Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate on Bill C-43. I want to comment on a couple of areas that have come up in the debate and I hope not to bore anyone by being repetitious.
My colleague from Mississauga South praised the government on its support for education and for keeping tuition rates down. He indicated that this was a great move by the government. I want to remind him that the only thing that was in the initial bill with respect to support for students was that if they happened to die, they would not have to pay. That was all. That can be found on pages 89 and 90 of Bill C-43.
The New Democratic Party told the Liberal government that was not good enough. Students across the country need to know they can afford their education. The government needs to provide some support to the provinces and to the universities and colleges to help keep tuition rates down so students can afford to go to school. Education is crucially important.
The NDP moved to get the Liberals to change some of the budget to reflect the different process, and that is what the Conservatives are criticizing. The Conservatives are criticizing the NDP for acting on behalf of students in Canada to keep tuition rates down.
They can go ahead and tell all the students in Canada that the NDP was bought by keeping their tuition rates down. They can go out there and tell it like it is. They can say we were bought by keeping tuition rates down instead of giving corporate tax cuts. I am proud of that.
The Conservatives should be ashamed for criticizing the fact that we arranged additional dollars to keep tuition rates down. Quite frankly, the Liberals should be ashamed that they had to be forced into a situation in order for students to get that. Throughout their campaigns they promised to help students. They promised to help them afford their education. They did not do that. Prior to the NDP agreement, students would not have to pay their debt if they happened to die. That was all the Liberals gave them.
Other Liberal promises were made during the election and some have come up a number of times since then. During the last campaign the Liberals promised dollars for child care, dollars for affordable housing and dollars for education. They also promised dollars for aboriginal communities like we could not imagine. They promised millions of dollars to aboriginal communities for infrastructure, for roads, water, and education for aboriginal students. What did the Liberals offer in the budget? Zip. It is shameful.
The New Democratic Party made sure that part of the dollars for affordable housing would go to aboriginal communities where there is the greatest housing needs in this country. We made sure that the money was marked for aboriginal housing because we know it would never flow to those communities otherwise. It is all promises.
During the last election I listened to the President of the Treasury Board promise money to a community in my riding. The government had promised that same money three years ago but it had never been paid out. The government made a big news announcement but it was the same money from before. The government promised the same money again to the same community. The reality is that money is not going to flow unless the New Democratic Party is here to hold the government accountable because it did not follow through on its promises in the last election.
The government made promises to assist in education. The New Democratic Party made sure some of those dollars would go to aboriginal education assistance. What did the Liberal government do? It is going to tax the support dollars that first nations students get.
The Auditor General identified education for aboriginal people as a crucial area. We have improved some of the access for first nations and aboriginal people to education. We are going to give them some additional dollars. What is the government going to do?
Aboriginal students have to leave their communities to get an education. Heaven only knows, we are just starting to see senior high schools in first nations communities. They were disallowed for decades by a plan to keep aboriginal people uneducated, and there is no doubt in my mind that is what it was. Some communities are just beginning to get senior high schools, and the government is going to tax what little dollars aboriginal students are getting to go to school.
After there was an outcry, the Liberals said they would look at it again and see what they could do and come back to it in 2006. Of course they would say that, because they are pretty sure there will be an election. Once again they promised to look at it. They did not fix the situation. They made another Liberal promise. The only way that Liberal promise will be kept is if the New Democratic Party is here to make sure that those promises are kept.
My Bloc and Conservative colleagues are a little touchy about this. They are upset that the NDP made a deal to get a better budget. Anybody who has negotiated, whether they be union people or business people, knows that in negotiating, we go back and forth, saying, “Okay, you give this and we will do this”. That is what negotiations are about. It happens all the time in the House on pieces of legislation. Members can talk all they want that things do not get changed. We all know there is negotiation behind the scenes to get changes made.
The reality is that we were not happy with that first budget because it did not give back to Canadians what they rightfully deserve. They deserve to benefit from their tax dollars. We did not want to see increased corporate tax cuts. There had already been a number of corporate tax cuts over the years. I am not denying that if there is lots of money out there and we can afford it, go ahead. The reality was that the government was paying for it on the backs of everyday ordinary working Canadians who do not have the kind of money that the corporations have. That was not acceptable to us, so we negotiated a deal.
How can that be wrong? How can it be wrong for us to negotiate on behalf of the Canadian people for a better budget for them? The Bloc members and the Conservatives, and the Liberals as well, should go out there and tell Canadians how much better the budget is because of the work the NDP did. The Bloc and Conservatives should go out there and criticize that Canadians have more money for education, affordable housing and child care and that more dollars will go to foreign aid. They should go out there and tell Canadians that it is happening because the NDP made it happen. That would be truthful in the next campaign and throughout the next number of days. That is why we are seeing a much better budget than we had before.
The other part of the changes that I have not mentioned is in the area of meeting our Kyoto commitments. We strongly support changes within our industries that will help to benefit the environment. We have a plan on implementing Kyoto and trying to meet the needs to address the ongoing climate change.
Anybody who lives anywhere in Canada over the last number of years has seen how our weather has changed and how it is affecting our environment. Certainly in my riding, the northern part of Churchill where the polar bears are, it is having a drastic impact. Already we can see the impact on our polar bear population. It is not something we have to worry about 10 years down the road. We are already seeing those changes. I do not have to be convinced there is a problem out there, so we are committed to implementing our Kyoto plan.
The Liberal government talked a fine line on Kyoto and sustainability, but there was nothing concrete. We ensured that there were more dollars there for the environment and for Kyoto.
I will try to wrap up really quickly. There is no question that the budget is not great. There is no question that we are not happy with the fact that there are no changes to EI. We know that the government is using the EI fund to offset its surpluses and there needs to be changes, but we got a better budget. It is not perfect, but it is a better budget. It is a budget for Canadians.