Madam Speaker, in the few minutes available I would like to put forward some thoughts on future budgets.
First, let me congratulate the minister on his announcement on March 6 of the change to the Income Tax Act regarding investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy sources. This is an initial step in the right direction which will help in keeping our red book promise to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
The main point I would like to make today is to express the hope that sooner or later, but preferably sooner, the government will find it possible to conclude the policy of deficit reduction and review and expand public sector expenditures in an effort to improve the social and economic conditions of most Canadians, particularly low and middle income earners.
We have witnessed with apprehension the phenomenon of certain large corporations, banks and other financial institutions making record profits by continuing to "downsize" their workforce. The time has come, as one observer recently put it, to downsize downsizing for the sake of social peace and stability.
The Easter recess has allowed me time to note the profound malaise caused by unemployment and poverty and to bring back to Ottawa from Toronto and Montreal recent images and impressions of the hardships Canadians are presently enduring.
In increasing numbers people are sleeping on sidewalks and in telephone booths and are reduced to begging for change in our downtown urban areas. Families are struggling to make ends meet. There are even reports that the financial hardship resulting from cuts to welfare payments in Ontario has become a factor in parents offering their children for adoption. Cash strapped municipalities are finding it almost impossible to provide basic services, from road maintenance to public libraries to providing an adequate number of teachers, to mention a few.
Social housing applicants are waiting longer and longer, in some cases several years, before their turn comes.
High youth unemployment set at 15.3 per cent in March has eroded the confidence and hope of our young people to find meaningful work commensurate with their training and career plans. It is no wonder that youth are without jobs when thousands of people have been and continue to be thrown out of work as a result of corporate and government layoffs, including the 10,500 provincial civil servants recently cut by the Harris government in Ontario.
Consumers are hesitant to buy even small appliances because of the uncertainty posed by potential job loss. Companies such as General Motors are closing down auto parts plants in Oshawa and Windsor because of low cost competition in the U.S., all in an effort to please the insatiable corporate appetite for larger and larger profits. Also, Kenworth Trucks in St. Therese, Quebec is giving notice that it intends to shift and enlarge truck production to its plant in Mexico.
New housing starts remain at a record low while the savings rates of Canadians stay at record low levels and the percentage of after tax personal income going toward servicing their debt is at a record high.
The poverty gap, that is the amount of additional income that would be required to bring all Canadians above the poverty line, amounts to a staggering $15.2 billion with single parent mothers representing one of the largest groups living in poverty.
It seems to me that these points call for a number of measures, the most pressing being the urgent necessity of redistributing incomes. Personal and corporate tax expenditures alone still cost the federal government billions of dollars in lost revenue. Some of these expenditures are necessary and warranted but others such as the non-taxation of gambling and lottery winnings, alone amounting to some $900 million in lost revenue in one year are not.
To give another example, the tax concessions in the resource sector such as the Canadian exploration expense and the Canadian development expense are conservatively estimated at $150 million a year. These expenditures are no longer justifiable if development is to become sustainable.
Over the past 30 years corporate taxes as a percentage of federal government revenue and as a percentage of GDP have declined. There was a corporate tax rate reduction from 46 per cent to 38 per cent under the Mulroney regime, thus reducing the corporate fiscal burden in Canada to one of the lowest among OECD countries.
While the social safety net has undergone intense scrutiny and reductions, for example unemployment insurance and the Canada assistance plan, outside of small increases in the large corporation tax and corporate surtax in 1995-96, increases in corporate taxation remain untouched in this budget. This policy has produced a serious imbalance between the treatment of social and economic policies.
For these reasons, sooner rather than later the Minister of Finance needs to shift his focus of attention from deficit reduction toward a policy which will: one, restore fairness and progressiveness in the tax system so as to bring back the confidence of Canadians in their government's sense of social justice and equity; two, give poverty issues the attention they so urgently require; three, provide low income Canadians with adequate social measures to ensure they can live in dignity; and four, translate the government's commitment to sustainable development into coherent policies that will ensure future growth while taking into account the need to protect our freshwater resources, the necessity of clean air to breathe, the fragility of many ecosystems, the need to adequately conserve our agricultural soil and the need for sustainable fisheries and forests, to name a few.
In addition, our sustainable development policies must respect our international commitments from the management of toxic waste to the ratification of the law of the sea, from the biodiversity convention to our commitments to lower carbon dioxide reductions under the climate change convention. All of these are important Liberal commitments we must work to realize.
In conclusion, I have a few words on the phasing out of the old age security pension over the next five years and the Canada pension plan. The replacement of the old age security pension with the proposals for new seniors benefits involves basing benefits on household income instead of on individual income as is the present case. Unfortunately the losers in the scenario are married women who have no income of their own who at the same time have no legal entitlement to the income of their spouse. I urge the government to redress this inequity over the next five years to ensure that married women retain the same degree of financial independence they have presently under the old age security pension.
On the Canada pension plan, I congratulate the government for launching today public hearings in Toronto which will help decide on the future of the CPP. Our increasing senior population makes it necessary to do in Canada what has already been done in other OECD countries namely, to increase contribution rates so as to retain both the present retirement age and level of benefits. This is a small price to pay for a retirement plan which benefits most Canadians who cannot afford a private retirement plan and which permits mobility from province to province and from job to job.
The Canada pension plan is one of the best plans of its kind in the world. It is funded entirely by contributions from employers and employees without a penny coming from taxes. It serves Canadians well and has done so for some 30 years. It ought to remain as a public fund owned and operated by the public sector for the benefit of many generations of Canadians to come.