Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join in the debate responding to the Speech from the Throne. I will be sharing my time with the member for Burnaby--Douglas.
I want to again thank my constituents for the honour of being here. I want to thank my family for their understanding and support through all of this. I also want to thank my campaign co-managers, Dennis Young and Anna Rae Fishman, for without them this would not be happening either.
I come from a riding that faces challenges very similar to those faced by other municipalities right across the country. The government has talked about making cities a priority. The test for me is how well the quality of life has improved in Hamilton.
Hamilton Centre encompasses downtown Hamilton. It includes not just our precious downtown but also our waterfront, and some of the very wealthiest people in Hamilton, including some of the oldest, established families, some of whom have friends on the other side of the House.
People in Hamilton Centre, like other Canadians, are facing some of the greatest challenges one could ever imagine, the least of which are the number of new Canadians coming in and the needs they have in terms of wanting to lay down their roots, and wanting to raise their families and participate fully in their communities.
Quite frankly, that is not an option for us. That is not a luxury whether we deal with the issue or not. Our economy will not grow without an immigration program that works. If our economy does not grow, it will stagnate, and we will continue to fall behind.
We need to take this issue very seriously. People in downtown Hamilton are trying. The city council is doing the best it can. Infrastructure problems, the lack of affordable housing, and the lack of assistance from the two senior levels of government have left Hamilton city council, like most other city councils across Canada, completely hamstrung in terms of knowing what the pressures are but just not having the money to do anything about them.
I had the honour of attending a world forum on cities. That forum recognized the fact that cities are playing a bigger role within their provinces, within their states and within their countries. One of the workshops was on the whole issue of cities and how they could impact the international agenda. What is happening in Canada is not happening in isolation. The question is, is Canada responding in an adequate fashion or not?
For some of us middle age folk it is hard to appreciate that in some areas of progressiveness Canada is falling way behind our neighbours to the south. We always used to take somewhat smug pride in the fact that our environmental laws were a bit better, that our minimum wage was always a little higher, that our health and safety was a bit better, and that we invested more in communities than our American neighbours. A lot of that does not stand anymore because of the right wing tilt of the Liberals and those provincial governments that have bought into those arguments.
I see one of the members across the way throwing his head back and laughing. When we reach the point where the minimum wage is higher in the United States of America than it is in Ontario then something has gone horribly wrong.
Promises are not good enough. This throne speech document is just promises. The difficulty for a lot of us on this side of the House is the fact that we have heard all of these promises before. The government has said that cities are its priority and yet in the Speech from the Throne it says, “Shelter is the foundation upon which healthy communities and individual dignity are built”. Those are great words. That is a great promise. What is the reality? The reality is that the Liberal government has cut the last existing federal housing program.
Quite frankly, we are one of the few developed nations that does not have a comprehensive national housing strategy. How can the opposition members and Canadians be expected to have faith that the government means it this time? Perhaps that is what should have been put in the bill in a few places, that the government really means it this time, wink, wink, nudge, nudge.
The difficulty for the New Democrats in looking at the Liberal throne speech is not that the government is going in the wrong direction necessarily in so many areas. In many of the areas we do agree. However, it is always only words. When it comes to action or money the government goes in a completely different direction, let alone the fact that in the areas where it is going in the right direction it is a halfhearted measure. There does not seem to be the same kind of commitment.
If the government really cared about housing, why did it spend the last four years prior to this Parliament spending $100 billion on tax cuts? The government says that health is a priority, cities are a priority, housing is a priority, education is a priority. They are words, just like in the throne speech. In reality $100 billion of cold hard cash went out in tax cuts. Let me say that the vast majority of people in my riding of Hamilton Centre did not see their fair share of that $100 billion.
We have to understand what the priorities are. It is in the track record. There is talk about a child care program, but we have been here before many times, at least back to the 1993 Speech from the Throne.
If we really want to push the issue of Liberal promises, why is the GST still in effect? I remember all the promises made by the former prime minister, but it is still the same party, in order to go from that side of the House to this side of the House. I should say that side of the House; it is awkward sitting over here. In order to go from the opposition benches to the government benches one of the big things was the GST, and guess what? We still have the GST. We do not have a comprehensive and adequate housing strategy, but we still have the GST.
If health care is such a big priority, why over the tenure of the current Prime Minister as minister of finance did he cut $25 billion from health care? If it is an absolute priority, why did he become the first finance minister, to the best of my knowledge, that has ever cut $25 billion from health care? If that is how priorities are treated, then the Liberals have a funny way of governing.