Mr. Speaker, I accept that admonishment, which is probably well placed. I was going to blame an individual, but I suppose we have to blame the collective government or the collective cabinet and so on.
The truth is that over the last number of years while we have heard people applaud the government for balancing its budget and reducing the deficit, I think it is fair to say that part of that has been on the backs of the people who do not have a job, who are expecting some employment insurance benefits to come their way because they have lost their job, but in fact they do not qualify.
The worst case scenario concerns the young people of Canada. In the last 48 hours we have been told that only 15% of young people who lose their jobs actually qualify for employment insurance. The people who have been paying into the system do not qualify. So 85% of young people who lose their jobs are SOL. They are out of luck. They do not collect any benefits.
I say this is theft. I am not going to say that an individual should be charged. We cannot put the whole government in jail, so we have to assume that there is one person who has to take the hit, and we can speculate on who the most appropriate person ought to be. That is one example.
As we speak today to this budget implementation bill there is another debate going on in one of the committee meetings around the pension system for all of the public employees. Again the government is dipping into that particular pot to the tune of grabbing $30 billion out of the retirement fund of federal employees, members of the RCMP and members of Canada's armed forces. Now the minister is dipping into that to use the money for various purposes in terms of the federal treasury.
On this side of the House we have to shake our heads with a combination of disgust and perplexity. What on earth would a government be doing dipping into a surplus in the EI fund of $25.9 billion and $30 billion in the pension fund?
The government tries to give the impression that somehow it has done magical things and balanced the budget. Of course if we take money from other people we can balance the budget. I suspect, on a personal basis, that if we held up a bunch of people on Sparks Street this afternoon and took all of their money, we could say that we balanced our budgets as well. We could pay off our credit cards and our mortgages through robbery because we held up people and stole their money.
I suspect that people might be thinking this sounds far-fetched, but it is the truth. Whether this is technically theft I do not know. I suppose lawyers could argue this for some weeks. However, it seems to me, as an average citizen, that when we dip into places where we should not be dipping and take money that we are not supposed to be taking, that is a form of theft. That is the one point I want to start off with. This tells us a bit about where the government seems to be going.
I think it is fair to say that the last budget was sort of a wait and see budget for most folks. The millionaires in Canada do not have to wait and see. They got a nice tax break. I calculate that for one million dollars they would save about $8,000 in income tax. That is not much for a millionaire, but $8,000 is $8,000. They could go out and put a down payment on a nice car or something. However, did mothers or fathers who are raising children on social assistance get anything in this budget in terms of tax breaks? No, there was nothing for them.
We have a government that says it should give a tax break to a multimillionaire, but it should not give a tax break to mothers and fathers who are raising children on social assistance. There is something wrong with this picture.
I could go on to talk about a number of points. Let me make my case and I will tell members in a second where I am taking them. There is a very clear school of economics at work. First, should those people on waiting lists in our hospitals and those waiting for a major increase in support for hospital care across the country be cheerleading this budget? The short answer is no.
The government says it is going to restore funding to health care. To my Liberal funds opposite I say that is true. After a number of years it hopes it will have restored the level of funding to health care up to where it was in 1995. We are almost at the year 2000. It is saying that if we wait a bit longer the funds will eventually be up to 1995 levels. Is it a real commitment to health care and medicare that we have seen over the last number of years? The answer is clearly no. This is a bit of a shell game. The impression is that the federal government is playing its role once again, when in fact it is not. It is playing a very minor role.
What about all those Canadians who are looking for work? Did they see initiatives in this budget that will give them some encouragement? Again, I regrettably have to say that the answer is, by and large, no. Is there anything in this budget that will give some hope that the future is going to be better for those who are suffering hard economic times in the forestry sector, the fisheries, agriculture, mining; the resource sectors that essentially built this country? Regretfully, the answer is no. There is nothing in this budget to give those folks hope.
What about the homeless people? What about the people who are struggling to get their family into a decent home? We all appreciate the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people today who cannot afford decent accommodation. A lot of young people who are starting out in their careers cannot afford to buy a house, a condominium, a townhouse or anything. They have to rent because they simply cannot afford it. The housing market is priced out of their limits.
In the past we have seen federal governments, and I will give them full credit, say they would do something about the housing crisis. They did. Those governments introduced various programs and made various tax changes to encourage more rental accommodation, more co-operative housing and a whole number of programs that would enable ordinary working men and women to get into a decent house. Was there anything mentioned in this budget to assist those needing a home? No, to say nothing about the tens of thousands of people who are sleeping on the streets of our cities. If they are homeless or seeking better accommodation, or accommodation period, there is nothing.
I will not even talk about first nations accommodations. If there is a national embarrassment globally it has to be the fact that so many of our first nations people are living in absolute poverty and in absolutely disgraceful conditions. Again, did this budget do anything to assist those individuals in any real way? The answer unfortunately is no. Let us go on.
If there is one thing that unifies Canadians from coast to coast to coast of all ages, all cultures, all backgrounds, all economic strata, it is the concern about the environment. We listened carefully when the Minister of Finance delivered the budget as to what was in it that was going to give some hope to those people concerned about the future environment of Canada. Again there was nothing in this budget. We are supposed to be fulfilling the Kyoto protocol. We have a whole set of programs.
Hold it, I have to be fair to the Minister of Finance. There was something. He was going to give to the Canadian Federation of Municipalities $1.2 million over three years to study ways to conserve energy. Where the hell have we been for the last 10 years? We could go down to the parliamentary library in the next 20 minutes and probably get 50 publications on how to save energy and energy costs. It is not as though we need to find new solutions. We have all kinds of solutions.
As a matter of fact I remember a vote in the House not long ago where we all voted in favour by and large of an energy retrofit for all federal buildings to make them more energy cost effective. It makes sense to change the way we insulate our federal buildings, to change the way we heat and cool them. In other words, we should become a leader in the community in terms of making public buildings more energy efficient.
It is not as though we do not know what to do. We need some cash or we need some incentive. We need some direction and some leadership. All the Minister of Finance could say was “Let us study this for another three years” with the assumption that after that presumably we will see some action. The environmental issues were abandoned in this budget. Let us go on. I do not want to go on too long because it gets very depressing.
I think all Canadians were listening carefully in the last election. I know I certainly was. I know my constituents were wondering whether they should support me because the Liberals were saying “Elect Liberals and we are going to introduce a national home care policy. Not only that, we are going to introduce a national pharmacare policy, plus a national child care policy.”
A lot of my constituents looked at me and said “The Liberals are promising home care, child care and pharmacare. You are a member of the New Democratic Party, you are probably not going to form the government”. I was hopeful, but they are very pragmatic electors. They said “Why should we support you?” I said “You know something, I like my Liberal counterpart, a nice person, but I do not think he knows what he is talking about. I do not think the government will deliver on home care, child care and pharmacare”.
Just as in the last election they said they were going to deliver on eliminating the GST. Remember that? “We will eliminate the GST if you elect Liberals”. The Liberals were elected and they did not do it. It was very disappointing. I said “When you get to the home care, pharmacare and child care, do not hold your breath. You are going to blow up if you do because it will not happen”.
We are now two years into the new mandate and again we listen carefully.