Madam Speaker, I am very pleased to have the opportunity today to briefly speak on Bill C-30, an implementation bill with respect to the government's most recently introduced budget. Sometimes the debate can seem to be somewhat ritualistic.
However, I am very pleased and I want to congratulate the member for Palliser for zeroing in on the issue of child poverty. If the current Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, a supposedly Liberal member, is satisfied with this government's record in terms of reducing child poverty, then it illustrates, better than almost any other public policy issue that one could use, how little difference there is today between the Liberal government opposite, the no longer Liberal government opposite and the no longer Progressive Conservative opposition party.
I listened carefully to the words that were uttered by the member for Scarborough East. In itself it is telling that we have now within this so-called Liberal government a parliamentary secretary specifically assigned to advance, and I would presume accelerate, the rate of privatization taking place under this so-called Liberal government.
I listened to his speech on Bill C-30. I then listened a few moments later to the speech by the member for Prince George—Peace River. If we went back 10 years ago, his party was significantly different in terms of its policies and priorities than the Liberal government was at the time. However, when we listened to those two speeches side by side in juxtaposition in the House this morning, I would defy anyone to see any fundamental difference between those two political parties.
Canadians need a serious progressive alternative. That progressive government in power would have brought in a very different set of priorities in the budget we are now debating, and the implementation bill that is now before us.
I just about fell off my chair when I heard the prescriptions that were offered up by the parliamentary secretary for privatization to genuinely improve the well-being of Canadians. No wonder we are making so little progress in tackling child poverty. We heard the member for Scarborough East say that we needed to grow the pie. When did we last hear that as a banner headline all over this country? It came from one of the contestants for the leadership of the no longer Progressive Conservative Party.
The contention that Canadians are better off today because this Liberal government has pursued vigorously and conscientiously the policies advanced by the Conservative Party is exactly what is wrong with what is happening.
We heard that there were two ways to increase productivity. One is to have people working harder and the other is to have people working smarter. I want to take those two prescriptions and relate them right down on the ground at the grassroots level in my riding of Halifax as to what is happening in the lives of a good many Canadians. They are supposed to be better off as a result of this government's pursuit of those ultra conservative prescriptions to supposedly to do something to ensure that we eliminate child poverty, as this Parliament unanimously resolved to do in 1989.
Let me take first the example of child care. Child care workers in Halifax are working their guts out for terrible pay, and they cannot work any harder, despite the fact that they have taken the training that has allowed them to work smarter.
Child care centres are closing because governments have not increased the per diem funding for those child care centres serving low income families that are also working their guts out, harder and harder, for poor pay. It has not been possible to increase their operating budgets because per diems have not increased. The result is that we have child care centres closing all over the place. How that works to support working people in being able to better support their families and work harder and work smarter, I do not know.
I want to speak about the medical residents, just one example of health care workers in my riding who are working their guts out. They are often working 36 hour and 40 hour shifts to try to meet the needs of patients because hospitals are under-resourced and short-staffed, because the government has taken tens of billions of dollars out of our health care system. Yet the parliamentary secretary talks about people needing to work smarter and harder. Those medical residents with whom I met in the QE II Hospital in my riding on Sunday during a medical residents awareness week initiative could not work any smarter or any harder.
And do we know what? Their families are paying a terrible penalty for how hard the residents are working and they themselves are paying a terrible penalty in massive debt loads. In one case, a husband and wife team of medical doctors has a debt load of $212,000 before they even begin to earn the kind of pay that people imagine medical doctors earning.
I want to speak about disabled persons in my riding. I met with a disabled man in my riding who has been absolutely breaking his back trying to get employment. He has been trying to generate employment with supposed support from programs that have been so shrunken down he cannot even get a foot in the door to get a job to work harder and work smarter.
I am going to finish with a reference to what is happening to our senior citizens. Last Friday I had the privilege of attending a tribute dinner to Dr. F. R. MacKinnon, Fred MacKinnon, who served the Province of Nova Scotia and the people of Canada as one of the most senior long-serving deputy ministers in this country. For 55 years he served the people of my province of Nova Scotia and the people of Canada, driving progressive social policy. He had a lot to say about what is happening to seniors today, particularly as they reach their pension years.
He says they have been robbed of adequate pensions because of the policies corporations have been allowed to pursue due to inadequate government regulations, because of privatization, and because of policies pursued by government itself. Because of privatization, because of contracting out, because of shipping out the risk and shrinking down the benefits, people do not have the kinds of pensions that allow them to deal with the everyday demands of life.
The fact that the parliamentary secretary, presumably speaking on behalf of the government, can be proud of the results of the government's implementation of these ultra-conservative policies is very instructive to the people of Canada as we go to the polls in the next few days or weeks, as we surely will.