Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
This committee has been travelling across the country asking four questions: how to achieve sustained economic recovery in Canada, create sustainable jobs, ensure relatively low rates of taxation, and achieve a balanced budget. Well, I've been travelling across Canada, too, and Canadians are telling me different things. They're concerned that their government is offering only one choice: eliminate the deficit by cutting billions of dollars of public services and the jobs of the people who provide them. The Canadians I talked to want another choice: they want a way forward that grows our economy and protects our long-term social safety net.
Take Meghan Thomson, who was a chemist at Environment Canada working to reduce fuel emissions. Her work is critical to our future and our children's futures. This was her dream job and she felt lucky to be doing work that was about making a difference. At just 30 years old, her dreams were dashed. In July, one month before earning a permanent position after three years of term work in government, her job was cut. What message is government sending to young Canadians like Meghan, who should be the future of the public service? Eliminating good-quality sustainable jobs for Canada's next generation is not a sound economic plan for growth and prosperity.
I imagine John Kelly would agree. Until this fall, he was an integrity account specialist at the federal government's pension centre in Shediac, New Brunswick. He had one of those good-quality jobs you're looking to create, but his dream was destroyed very suddenly. After a meeting with his director, his job and the jobs of 150 others were gone. What does the loss of 150 jobs mean in a small community like Shediac? It's a loss of $4 million or $5 million in salaries that helped keep the community's economy alive, according to the Shediac mayor, and it will be the small businesses, the local restaurants, and the corner stores that will be hit hardest.
The government says it's just cutting services that aren't relevant or useful to Canadians. The Canadians I've spoken to would disagree.
Bill Dicks, from St. John's, Newfoundland, has worked for the coast guard for 30 years. For the last six and a half years, he has dedicated his expertise to the St. John's search and rescue substation, helping rescue people in trouble at sea. But the government is shutting down the station, along with another one just like it in Quebec City.
The St. John's subcentre watches over 900,000 square kilometres of ocean and almost 30,000 kilometres of shoreline, some 90% of the fishing vessel activity, and the highest level of transatlantic shipping in Canada. The government says that all this work can be coordinated out of Halifax instead.
The real search and rescue experts like Bill Dicks disagree. He doesn't want to downplay the expertise of the workers in Halifax, but there's just no way they would know the Newfoundland and Labrador coast as well as the locals do. Canadians along the coast are asking, “Is saving money more important than saving lives?”
There is no way around it: cuts to services undermine our safety, our health, and our environment. Canadians are smart. They know that gutting public services just doesn't make sense. They know there must be another way forward and that we can improve our public services and grow our economy. We think we can do this, but it means choosing another path and asking the right questions. There are alternatives.
If this is really about cutting costs and waste, then we suggest that the government start by reining in outsourcing costs, which, under this government, have risen by 79%. Also, if departmental budgets have been capped, why are we still spending $1 billion a year on outside consultants? As well, if this is really about quality sustainable jobs, why don't we keep people like Meghan Thomson and John Kelly in their jobs? Finally, if this is really about sustainable economic recovery, then why are we cutting jobs in communities--your constituencies--jobs that keep small and medium-sized businesses open?
Ordinary people should not be asked to bear heavier burdens and lose vital public services in order to satisfy a misguided quest to balance the books at all costs. There are alternatives.
The government says it is consulting experts from outside government and plans to make public service cuts. Well, we represent experts on the public service--the people who provide them--and we won't charge anyone $90,000 a day to share this expertise, because we know that it's possible to offer Canadians another choice and a better way forward.
Thank you very much for allowing me to appear before you today.
I'm sure the questions will be interesting.