The parliamentary secretary says “done”. Well I guess he is living in a little bowl with his rose-coloured glasses on because in fact the rest of the people in this country do not have such optimism. They do not see such faith maintained by the Liberals in terms of the promises made.
They want answers on the government's commitment to women's equality. I hope the parliamentary secretary does not say “done” because we are a long way from achieving our objectives around a fully equal society. They want answers about the government's commitment to international development, and the list goes on and on. Suffice it to say there are many unanswered questions on the part of Canadians.
The Liberal Party may be doing fine financially and certainly Liberal friends are millions of dollars richer, but the vast majority of Canadians are not so lucky. They are stressed out. They are struggling to hold their ground. They are fighting to keep pace. Many are working at more than one job, either in the paid workforce or unpaid family-related jobs, trying to pick up the slack from public services that have not survived previous Liberal budget cutbacks and downloads. These are the Canadians who have heard the Liberal speeches. They have endured the Liberal smugness and they now expect the Liberal government, through this budget, to deliver.
How does this budget bill measure up and what does it say in real terms about how the Liberals measure up in meeting the basic needs of Canadians: housing, education, child care, infrastructure, reducing poverty, and of course our share of the planet and environment.
To start, let us just take $4.6 billion right off the top, money that the Liberals have given away, no strings attached, the way only Liberals can, to their corporate pals in new tax cuts despite, interestingly, having promised not to bring in any new cuts until social program needs had been met. Then, let us carve off another $4 billion with no discussion and no debate in Parliament for accelerated debt reduction.
Let us look at what is left. Who better to ask about the impact of Liberal budget priorities than the people who work day in and day out on these issues, the people who are knowledgeable about what was needed and can best judge just what was given. Here is what a few of them had to say.
On the Liberal broken promise on post-secondary education, which as I have said many times is the foundation of our future workforce and continuing prosperity, university graduates are dragging an average debt load of nearly $25,000 with them when they leave school. Tuition fees have more than doubled under Liberal rule, an area completely ignored by the Liberals in this budget.
What are folks saying?
The Canadian Association of University Teachers said, “There is nothing in the budget that provides any relief to students and their families struggling with record high tuition fees” and record high debt. Of the Prime Minister's election vow to restore core funding, the Canadian Federation of Students said simply, “He broke that promise”.
On the Liberal broken promise on affordable housing, another vital area for Canadians, all ignored in this budget, the child poverty advocates of Campaign 2000 said:
We are extremely disappointed that the Liberal Government did not follow through on their election promise to invest $1.5 billion in housing.
The National Aboriginal Housing Association said:
Once again, the federal government has ignored the housing crisis facing non-reserve Aboriginal communities.
The Canadian Real Estate Association, with us in the halls of the House of Commons today, expressed disappointment and said:
The government should have taken this budget opportunity to specify its commitment to a new affordable housing strategy.
On the Liberal broken promise to take into account the budget impact on women, last promised by the Liberals in February, the Coalition for Women's Equality said:
This budget has once again let women down.
La Fédération des femmes du Québec said:
For the 2.4 million women currently living in poverty have very little to celebrate today. The government has not followed through on its housing promises nor has it made substantive changes in the EI program. These programs matter a lot for women.
The YWCA said:
Promise after promise, budget after budget, the federal government is ignoring women's needs and rightful place in Canadian society.
On the Liberal broken promise to make aboriginal issues a priority despite the long overdue round table process, the Assembly of First Nations said:
This budget will condemn our people to last place for a lot longer.
The National Association of Friendship Centres said:
The lack of attention to urban aboriginal issues, despite the Prime Minister's commitment...is disheartening.
Even in the areas where the government is slowly inching forward on its long time commitments, the municipal gas tax funding, the 12 year overdue promise on a national child care program, the response has been cautious as the projects are so far from complete.
As the Canadian Labour Congress said:
What we have are short-term half-measures that still don't deliver the goods for the majority of Canadians...nothing on a range of issues important to working people.
Let us not forget the environment, where again the Liberals just could not control their natural impulse to arrogance and deception by trying to sneak in changes to disguise the real inadequacy of the environmental proposals in the budget bill. I do not think the Liberals take the environment seriously. Twelve years after taking over an urgent environment file and promising to attack pollution, they still have not got their act together to take on the Kyoto challenge.
Climate change is a worldwide issue already bringing catastrophic results in ecologically vulnerable regions. People's lives, indeed the life of the planet as we know it, are at stake and the government, these Liberals, continue to dither around with half measures that question their commitment.
Many nations are wrestling with the same Kyoto adjustment pains that we are. They are watching closely to see how Canada resolves the contentious environmental issues and moves forward. It would appear that they have been waiting in vain. Instead of commitments and strategies, the Liberals offer only game playing, machismo, and measures not supported by the environmental community.
The budget has paraded a string of Liberal broken promises before the world that seriously challenges the government's credibility.
The Liberal broken promise that has the world community most concerned is Canada's lagging commitment to the millennium development goals, the 35-year-old broken promise to contribute .7% of our GDP toward developmental assistance. Two years ago under the Liberals, Canada's contribution had sunk to only .24% of GDP. This is incredible. It is an embarrassment.
I have just returned from the 112th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union. The topic of the day was international commitments to the millennium goals. Once again, Canada was hard-pressed to explain how, given our wealth and our economic stability, the government was contributing so little and had not even set a target date for meeting its promised funding obligations.
Some countries are already delivering their .7%. Others, including France, Britain, Spain, Finland, Belgium and Ireland, are on track to raising funding to this level by 2015. That is a reasonable target. That is a target we in the New Democratic Party have been calling on the government to adopt.
However, the Liberals seem as enthusiastic to address the world poverty issues as they are to lower poverty right here at home in Canada. They have failed to set targets to lower poverty here just as they have failed to meet their targets internationally.
Interestingly, the results speak for themselves. The gap between the rich and the poor keeps growing. Even with repeated promises to relieve child poverty, 15% of Canadian children still live below the poverty line. Broken promises led UNICEF to openly criticize Canada's record last month.
Whether we are in Winnipeg or Halifax, Kampala or Geneva, the conclusion from the budget is clearly that we cannot trust the Liberals.
Just as the Liberals will not own up to their responsibility for the sponsorship scandal, neither will they admit to their failures and broken promises. Instead, they preach to the world about what others should do. The Prime Minister, while still in waiting, having devastated public services to Canadians, issued a report to the United Nations extolling developing nations to base their economic future on the private sector instead of the government intervention route that helped forge the Canadian economy over the years.
Perhaps the most insipid and, as it turns out, ironic example of Liberal arrogance was Jean Chrétien's farewell tour. His farewell tour stopped in Abuja, Nigeria in December 2003, where he had the nerve to lecture those attending from southern nations about the need to clean up corruption as the most important step to attracting investment and strengthening their economies. He chided their record and cited Canada as exemplary in this respect.
The hypocrisy. Words escape me. I just cannot understand the Liberal government, those who came before and those who are now in the seat of power. Denial and then more denial.
A number of us were on the public accounts committee last year before the last election. We were examining in great detail the sponsorship scandal. We suspected the treachery now being recounted daily at the Gomery commission. What happened when we tried to ask those questions and raise those concerns? We were dismissed by Liberals as not knowing anything. We were dismissed arrogantly by the Liberals at the time.
We wanted to hear from key witnesses before the last election. Who stopped us? Who denied us the opportunity? The Liberal majority on the public accounts committee.
Well, the jig is up. There will be no more Liberals stuffing their friends' pockets while Canadians are wanting. Canadians will no longer abide it. The NDP certainly will not vote for it.
The budget is another chapter in the Liberals' long budget legacy of opportunities squandered to improve the lives of Canadians, and huge corporate tax cuts given, serving Liberal friends first.
The world sees the gap growing between the rich and the poor. Child poverty is beginning to increase again. The number of food banks is rising. And the Liberals do not understand it. Neither do Canadians. Under Liberal majority and minority governments, the wealthy continue to recycle wealth among themselves. There is nothing in the budget to keep investment in Canada instead of offshore tax havens.
There is ongoing chopping of programs to Canadians but nothing to recover millions in lost corporate taxes and loans. There is however an increase in the amount people making more than $100,000 can put into RRSPs where it is not taxed.
Maybe the Liberals when cornered can just steam off to their home ports in Barbados or other tax havens, but the rest of us are stuck here to face the world with their mess and their reputation. Today as we examine the Liberal budget bill, the story that is exposed to the world is one of a Liberal government that, in the midst of great riches, has greatly impoverished Canadians.