Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased and honoured to rise today on the prebudget debate to discuss what is going to be extremely important for Canadians across the country.
Over the last 11 years we have seen 11 years of Bay Street budgets. What we need to see this year is a budget for main street, a budget for our communities across the country, a budget that will help to address the fall in the quality of life which we have seen Canadians endure over the past decade.
In my riding of Burnaby—New Westminster we saw the closure of a major hospital just a few months ago because of federal health care cutbacks. We have seen for the average Canadian worker a fall in salary of 60¢ an hour in real terms. We see average Canadian families now indebted a third more than they were a decade ago. And we have seen broken promise after broken promise.
In this year it is time for this budget to address all these outstanding issues and start to address the main street deficit. The fact is that most Canadians are living with a lower quality of life than they were 10 years ago.
I would like to speak for a few minutes about what we particularly do not want to see in the budget for this year.
First of all, we do not want to see the continued mismanagement of public funds, as we saw in the sponsorship scandal last year and in numerous other cases. A few weeks ago, despite the regulations that exist at Treasury Board, we saw that the Canadian ambassador to France managed to spend $200,000 on social evenings, while Canadians find themselves with ever dwindling financial resources. We do not want the budget to permit such bad practices any longer.
Neither do we want to see continued investment of money in certain foundations that have no oversight from the Auditor General. We all know that she has spoken about this on many occasions. I myself am impatiently awaiting Ms. Fraser's report on this subject on February 15. It is very clear that we cannot continue to keep money from the public servants who are responsible for ensuring that it is spent wisely.
We do not want to see more tax reductions for the best performing companies, as we have seen under this government. In fact the first major decision of this government, taken at the beginning of last year, was to cut the income taxes of such companies.
There is this huge gap between Bay Street, with its record profits, and ordinary Canadians. We are in fact looking at profits of 14% once again. This is unprecedented in Canadian history. At the same time, Canadians are living with increasingly fewer resources and services, and increasingly fewer promises are kept.
These are the things that we especially do not want to see again. We do not want to see this government wrong again in its budget projections. In the last 10 years, we have seen a difference of $86 billion between the forecasts and the final results. It is absolutely appalling for projections to be so far from reality.
Those are the things that we do not want to see in this budget.
There are things that we do want to see. In this minority Parliament and because of pressure from the four corners of the House--and I can guarantee that in this corner of the House we will be fighting for main street--this budget must finally start to address that main street deficit: the cuts in community services; the cuts in the quality of life; the cut in basic revenue; the increase in debt for Canadian families; the increase in debt for Canadian students; and the increase in debt we are seeing right across this country, which is being paid for by Canadians from coast to coast to coast. If we want to see that main street deficit addressed, then there are things that must be in this budget.
We must invest in education. Either we have seen students themselves and/or their families going into debt by tens of thousands of dollars in order to further their education to make a contribution to this country or, as in my riding where I have knocked on thousands of doors, we have seen dozens of young people who have not gone to school. They have not gone into post-secondary education because they know there are no supports in place to help them do that.
We are looking in this budget for a significant investment in education that will start to address that main street deficit, an investment that will start to address support for ordinary Canadians across this country so that they can go to school and get the trade qualifications and the education required for them to make the full contribution they want to make to this society and to this country.
What we want to see and are fighting for is a main street budget that is going to invest in a sustainable environment. It is deplorable that after signing the Kyoto accord, after making that commitment to reduce emissions by 20% in 2005, we are actually seeing an increase of 20% in emissions, as our leader, the member for Toronto--Danforth, has pointed out on numerous occasions here in the House. That is shameful. It is shocking.
In this corner of the House we are working hard and we will be fighting to make sure that this budget in this minority Parliament actually addresses that main street deficit and that we start to invest in a sustainable environment. This includes investing in municipalities and investing in infrastructure.
We will also be fighting hard to make sure that this budget invests in children. We have been calling for this for years. Broken promise after broken promise from the government has led to not keeping that fundamental commitment made by Liberal governments and the Liberal Party during elections: to establish a pan-Canadian, publicly funded, universally accessible, not for profit child care system that helps to support families, those working families and families across this country that have had to deal with that main street deficit and the absence of publicly funded, universally accessible and not for profit child care in this country. We will be fighting for that in the budget to be tabled this month.
We will be fighting as well to increase the $4,900 child tax benefit and to open the benefit and include those who do not pay income tax, again to address this main street deficit.
It is important to note that when we talk about growing poverty in this country, when we talk about the fact that homelessness in my area has tripled, when we are talking about the fact that food bank lineups are longer and longer, when we are talking about the fact that there are more and more poor Canadians, so much of that has impacted children in this country.
It is deplorable that 15 years after the adoption in the House of this resolution to eliminate child poverty we now see over a million poor Canadians, poor children and their families who are forced to address this issue of the main street deficit. We will be looking for a substantial investment to make sure that for this main street deficit for poor children, who are in food bank lineups and are homeless in so many tragic cases across this country, there is finally an investment to start to deal with their reality.
It is tragic as well to note that we are now looking at between 150,000 and 300,000 Canadians who are homeless in this land. At a time when we are looking at record corporate profits, at a time when we have $9 billion of surplus, at a time when we have all of these resources available, we are looking at between 0.5% and 1% of our population who are sleeping without a home tonight. That is shocking.
We will be fighting for all of these issues because we have had 11 years of Bay Street budgets. We in the New Democratic Party caucus will be fighting very hard to make sure that this is a main street budget dealing with the real realities of Canadians from coast to coast to coast in this country. We will be fighting hard and we will not stop until Canadians are adequately represented in this year's budget.