Madam Speaker, I would like also take this opportunity to congratulate you on your new appointment.
I would like to thank all of the members who ran in this election, the people who won and those that did not. It is an important place to be and I value the struggle that everyone went through.
I would also like to thank the people of Dartmouth, Cole Harbour, the Prestons, Cherry Brook and Lake Echo who have once again returned me to this place.
Maybe I should also make a comment with respect to Her Excellency the Governor General. She is doing a most excellent job and is a credit to her office and her country. I would not like it to be thought that my comments on her speech reflect poorly upon her.
This is the third Speech from the Throne which I have witnessed since being elected in 1997. Like the others, I believe the speech was long in rhetoric and short on specifics.
I would like to use my time to comment on two things which are the skepticism created by failed Liberal promises and the lack of overall vision to deal with the problems facing us in the years to come.
I am from Dartmouth. People in Dartmouth are not usually satisfied with good intentions. They want to know what we are going to do. They are skeptical and, given past Liberal performances, they have a right to be.
A current example of how Liberals created this feeling is the so-called home heating rebate, which is now being received by some of my constituent. People were led to believe they would get help. Page 5 of the Liberal platform said “we will provide fuel tax rebates of up to $250 per household to help low and modest income Canadians cope with the higher costs of fuel prices this winter”.
What has been delivered instead is a slightly augmented GST tax credit which does nothing to rebate anyone. The cheque is being given to people based on their eligibility for the GST tax credit, not on their heating cost. This program also does not go to any modest income families because they make too much to qualify for the GST rebate. In short, the program has no bearing on the ability of a person to pay his or her heating bill.
While I have always believed that tax support for our lowest income families has been too low and support an increase to this tax credit, calling this a home heating rebate fails every test of good public policy or even common sense. It does not deliver what has been promised because there are working families facing desperate economic circumstances but receiving none of the promised help from the federal or the provincial government.
There is also a social division being exploited as those with high heating costs get no help and many who are getting help do not directly pay for their heating.
This policy is not helping my community get together, it is dividing it. My riding office phone has been ringing off the hook. I sympathize with the callers. As I said, this kind of thing keeps them skeptical.
The Minister of Finance said that this happened because the government was anxious to get the cheques out quickly. However, the timing of the rebate only seemed to allow an announcement before the election and then to release the flawed details after the election. I am not convinced by this explanation.
Millions of Canadians are now on the verge of filing their taxes as they do every spring. If the government were serious about actually getting help to those facing huge increases in heating costs this winter, it could have used the tax system to help them when the mini-budget was announced last fall and people would have received rebates when they filed their taxes.
After all, the oil companies, which are reaping record profits because of the increased fuel prices, received help on their corporate taxes in last fall's budget. Their cheques, a real rebate in the form of reduced corporate taxes, will soon be in the mail. However hard working, modest income families in Dartmouth have been left with a promise, not a cheque.
This is simply one example of how the government has made choices under the cover of platitudes. I believe the other modest initiatives mentioned in the throne speech will suffer a similar but predictable fate.
The mention of support for employment programs for persons with disabilities will probably do nothing for the millions of Canadians who have a disability but are currently unable to qualify for EI or CPP because of their tenuous relationship to the labour force.
The building of broadband access does not say how low income Canadians will be able to afford this service, let alone buy a computer. It seems predestined to support bigger dot com profits before providing support to the people who are not willing to line up at community access sites.
The cultural initiatives in the throne speech are likewise vague. While artistic creators still receive no targeted tax relief and exist at minimum wage levels, my constituents and I remain skeptical.
My most important concern is the lack of a real vision of Canada in the Speech from the Throne. Last year we saw the passing of the Right Hon. Pierre Trudeau, someone who had a vision for Canada. He could inspire us. We did not always agree, but we always had some respect for him. He was not ambiguous. He saw our country's problems on the horizon, brought them to our attention and offered his opinion.
The current throne speech has failed to do that. There are huge problems facing the people with which we have to deal. Our democracy is declining. Voter turnout is plummeting. Alienation is growing in many regions and among our young people.
There is a wide belief that the powers of this place have been subverted to those in the Langevin block. Above all, there is a growing sense that the powers of Canada as a state have been subverted to the powers of trading blocks, transnational corporations under NAFTA, the WTO and, maybe worse, the proposed free trade of the Americas regime.
The throne speech is silent on how to reintegrate young people and the disaffected of Quebec or the west into our democracy. It is silent on how to reassert our national sovereignty when foreign companies demand our resources at a lower price, demand access to our water, and demand an end to public delivery of our health services, our education system and our public environmental protections. In my humble way I will be bringing forward suggestions on how to give us some protection in parliament.
I believe the government should limit the concentration of ownership in our private media and restore its past support to the CBC so that information can flow to citizens as ideas for public debate, not just as content dressed up to attract advertising dollars. Any parliamentary package which neglects this aspect of our living democracy is flawed.
The lack of any mention of our need for cultural, environmental, labour and public service safeguards, while talking about new trade agreements including the free trade of the Americas initiative which the throne speech so proudly supports, is shameful.
Has the government forgotten the humiliation which we suffered two years back when we surrendered control over our magazine sector because the cultural carve out in the FTA and NAFTA proved to be worthless?
Has the work of the Minister of Canadian Heritage on building a separate international agreement on culture already been sacrificed to the Americas so the Prime Minister can go bass fishing in Texas or host a banquet in Quebec City in April?
Is the fact that government subsidies to public broadcasters are being threatened in Europe under the free trade rules being forgotten by officials in the Langevin block, or have they simply decided that private media conglomerates should control all information for the Canadian public?
We need to take a stand saying that we are a rich people with a great and vast country and that we will trade fairly with the world. At the same time we must tell our trading partners that this country is ours and this parliament should make our laws, not some NAFTA trade arbitrator and not a transnational corporation.
The throne speech should have made it clear that until we have binding protection for our culture, environment, education and health care systems, we will not expand our trading agreements.
We must make it clear to all abroad that only we as members of parliament are accountable to our constituents. We should be saying to Canada: let us work together; let us prosper; let us defend our country together from the onslaught of corporate power; and let us revitalize our democracy together. That should have been the primary vision of the throne speech. The government had the opportunity to give us this vision but it declined. I hope that over the life of this parliament we can get the government to change its mind.