Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-28, the budget implementation act. Lest anybody be surprised, members of the New Democratic Party will be standing in clear opposition to the Liberal budget of 2003.
The Liberal spin doctors, and they have many of them across the way, have tried to portray this as a social spending budget. In fact, the government did try to do two things in the budget.
First, Ottawa tried to replace some of what it hacked and slashed over the past decade, but it is worth remembering that program spending in the budget taken as a percentage of our gross national product is far below historical levels. It is roughly at the levels that it was at in the 1940s, the years of Mackenzie King, Babe Ruth and Rocket Richard. Our level of spending is stuck there and for that we can thank in large part the former finance minister and the man who would become the next Prime Minister.
Social historians will note that the changes after the second world war were very profound. When Johnny came marching home from the war, he wanted to ensure that there were significant changes made in the way the country would function in the future after battling and defeating Hitler and Nazism. We had the growth of the welfare state in the fifties and sixties. What we are seeing subsequently is the pull back from that and it is impacting negatively on our society as a result. It is not just New Democrats who are saying that.
Yesterday Statistics Canada published its final report on the census data for the year 2001. The headline in today's news media says, “1990s a good decade for the rich: Statistics Canada”.The lead paragraph said:
The rich got richer in the 1990s, while everyone else's before-tax income stayed just about the same, as did the number of children living in low income families, Statistics Canada said on Tuesday.
According to Statistics Canada there are more than eight million families in Canada and their average income went up over the decade by the magnificent sum of $500 on average, about $50 a year. Members opposite are congratulating and patting themselves on the back about what a wonderful job they are doing. But, on the other hand, families in the top 10% of the income pyramid made 28% of all the money earned in the year 2000, and that was up from a decade earlier. Hence, the rich get richer headline.
The poorest 10% of families accounted for a mere 2% of the income. They remained in the same rut they were in a decade ago. Many of the poor people are single parents and 17% of seniors live in low income situations. They are the people who built the country and one in six of them is forced to live below the poverty line. That is a shame and something that none of us should accept. Even more shameful is that 18% of children in Canada were living in low income families in the year 2000.
We all heard the bold promises from the previous Conservative government of Brian Mulroney and of the current Liberal government about how they were going to do away with child poverty by the year 2000. The Ed Broadbent amendment was introduced and passed unanimously in November 1989, yet the number of poor children in Canada is almost exactly where it was 20 years ago in 1981. We are simply treading water.
Food banks are the only ones in the country where the branches are growing rapidly. We see them from coast to coast. With the resources that we have, it is an abomination that it continues to be the case in a country as rich and diverse as Canada.
The New Democratic Party believes the true test of any economy is how well it distributes the benefits of citizenship and by that measure the government and the budget do not pass the test.
In the 1940s there was somebody who said it slightly differently and much better than I just said it and that was Tommy Douglas. He said that the true test of a society is not the height of its skyscrapers but how it treats its most vulnerable citizens. I repeat again that on that basis the government and this budget do not pass the test.
I am not alone in my observations. The Catholic bishops of Quebec released their annual statement a couple of weeks ago expressing concern about the number of jobs in Canada that are part time, short term and insecure.
The bishops of Quebec said that insecurity in the lives of workers erodes their dignity and turns the human person into just another marketable commodity. The bishops added that the rights and dignity of workers would be better protected if more of them were able to belong to trade unions. I wholeheartedly concur with that.
What has the government and the budget done for workers? I acknowledge that it does reduce very slightly the cost of employment insurance premiums. This is a small measure when we consider that the government has accumulated a surplus of almost $50 billion in the EI fund over the years. We all know that the government has fought the deficit and paid for its massive tax cuts by raising money through workers' employment insurance premiums and the payroll taxes of employers. Both of those groups pay into the fund but the government does not. It just directs where the money will go.
Let me turn to the issue of students and post-secondary education. We used to call them the workers of tomorrow. In many cases they are not that any longer because they are working at part time jobs as they continue with their studies to try and help defray the high costs and the growing costs of post-secondary education.
The Canadian Association of University Teachers predicts that the funding available for post-secondary education will fall dramatically from $2.8 billion in the current fiscal year to $1.8 billion next year. That is placing significant strain on students and their families.
The federal cutbacks in post-secondary education in recent years have had the effect of driving up both tuition fees and student debt levels. Average student debt when the government came to power in 1993 was $13,000. Today it is over $21,000. Tuition fees in short have exceeded inflation six times between 1991 and 2001.
As I indicated, it is not just the students, but their families as well. The Canada student loans program requires parents to contribute a portion of family income, if they earn over a certain level, to their children's education until four years following graduation from high school. That amount is deducted from the student's assessed loan amount.
The required parental contribution is based on a moderate standard of living, determined by a formula that includes family size, income and the province in which the student resides. By way of example, a Saskatchewan family of three with an income of $50,000 would be expected to contribute between $220 and $230 a week to their child's education, or about $5,500 for a 24 week school year.
Obviously, moderate income families have to make large sacrifices to help their children through school. Some students simply do not go on to school or they delay their education. In fact, the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation published a study recently which stated that only 3% of Canadian families are able to provide the level of funding that is required under the Canada student loans program.
This is clearly not working. It is bad public policy and it is certainly inequitable. In talking with some university presidents, they have indicated to me that they are concerned about whether or not children from low and moderate income families will indeed be able to continue their education, or whether we are going to revert to the 1940s and earlier when it was only the children of wealthier families who had the wherewithal and were able to go on to a post-secondary education.
For our part, the New Democratic Party believes that we need to reduce the cost of post-secondary education by reducing tuition fees and relieving student debt by having the federal government assume interest costs on student loans throughout the life of the loan.
We should certainly eliminate all taxes on scholarships, grants and bursaries. As I have said before in this place, if we can eliminate taxes on lottery winnings, surely to goodness we can do it on scholarships, grants and bursaries.
As the agriculture critic for my party, let me turn for a moment to that issue and say how next to impossible it is to critique the government's budget when it comes to agriculture. It is not because it is a great budget. It is for another reason and let me explain.
The Department of Agriculture and Agri-Food has requested about $1.3 billion for the current fiscal year, but the Minister of Agriculture has told us that he will be seeking another $1.4 billion during the year to implement the agricultural policy framework. This is absolutely astounding. There is $1.3 billion in the budget, but we already know from the Minister of Agriculture that he is going to come back and ask for more money than is currently in the budget. How in the world can we debate and discuss a budget like that? Try to run a household or a farm in that kind of scenario, and one would not last very long.
Looking beyond all of that, let us say it is $1.4 billion plus $1.3 billion equals $2.7 billion. The amount of $2.7 billion in agriculture in this current fiscal year represents about one-half of what the federal government spent on agriculture just 12 years ago. Let the spin doctors try to turn that dross into gold. Spending is $2.7 billion this year. It was $4.3 billion in 1991-92. Spending on agriculture as a percentage of total government spending has dropped by half, from 2.8% in 1991-92 to just 1.4% this year.
Agriculture Canada reported last month that realized net farm income will fall by a full 19% this year and by more than 50% in Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan farm leader Terry Hildebrandt describes this as devastating. At a time of great difficulty on the farm, one would think that Ottawa would help out, but it is clear that the new agricultural policy framework has been designed to limit what Ottawa spends on agriculture.
It was with great fanfare that the Prime Minister announced the new agricultural policy framework just south of here last June. It was to include new safety net programs to protect farmers against sharp drops in income.
We are now a month and a half into the new fiscal year and there are still no new programs in place. It is absolutely unbelievable. Farmers rely on a clear policy framework as an informal collateral to take out spring operating loans from banks and credit unions. This year, incredibly, they are going to these financial institutions with empty hands.
Quite simply, at a time when farmers' incomes are under severe stress and they need a safety net, the federal government is proposing a new set of programs designed to reduce its commitment to farm families in perpetuity. We have to ask why the income of Canadian farmers is taking such a hit. One reason certainly is the massive American and European subsidies that are driving down international prices for farm products. That has a direct impact on our own products.
Canadian farmers are suffering trade injury. It is estimated to be worth about $1.3 billion a year. Although the agriculture minister basically accepts that figure, he went out of his way last June when he was unveiling his new policy to say that this new APF did not relate to trade injury. He knows it is a problem but stubbornly insists that the Canadian government will not do anything about it.
The government, in our opinion, must protect the incomes of Canadian farmers and that means acknowledging the impact of those subsidies. Ottawa needs to consult openly with farm organizations and provincial governments to provide new safety net programs, safety net programs that work and are acceptable to the producers and the industry overall.
Housing and infrastructure is something the parliamentary secretary boasted about. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities said that it needed about $2 billion a year in infrastructure investment and we got the magnificent sum of $150 million in new money. It is simply not enough.
I want to talk about another issue related to the state that Canadian families and working Canadians find themselves in. It is the whole issue of work. There was an astonishing article recently. I spoke earlier about part time work and insecure work, but full time employees are literally working themselves to death. In fact, North Americans now work 1,978 hours on average annually, which is 350 hours more than western Europeans work. If we do the math, we will find that 350 hours means that North American workers who are employed full time generally are working nine weeks more than their counterparts in western Europe.
It is no wonder parents do not have time to look after their children, to help out in the community or perhaps to take care of older parents. Work and consumption have become the focus at the expense of everything else in our society. Surely all of us here need to find ways to encourage Canadians to lead more balanced lives.
Today when productivity is several times what it was in the far-off 1940s, workers find themselves unable to complete the work in less than 40 hours per week. Of course, the Ontario government has fixed that by saying that it is not allowing any overtime until someone has worked 60 hours a week. As a result of this, the poor are earning less in real terms.
Working long hours has many other effects besides the impact directly on families. It impacts our health care system to a significant extent. Stress is the leading cause of heart disease and overwork impacts and causes stress. The consumption of fast foods results in greater obesity and the onset of adult diabetes.
In fact, tests show that the productivity of a worker declines dramatically in the final hours of a very long work shift. With regard to the 12 hour shifts that nurses put in, I think studies show that those individuals are not nearly as productive in the last two or three hours of the shift as they were in the first two or three hours.
In this wonderful job of being a member of Parliament, I have had the opportunity to travel a little with committees. When I am in Europe I do notice that Europeans seem to live a simpler, more balanced life. They do that because they work fewer hours. People who happen to be in a city in Europe on a Sunday will notice that most of the stores are not open. People are not seen running around to supermarkets to do their shopping. The staff are enjoying a day off, a day with their families, a day to hang out. For example, 29% of Norwegians spend less time at work than their North American counterparts, but their average income is actually only 16% less on average.
This issue is going to be of greater concern as we go along. Canadians are feeling very tired with the rat race they are in. They recognize it is leading to debilitating family relationships and is having an impact. I think we are going to hear more about people taking back their time and trying to lead a more balanced life.
The parliamentary secretary said he does not like personal debt or government debt. However, he did not have any comment about the debt that families in the country are facing with credit cards and things like high tuition fees which have an impact.
We in the New Democratic Party acknowledge and celebrate Canada's wealth and promise, but we insist that the government employ that wealth and our many advantages in the best interests of all citizens. We submit that this budget simply does not do that and consequently, we are opposed to it.