no plan to help the middle class, and that is its first great failing.
In budget 2013, the Conservatives prioritize spending cuts ahead of strengthening the economy and creating Canadian jobs. Their latest round of spending cuts is going to hurt Canada's already-weakened economy. The EI premium hike in budget 2013 would again cost more jobs. Canada's job market has not recovered from the recession, no matter what this Prime Minister and the government say. It is even more difficult for young Canadians to find a job, with an employment rate that is five points worse than it was before the recession, so we risk creating a lost generation of youth, unable to move out of their parents' home, scarred with high debt and with no meaningful job experience. I guess that would make the government's failure to address youth unemployment the second greatest failing of this budget. However, it is a failing of which the full impact will not be understood fully for years, and that is an important point.
The current government has developed a habit of kicking a can down the road on key issues. Government is about leadership and making real decisions. Passing the bill to our children for our generations of mismanagement is unethical, short-sighted and just plain wrong.
Budget 2013 announcements on infrastructure, training and manufacturing are not enough to kickstart the economy. These are not new programs. The Conservatives are just using budget 2013 to rebrand programs that already exist. Again, the Conservatives are just kicking the can down the road.
Worse than all of this, the budget would fail to do anything to shore up the very foundation of the economy, middle-class workers. Canadian workers are the true fuel of the economy, and they have been ignored by the current government. Instead, the Minister of Finance has developed a habit of calling the banks and demanding that they increase mortgage prices. This may look great on paper, but it will only make it harder for middle-class families to make ends meet. Canadian housing prices are overvalued, and prices are now starting to drop. The minister is to blame with his risky mortgage scheme in budget 2006 that brought U.S.-style 40-year mortgages with zero down payment to Canada, and helped create the current housing bubble. Then the Conservatives had to change it, so now the only real growth in Canada's economy is the growth in household debt. Personal debt levels in Canada are now worse than they were in the U.S. before the U.S. housing crush.
Canadians are not wasteful mismanagers. They are not putting new TVs and fancy cars on their credit cards. They are putting food and rent on their credit cards.
The responsibility for this climate rests on the shoulders of the Conservatives. This budget's failure is not isolated to the country's workers. They have also turned their backs on seniors. Despite their billion-dollar ad campaign to the contrary, Conservatives have no plan for middle class prosperity. Instead, they repeatedly punish the middle-class. Conservatives taxed income trusts, wiping out billions in retirement savings, after saying they would never touch them. They made old age security harder to get by moving it up to age 67. The Conservatives PRPP scheme is a joke. It is nothing better than just something for the banks and insurance companies. Seventy per cent of Canadians have no pension, yet Conservative incompetence is making it much harder to retire with dignity. I cannot help but wonder why the Prime Minister wants poverty to be part of middle-class retirement.
The government's answer to this problem has always been trade. It has failed to note that more trade has not always been better for Canadian industry. Canadian farmers know this better than anyone. For the past 50 years, farmers have been increasing their production levels each year, only to watch their incomes fall well into negative margins.
I support trade, and so does my party. However, trade has to be on an equal and profitable footing. Trade success is more than a simple scorecard. It has to include real gains for Canadian industry and workers. Instead, the government talks big, but unlike certain goods in places like the U.S., talk is cheap. For example, the suggested Canadian retail price for an Acura, a car made in Alliston, Ontario, is $54,990, yet our U.S. friends can buy the same car for just $46,120. That is a $9,000 price differential, a price paid by Canadian families. It goes right back into the manufacturer's hands. The differential applies to every car from the Matrix to the Impala. In short, everyone has their hand in consumers' pockets and despite the government's promise to get serious about price parity, it continues to do nothing on those big issues.
Empty words will not close this gap, nor will they help middle-class families raise their families. The government has spent well over half a billion dollars on advertising, trying to buy Canadian voters with their own tax dollars. Most recently, it has spent more than $8 million to tell Canadians in rural Canada that they should not be happy with their cellphone service. Effectively, to score cheap political points, the government is using tax dollars to run ads against Canadian businesses. It calls this action on behalf of consumers.
As bad as this is, incompetent military procurement, like the $40 billion runaway F-35 costs, are draining government resources at a time when Canadians need them the most. This kind of waste is taking money from workers, students, and middle-class families, plain and simple.
I could go on with example after example of just how the government has failed Canadians, but time simply does not permit a full reading of the list. In short, this budget takes drastically reduced economic growth forecasts and magically turns them into increased revenue projections. The government is projecting a balanced budget by 2015, with an $800 million surplus, yet short of a math error, has no real explanation of how to attain that goal.
Mr. Speaker, thank you very much for the opportunity to conclude this debate. With great sadness, we will rise tonight and vote against Bill C-4.
