Mr. Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to speak on this very important debate and I will be splitting my time with the member for Winnipeg North.
The voters in the last election sent a very clear message. They were not happy with continued majority Liberal governments. They wanted better; they wanted a new direction. It was the decision of a great number of Canadians that New Democrats should be sent to the House of Commons in order to attempt to achieve some of the goals that Canadians had in mind for people, their families and the environment.
When people vote for the New Democratic Party, they expect us to come here to work and not to play political games, and engage in the kind of political back and forth name calling and brinkmanship that has been going on in this House of Commons for quite some time. We of course looked for an opportunity to make a difference on behalf of the Canadians who voted for us, and Canadians more broadly, around the issues that they felt were most important.
We took a look at this budget when it was first presented and the first thing we noticed was that there was a very large tax cut being given to the large corporate sector. This was never promised in the election. Canadians did not vote for such an initiative. Yet ,there it was in the budget.
Meanwhile, Canadians had hoped that the budget would address affordable housing, significant action to achieve our Kyoto targets and reduce pollution so there would be clean air for people to breathe, and putting Canada on the international stage and to a position of honouring its commitments on foreign aid. Many other issues such as post-secondary education funding so that tuition fees which are rising through the roof and student debt which has reached completely unacceptable levels were not addressed.
We looked at the budget and saw that many of those commitments, many of those aspirations that Canadians had but had not been realized in the budget, represented a problem in that budget document. We had promises broken to Canadians, on the one hand, and on the other hand, we had very expensive initiatives that were never promised, namely, corporate tax cuts to the friends of the government. So, faced with that budget, we were unable to support it.
We did notice that the Conservative Party felt that it was a terrific budget and were happy to sit on its hands and not vote against it. As a result, it was going to move forward on that basis.
Then, as a result of the unfolding political games here in Parliament that have left so many people quite disgusted at what goes on in this place, the Conservatives decided that they would no longer support the budget that they initially thought was terrific.
We sat down and asked, as a caucus, “How can we offer to improve this budget to the point where it might actually deliver on some of the needs that Canadians are facing?” We consulted very broadly in this process. We talked to the NGOs, we talked to Canadians, and we talked to representatives of provincial governments, municipal governments, and the labour movement.
We decided to offer some initiatives, that if they were put into the budget at the same time as removing the overly generous, very large corporate tax cuts to big business, we could create a new balanced budget. It would be balanced in terms of its fiscal content and it would also be balanced in terms of its approach to dealing with the issues. Canadians could at least have on the table a budget that really represented their values, their perspectives, and the issues that faced them in their daily lives.
Furthermore, we suggested to the Liberal Party at the time, and to the Prime Minister, that if the government was willing to move in an expeditious fashion to actually adopt these changes to the budget, so that there could be some results from the deliberations over the last 10 months that have largely been unproductive in this House, this would represent a real contribution to Canadian political life and, more important, to the lives of Canadians themselves and to their families.
Canadians could then look forward to their children perhaps actually achieving post-secondary education and training for the jobs of the 21st century instead of having to decide, as many of them are right now, that they cannot afford to carry on with post-secondary education or pursue training that they need because they simply cannot afford it and it would be too much of a burden on their families.
It is hard to imagine a more tragic circumstance than young people who have worked hard through high school, achieved the grades that are needed to be admitted to university or college, and then to have to realize that they simply cannot afford to make use of the opportunity that should be there for every young Canadian.
That was very important as part of our proposals. Our first proposal was that there should be a fund created that would allow for greater affordability of post-secondary education, with a specific focus on tuition fee reduction as a very important goal.
Second, we turned to the issue of affordable housing. I must admit that I was completely shocked when I read the budget document and saw that not one penny through the five years of that budget plan was being added to deal with the crisis of homelessness and affordable housing in this country.
Our party, Canadians, municipal organizations, NGOs and homeless people themselves have been calling for action to build affordable housing for years. I remember when two blocks from my home Eugene Upper perished and froze to death because we did not have enough affordable housing in our communities for people such as Eugene Upper to put a roof over their heads. It was absolutely shocking.
There have been many announcements made of large sums of money that were ostensibly to be spent. Most of that money has never flowed to the very people who are in need of housing. It has sat in accounts. It has been announced time and time again in press conferences and press releases where politicians in a self-satisfied way beat their chests about their level of concern. Yet, year after year goes by as homelessness increases and people die in the streets of a rich country such as Canada because we have no national affordable housing program to speak of.
It was the finance minister in the mid-1990s who annihilated the affordable housing construction program that in fact had won international recognition as the best housing program in the world. That was a housing program that was created at the time when the member for Ottawa Centre was the housing critic of the New Democratic Party and in a minority Parliament.
As a result of working for the interests of Canadians in that context we saw a minority Parliament working. I am very proud to be part of a caucus that is once again attempting to do exactly the same thing around affordable housing.
Third, we turned to the issue of the environment. The fact is that our communities need some of that huge federal surplus which comes to the federal government in part from a gas tax of 10¢ a litre, also GST on top of all of that from gasoline sale, and that never makes its way back into the communities to be invested on cleaning the environment.
In my experience in the municipal world and as past president of the Canadian Federation of Municipalities, we pushed hard against an intransigence on the part of this government for many years. Finally, we got the beginnings of some movement in this budget, 1.5¢ out of the 10¢.
We felt that was insufficient and that in a balanced budget context it was possible to do more. We proposed that an additional 1¢ would be delivered directly to those communities, so they could move on things like public transit which is so vital to reducing the number of smog days. In my home city of Toronto we are not on our first smog day of the season. There were smog days in February and then again in the month of May. When smog happens, it sends people to hospitals.
Fourth, we put a focus on international aid. Canada made a commitment to respond to the international needs of so many who are living at a dollar a day, billions of people globally. We have such great affluence that 0.7% of GDP should be directed to these purposes.
Our proposal to add a half a billion dollars in the next two years for that objective will move Canada on a trajectory toward achieving that goal. There is more to do. As we listen to Stephen Lewis and so many other eloquent speakers talk about the needs globally and what a Canadian dollar could do to save lives, we felt it was important to put that initiative as part of the revised better budget that would focus on people's needs.
Last is the intervention to create $100 million fund that will help workers when they are faced with bankruptcies in their workplace. It is an absolute injustice that workers who have put all their work over so many years, their lives in many cases, into the profitability of a business would be left behind.
It is with a great deal of pride but also considerable humility that our party try to engage in this process in a positive way. We now have a better balanced budget for families and for the environment. Our goal is to have it passed.