Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Regina—Qu'Appelle.
First of all I thank the hon. member for Shefford and her party for introducing the motion today. I think it is an extremely timely debate with the crisis of this country, although it is not a crisis that just happened yesterday, this is an ongoing crisis which has been going on for many years. I am glad that today is a good day to discuss this.
Next week my hon. colleague from Acadie—Bathurst will be bringing out his long awaited EI report. After his travel across the country from coast to coast to coast he will be relating the report and putting a human face to exactly what this government and the previous governments have done to people who are collecting EI and exactly what has happened to these people. He will be relating their personal stories for the House of Commons for all parliamentarians to have.
If I may digress to a personal experience, my mother and father and I were born in Holland. In 1956 when Holland was discussing the closure of the coal mines, and my father was a miner then, my mom and dad and six brothers and sisters plus thousands of other people in Europe at that time had no other opportunities but to abandon not only their homes but their countries and migrate to a great country like Canada and other countries.
I am very proud to say that my mother and father and all my brothers and sisters have done very well in Canada in terms of the social fabric of this country. The only unfortunate part is I now speak to my mother and father on a regular basis and what they see around them is the degenerating of the social fabric of this country.
For over 20 years my mother and father ran a group home for various children from across this country who were abandoned or abused, neglected or just basically forgotten about. They had well over a few hundred children go through their home. It was their way of thanking Canada for opening up Canada's doors when we needed a place to come and live and survive.
Unfortunately after living in this country for over 43 years they feel now that Canada is reverting to dog eat dog, forget about them society, a user pay, merger monopoly society aided and abetted by the provincial and federal governments.
A tax program like the GST is not implemented without having some detrimental effect on the lowest paid citizen. To give a tax break to citizens start lowering the GST. That is probably the most balanced and fair tax break that every single Canadian in the country can be given, especially for those who are the lowest paid.
Ravage cuts to EI cannot be introduced without a negative effect. I would like to give a quote of a very famous Canadian from February 17, 1993: “By reducing benefits and by imposing even higher penalties on those who leave their jobs voluntarily, it is clear that the government has little concern for victims of the economic crisis. Instead of addressing the underlying cause of the problem it attacks the unemployed”.
Believe it or not that was a quote by the Prime Minister. If that is not a metamorphosis in the Liberal Party I do not know what does.
The Liberals have abandoned all the principles of the great leader Lester Pearson. They have abandoned all the principles and the moral fabric of Mr. Warren Allmand. They have abandoned all it was to be a Liberal in the 60s and 70s. Their agenda is tax breaks for the wealthy and their friends high on the economic scale while completely abandoning poverty, those who are homeless and those who are disenfranchised in society.
I work on the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans. When we had the previous member from Gander—Grand Falls as the chair of the committee, we were on extensive tours across the country, especially in small isolated coastal communities. It did not take a rocket scientist to understand the problem these people were going through.
What the government with those in the corporate sector has done is take a common property resource, the fish, and given most of it through the ITQ, IQ and EA programs to their friends in the corporate sector.
Someone like John Rifley of Clearwater can go from 15 years of selling lobsters individually and on a small scale to a grand scale. People will say that is really great but what has happened is that Clearwater and also Highliner Foods have managed to grab most of the licensing in the scallop sectors for example. Literally thousands of people on the east coast and the west coast have now been taken out of an economic opportunity in terms of their livelihood which is fishing.
The same thing is happening to our farmers, especially in the prairies. Back in 1977 there were 110,000 registered farmers in the province of Saskatchewan. These were family farms. They were independent and proud people who did not want to rely on the handouts of government to put food on their tables. These were people who put food on our tables.
Unfortunately now in 1999 we are probably down to about 58,000 registered farmers in Saskatchewan and with the recent crisis in the country, by next year we will probably have fewer and fewer farmers. That indicates that instead of being individually run and family owned by people who are proud to call themselves Canadian who support us and put food on our table, now we are going to the corporate sector of farming. We are literally giving these farms away because of the policies of the government. It is the same as in the fishing industry.
I find it absolutely abominable that the government can talk about its pride when it comes to the financial record of the country when in essence over $20 billion has been taken out of the unemployed of the country. It is proud of that record. It is absolutely scandalous when only 35% of people who pay EI can actually qualify for it now.
Last week the government again got its hand caught in the cookie jar with a memo that was leaked from HRDC that indicated that if HRDC personnel in Prince Edward Island did not cut enough people off EI and maintain a certain quota they themselves would be on the unemployment line.
Knowing the way this government works, it probably would not have been able to collect EI. This government is absolutely hollow when it comes to the concerns of the unemployed, the homeless and those who have to rely on shelters and the generosity of food banks in order to get by in their daily living.
For Canada to have an increase in food banks should send alarms right across the Liberal caucus telling them very urgently that we have a crisis and a problem in this country. But no, the Liberals talk about the 1.3 million jobs they have created. They never ever talk about the thousands and thousands of jobs that have been lost in most cases by people with limited education but with great vocational skills. They are proud working people. Now they are in their forties and they no longer can look after their families.
Recently I was in Sointula, British Columbia. There was a gentleman in his forties with his wife and his three children. The man was extremely proud to be living in that community but he stood in front of the committee, a group of total strangers, and he started weeping. He no longer knows how to survive. He no longer knows how to look after his family. And all this government does is say it will probably give him a tax break or try to look at some sort of program. All the man ever wanted was a job.
Years ago a Cape Breton woman wrote to Prime Minister Mulroney saying “Go ahead, threaten me with a full time job”. I encourage every single one of the Liberals and my fellow opposition members to go ahead and threaten the unemployed with a full time job that pays them a decent salary, that gives them proper labour standards, that gives them the opportunity to look after their families and live in their communities without being forced to abandon their homes like they do in Catalina or Burgeo or up in Canso, Nova Scotia. They literally board up their homes and then leave.
The track record of this government is very poor and abysmal. I thank the hon. member for Shefford for this opportunity. I know the work she does very well with the homeless and impoverished.
It is time that the government understood the crisis of what it has done. Not only is it important to pay attention to the fiscal problems, but it is also important to talk about the social deficit that has been caused by the previous Tory government and this current Liberal government.