Debates of Oct. 26th, 2006

Budget Implementation Act, 2006, No. 2

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I listened attentively to the member from the New Democratic Party and I believe he is genuine in what he is suggesting.

I would have to excuse people who would suggest that the NDP is less than genuine on these questions, because they would remember in a past parliament when the NDP had some negotiating position. When the Liberals were in power in a minority situation that party negotiated the advancement of Liberal priorities on education, on housing, on homelessness. A $4 billion package was put together, but prior to its implementation, the NDP voted to remove the government. The New Democrats voted in favour of a motion of non-confidence. The motion was not on any budget measure. The NDP voted favourably on the budget measures. They did not vote the government out on the budget, but they supported a specific motion of non-confidence. When they had the power in that they had negotiated a deal to assist students, to assist on the homelessness issue, when there was a historic child care agreement with all the provinces, which the NDP members have always said they favour, they chose to go to an election.

Throughout the election the member's leader said, “Lend us your vote”. Perhaps the member is fearful that those who lent the NDP their vote will now recognize the cost of that vote: losing Kyoto, losing child care, losing assistance to students, losing assistance to homelessness and housing. Is the member fearful that come the next election, people may want to exercise their votes properly to advance what all Canadians believe in?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is very interesting that day in and day out in this House we hear that somehow the NDP cost the Liberal government its place. I would suggest that the judgment of the Canadian people during the election campaign was that they were tired of the arrogance from that party, and we are hearing more of it here today. That group of people while in government had five surplus budgets and crassly promised day care in each election to get votes, and never delivered on that promise. I repeat what I said to other members when this was raised before. It is time for that member to speak to the rest of his caucus about the fact that it was not the NDP who booted the Liberals out of office; it was the Canadian people. Canadians spoke very clearly.

Do I agree with how the new government is functioning? Absolutely not. We stand here day in and day out as the loyal opposition and raise the issues of Canadians with respect to the new government. But I will say one thing. I believe that the Conservative government is not as arrogant or as fundamentally corrupt as the last government.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Hamilton for pointing out these things. In his introduction the member said that people who study these things will recognize the fact that the previous Liberal government was the most right-wing government in Canadian history. The most notable thing about the Liberals was their cutting, hacking and slashing, even during periods of record budgetary surpluses, to the point where it was not just irresponsible, it was cruel. The Liberals caused a sum total of misery around this country the likes of which should go down in the history books and never be forgotten. We must remind ourselves to be vigilant because people like that will come along from time to time and do such damage to our social safety nets that it will take years to even get back to where we started.

My colleague from West Nova is too good an MP to really believe the speaking notes he was handed when he walked in here today which told him to attack the NDP because an election is coming.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in response to the member for Winnipeg Centre, I recall that in 1995 the Canada health and social transfer was cut. That took billions of dollars out of education and health care across this country. I also remember being a labour activist in the community of Hamilton that was devastated by the free trade agreement that happened as a result of the previous Conservative government. We lost some 500,000 jobs in Ontario because of that free trade agreement.

I recall that in 1995, 85% of the people who applied for employment insurance were funded. It dropped to 27%. That is disgusting.

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be discussing this bill. It is very important, because it shows the government's budget measures and the impact they can have on the daily lives of all Canadians, from sea to sea to sea.

We can support a number of these budget measures, because some are good. I especially like the measures designed to help fishers transition from one generation to the next, take retirement and sell their fishing gear and licence.

These are good measures, even though we would have liked the government to go further. During the election campaign, we had talked about measures that would have provided slightly more money and assistance for fishers. Still, the Conservatives have put forward good measures.

On the question of the fisheries, we would have gone further. Rather than half a million dollars of capital gains exemption, we suggested that there be $750,000 and unlimited intergenerationally, but I have to admit it is a great improvement what is proposed in this budget at half a million dollars intergenerational and half a million dollars outside of the family. It must come in concert with other measures in the fisheries, in resource sectors, in all areas of the economy. When we look at this budget measure, it is not just what we see in it that we have problems with; it is what we do not see. We look at the opportunity that has been missed.

When the Conservatives came into power they inherited the best financial position of any government in the history of this country. In 1993 when the Liberals came into power, there was a $42 billion operating deficit. There was a mounting national debt that was sucking the lifeblood out of this country. Interest was being paid internationally to foreign countries and foreign investors from the taxes of Canadians in increasing amounts every year, meaning that we could provide less and less service to Canadians. Tackling the deficit was not easy. It meant some very difficult measures.

Reasonable people can argue on whether those measures that were taken were the correct ones and whether the priorities were right. We can come up with various answers. What we cannot argue, what we have to agree on if we are honest, are the results. The deficit was brought under control. Surpluses were established. The national debt was reduced. Investments were made for ordinary Canadians and communities in working with the provinces. We improved and increased the competitiveness of Canadian industry. We continue to benefit from that.

The NDP would scream because tax measures assisted industry and corporations. I am pleased with those measures because the Canadians I know work for businesses, they own businesses, or they want to develop some. In order to compete internationally, which is what Canadian businesses do, they have to be competitive.

The previous government did more than that. It reduced taxation by $100 billion. The vast majority of that $100 billion was to the benefit of lower and middle income Canadians, average Canadians, all our friends on main street saw their earning power go up.

We removed what is called bracket creep, where if a person's salary went up a little bit, he or she might be in an adverse financial position. We reached historic agreements to advance society within this country. Look at the Kelowna agreement where provincial governments, the federal government and the native communities would work hand in hand knowing they had the financial resources and knowing they could apply the solutions to the problems community by community and not with just one cookie-cutter approach. That was quite historic.

The child care agreement was very historic. We had to negotiate over a long period of time with 10 provinces and three territories to find a way to improve early childhood education and child care in the communities, while respecting provincial jurisdictions, respecting the desires of Canadians, respecting the needs of parents and respecting the potential of the children. It was only the start and there is a lot more to do. And to think that the Conservative government with the current financial situation would start by cutting that. Why did the Conservatives do it? Complete ideology. We heard over and over in this House the baseless rhetoric, the complete ideological nature behind this cut. That was very unfortunate.

I come back to the fishery. Small craft harbours was an area where funding was reduced when we made those deficit tackling measures. That was very difficult for the communities and we continue to live with some of those difficulties. But when the financial situation of the country improved, the Liberal government added $20 million a year for five years, $100 million toward small craft harbours.

The member for Halifax West as fisheries minister and I as fisheries minister were able to assist the communities in upgrading their stock, but the job is not done. There is still a lot of work to do.

What do we see now with the new government, which has the best ever financial position of this country, having inherited that from the Liberal government? It eliminates that funding. It make cuts to fisheries and oceans at the time when it is the most senseless, at the time when there should be great investments within that portfolio, within that program of that department.

Also, let us look at it in terms of ideology. Why do the Conservatives do this? I do not know. Maybe their base of support does not think that fishermen should get assistance. I would like them to explain it. I have not yet heard from the minister.

Then I look at the other ideologies they have, and I look at my part of the world, where in agriculture the most stable part of agriculture in my community is the supply managed part. The producers are very nervous, because everywhere around them they see hog producers having trouble and they see vegetable producers having trouble. Then they look out west and see a sudden concerted attack on the Wheat Board, not improvements to the Wheat Board.

The fix is in on the Wheat Board. For ideological reasons, the government has decided that the Wheat Board is to disappear, and it does not ask farmers in a plebiscite, as it should under the Canadian Wheat Board Act, section 47.1, to see where farmers stand on this.

The Conservatives attacked it very strategically: create a task force and stack the task force such that only people who are opposed to the Wheat Board need apply. Only people who are opposed to the Wheat Board can make submissions to the task force.

For the first time ever, of the five federal appointees on the Wheat Board itself, the Conservatives appointed a farmer-producer who is opposed to the Wheat Board. Rather than having him challenge for one of the 10 spots that are there for producers, they put him in one of the spots reserved for expertise on the Wheat Board.

Then, because there are elections for the Wheat Board, they eliminate and disenfranchise 16,000 producers. Sixteen thousand grain producers who have historically sold grain to the Wheat Board are not allowed to vote. I believe it is something like 30%. I do not know the exact figures. It is true that some of them did not sell wheat to the Wheat Board last year or the year before because of drought, because of conditions, and in some cases because of floods. Maybe some of them are out of the market, but 16,000 certainly are not. The fix is in on the Wheat Board.

I want to come back to how that affects my community. I have supply managed farmers in my community. I have dairy. I have poultry. They are doing quite well. They are able to have a good family income. Their families can look forward to taking over their operations. But they wonder, will the Prime Minister, the person who in 1998 said that supply management was a “government sponsored price fixing cartel”, come back to his true beliefs, as he is doing with the Wheat Board, and accept the views next year or the year after of the people who are opposed to supply management? Will that be addressed? Sure, they are worried about that. They look at all the cuts being done and see the ideological bent within.

As for wind energy and removing the initiative for wind energy, in my community of West Pubnico local business people, with other investors, have put up 17 wind turbines. They are producing energy that is relatively equivalent to what is consumed in the businesses and residences in that community. It is expensive, so it needs assistance from the federal government, but there is no carbon problem. There is no carbon dioxide. There is no smoke coming from these turbines. It is completely green energy.

Rather than investing in that, the government comes out with eradicating Kyoto. It comes out with a false green plan, with a plan that will take away the targets and take the base year forward to an easier year when we are at all time high levels of polluting. The government says it will consult for four years and have targets that we should meet in 40 years. Canadians are concerned about that, and when they see the removal of those incentives, they should be worried.

What worries me more, and what should worry them, is that when we look at the billion dollar cuts that were made this year, a.k.a. savings, the government promises to do another billion dollars' worth of cuts. What did the Conservatives do with these savings? I will try to run through a few of them.

They went to areas where they had ideological difficulties. They said to the very basis of their base support, look at what we did quickly with a minority government, so imagine what can be expected if we get a majority. Then we will get really right-wing, they said, and we will go far to the right and there will be social program cuts and people will see what they have been asking for.

For example, there is the court challenges fund.

As a member of a minority language community, I have to say that the court challenges program was very important to us. This program allowed minority language communities and other communities, people of different religions and so on, to launch court challenges to determine whether the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms would protect their rights in certain instances.

The communities in my riding benefited from the program when a French-language school system was put in place for the first time in the history of Canada.

My grandfather was a politician, When he was first elected in Nova Scotia, around 1907, French schooling was against the law. Whenever the school board inspector arrived, the teachers would hide the unsigned French textbook, which had been written by the parish priest, Mr. Daignault, to teach the students French.

A hundred years later, it is the law of the land. We have a provincial Acadian school board, and children throughout Nova Scotia have the right to education in both languages. However, that is not due to provincial goodwill, although I can say that Nova Scotia was proactive; it is due to the court challenges program.

I see here that there is an ideological bent, that the supporters of the Prime Minister do not believe in the charter of rights. They do not like what it has led to in certain instances, so the best way to do this is to take the oxygen away from the charter, to take away the possibility for citizens--or the provinces or others under the charter--to contest any laws of the nation.

Let us look at questions like that of the status of women. I mentioned this in the House in an earlier question. We have less than 50% representation of women in the House. We have less than 50% representation of women in senior positions in industry, corporations, the banking sector, the financial sector and so on. They are underrepresented. We have a way to go. We have made improvements since the persons case, but we have a way to go in this country.

One of the tools, not the solution to everything but one of the tools, is the status of women organization. What did the federal government do? It bent to the appeal of REAL Women. It cut the funding to status of women. Not only that, it said that people can no longer use that money to do research and that it cannot grant that money to anybody who does advocacy. If we cannot do advocacy and if we cannot do research, there is not much left. It is a backdoor attack.

Let us look at ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. There is a small program within ACOA, worth $6 million over three years, to work on the social economy, whereby the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency would be able to interact with the not for profit sector in the same way that it can with the commercial sector, the for profit sector, and where it would be able to make loans. For example, a sheltered workshop could have a loan to do an expansion or buy a new piece of machinery and go into a new commercial venture, a loan that it would repay. That has been removed. I cannot understand why.

Why reduce student employment grants and at the same time announce cuts to the museum assistance program funding, a double whammy for that sector, when the Prime Minister had promised increase funding for museums in this country? The student employment programs helped the volunteer sector such as the museums to operate efficiently and gave very good experience to the students. But they were reduced and they are getting reduced further.

As for job training, three months into this year, just three months, there was no more money in western Nova Scotia for adults needing retraining because they needed to change industries and get new skills. That is unacceptable. It is a rural part of the country. A lot of the areas are based on resources and, at one point or another, there are changes in industry. We have had mill closures. The softwood lumber agreement has not saved that. As well, there are changes in the fisheries. Some people have to retrain and get into new areas, but we do not assist them. Rather than the money being increased, it is reduced, and that is unacceptable.

On literacy training, how can the Government of Canada justify that reduction when it had a surplus of $13.5 billion and is looking at an equivalent if not larger surplus in this fiscal year? How can it justify that money be reduced for literacy training, whereby adults are trying to improve their literacy skills so they can seek training, seek employment, assist their children and have pride in themselves and confidence going into the job market? Under what conditions can we justify reducing that funding? I implore the government to review that situation, to yield to the will of the House, and to restore funding.

As for CAP sites, in rural Canada we do not have the broadband Internet access that people in urban communities have learned to live with. We do not have it in all households. We do not have it in all businesses. One of the very important ways in which rural residents can access the information they need is going to those community access sites. Because most of us, let us face it, need broadband in today's world.

This program has developed very well. In my riding, there are good numbers in the English language and in the French language, working with schools, community centres and libraries. These are all great partnerships, but now what do they find? Not only will they not be able to do any programming, but they probably will not be able to operate. We should restore that funding. We should continue that funding. There is no excuse for why the government would not do it.

Further, the Conservatives should steal our promise, and steal our platform to deliver broadband Internet access to all communities in the country over a very short period. It is a great investment in competitiveness in the nation, the education of our young and the continued education of adults. I would hope that would happen.

We still have communities in my riding that do not have cell phone service. We need investments in those areas. It has become a tool of safety. The ambulance drivers depend on it. The 911 system depends on those tools being available. We have communities that are shut out of that local market. The private sector cannot do it alone. There is a possibility for the federal government to participate, but we do not see it investing. We see it with large surpluses while refusing to make those investments, and it makes politically correct budget cuts, the GST. That helps the very rich but does not help the average Canadian.

Average Canadians, the lower income people in my riding, have seen their taxes increase because the level of taxation at the lower amount went up by half a point and they do not recover it on the GST. I think the government should review that.

There should be some investments within the communities to help them help themselves. We were able to do it in the last government by working with ACOA, the municipalities and infrastructure development. We were able to assist communities with water, sewers and fire halls. The town of Bridgetown in my community was ready and applied for funding to build a new fire hall. The town needs it. It is a volunteer fire department and people give of their time. The town is not asking for 100% of the money from the federal government. It is asking for a commitment, a contribution.

I ask the government to reconsider the billion dollars of cuts and the ideological bent as to how it is using Canadian taxpayers' money.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have an environmental disaster in our midst. The World Wildlife Fund said that we are quickly running out of global resources. We are seeing an increase in forest fires and a pine beetle infestation killing off our pines and forests. We know that we have a serious problem.

In this budget there is no investment in fuel efficiency vehicles. There is no investment in green transportation or technology. There is no real investment in public transit or in retrofitting buildings. However, it does continue the former Liberal government's practice of heavily subsidizing the oil and gas industry to the tune of $1.5 billion.

I do not know whether that member of Parliament finds that troubling. If there is an opportunity, would that member of Parliament, or the Liberal Party, vote against subsidies so that we can in fact take the $1.5 billion and invest it in all of those matters, especially for homeowners, so that they could retrofit their homes and be able to save on electricity while being able to create some jobs? Would that be an area that he would definitely work on or agree with the NDP?

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, what we are running out of in this country, according to the papers this morning, are communications officials for the Minister of the Environment. I read that she has gone through four in the short term that she has been in office. Why? It is because they cannot sell the measures that she is proposing as there is nothing on the table to sell. There is no concerted plan to improve the environmental situation in Canada and no plan to meet its international commitments.

The member made some suggestions as to where we could get the money to make these types of investments. I would not rule out that suggestion, but there are other places to get the money. We have a surplus of $13.5 billion. These investments in green energy pay for themselves because they improve competitiveness. We can be a leading nation in the world.

The previous government had invested a lot of money. It had some very good programs. There can always be improvements in the administration of programs, I would not argue with anybody on that, but I do not want to put this country in a situation where it is pitting one industry against the other and fighting one against the other. Everybody can participate in environmental improvement and green energy.

It is important for energy to be produced in this country. I am proud of the investments that we have made in the production of petroleum energy in this country, whether it be the tar sands or offshore in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland that bring much needed economic activity to those parts of the province.

I am very proud of the wind energy site in West Pubnico that received some contributions from the wind energy incentive program of the federal government. I cannot for the life of me begin to imagine why a government would cancel such initiatives. I cannot see why a government would remove programs like EnerGuide. It makes absolutely no sense.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question that relates to the court challenges program. The Conservative government eliminated a program which basically strived for justice to make us a more equal society.

We had a situation just a little while ago where a child of one of the war brides was given citizenship by an order in cabinet back in 1948 and the government denied him his citizenship on very questionable grounds. When it went before Federal Court Justice Luc Martineau, he ruled that the actions of the government were contrary to the legal section of the charter, section 7, and the equality section of the charter, section 15. The government has appealed that decision.

The reason I raise this is because it raises a fundamental question that very much impacts on the life of an individual in this country. An individual challenged the government on a question relating to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, he won the case in the first instance, and now must face a government appeal and perhaps take it to the Supreme Court. An average individual does not have the resources.

In terms of public policy and pursuing a just society, we must have something like the court challenges program to ensure that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms applies to everybody, not just to people who can afford it.

Could my friend comment on the importance of the court challenges program because these things happen to real people and they very much impact on people's equality and the justice that they can receive in this country?

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be asked this question by the member for Kitchener—Waterloo because I know he has a lot of interest in human rights.

I fundamentally believe that this is probably the most cowardly move that the government could make when it ideologically does not support the Charter of Rights of Freedoms. It does not have the courage to take the necessary action to have a true debate if it wishes to stifle it. It is choking the sunlight, removing the sunlight, shading the light, and removing the oxygen that makes it live by cutting the court challenges program.

As the member mentioned, it is the only way that an average citizen can afford to go to the Supreme Court of Canada or any other court level, whether it be federal or provincial. It is the only way that communities and organizations can do it. It is the way the Acadians did it for education. It is the only way that not for profit church organizations can have their rights tested and respected.

Rather than saying that it is against the charter, I believe the government has decided to stifle the charter by removing the oxygen that makes it live.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I was glad to hear some of the tone and the content in the speech from my colleague from West Nova. He seems to have come to the realization that a country does not cut its way to prosperity. We do not build a great nation by cutting, hacking and slashing everything that we fought to build up in the post-war era, in that period when we were building this great country.

His own party went on a 13 year rampage, cutting and hacking and slashing everything we hold dear in terms of the institutions by which we define ourselves as Canadians. He seems to have had an awakening because he is being critical now of the current government for cutting too much.

Will he agree with me on one fundamental principle? Has his political thinking matured enough in this way? Does he agree that it was fundamentally wrong for his party to allow offshore tax havens to flourish and prosper all through these years, and for Canadian businesses to avoid paying their fair share of taxes by setting up dummy paper companies in Barbados and losing all that tax revenue? Has he come to our same conclusion that it was fundamentally wrong of his government and that this 2006 budget should have plugged those outrageous tax loopholes, brought those tax fugitives back within our revenue regime, and then we would have those resources to build a great nation with?

[Robert Thibault, Liberal, West Nova, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I would never accuse the member of trying to mislead the House, but I will understand if he has trouble understanding or recognizing true economic circumstances.

When we were operating at $42 billion deficits a year and building our national debt, and increasing the amount of money being taken away from the country in interest every year, we were going in the wrong direction and our ability to deliver social programs was leaving. That is why the Liberal government had to tackle the deficit. It brought the country into a surplus situation, reduced the debt, and left this country in the best financial position it has been in since Confederation.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it gives me pleasure to join the debate right after my Liberal colleague who has just spoken, especially since it is a question of cuts and the Liberals claim that they had left the country in good financial condition by reducing the debt.

The question that needs to be asked is the following: at whose expense was the reduction of the debt carried out?

The question of the member for Winnipeg Centre dealt with the fact that big businesses in Canada and their Bay Street friends are not obliged to pay income tax. Meanwhile, who has been cut? To whom has the debt been transferred?

For my part, I would like to remind the former finance minister—now the member for LaSalle—Émard, who was prime minister during a short period of time—that at the time of the cuts, he told Canadians to tighten their belts in order to pay down our debt because that debt must not be transferred to future generations. Yet, what the Liberal government of the day did, during its mandate, was to transfer the debt to future generations.

Today, the present government has not done any better since taking office. I will return to this subject later. For the moment, I want to consider Canada’s national debt. The Liberals like to tell us how hard and successfully they worked to reduce the debt, to reach a zero deficit and balance the budget.

For example, they transferred the debt to students. Today, most Canadian university students finish their studies with a debt of $40,000. I have already spoken about this matter in the House, and I even spoke about it during the election. I took part in a forum in the schools, where the students agreed on that amount. They even corrected me, calling me by name and telling me that I did not put the total high enough. In fact, a university student finishes his or her studies with a minimum personal debt of $40,000.

If a student meets his or her spouse at the university or college, and if that spouse has an equivalent debt, the debt of these two students who finish university and who have a diploma amounts to $80,000. I am talking about a debt of $40,000 for four years of study. A bachelor’s degree requires five years of study, which raises the debt to $50,000 per person and to $100,000 for two people.

Now, if the two students want to work and if they do not live in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver or Calgary where there are public transit services that enable them get around and to go to work, and if they live in a rural community, they will have to buy a car. And if they do not both work at the same place, two cars will be necessary. Let us suppose they buy used cars valued at $10,000 each. Then, the two students will have a debt of $120,000.

Even if they do not live in Toronto, where houses cost between $250,000 and $300,000, but rather in a rural area where the cost of living is not so high, they will still have to pay $80,000 more to buy a house. The couple will therefore have accumulated a debt of $200, 000 before even having their first baby. That is what we have done to the future generation. We have transferred Canada’s debt to our next generation, and that is a disgrace. That is what we have done.

At a time when Canadians are being told to tighten their belts in order to pay down the debt, who else has been affected by such a measure? It is working people, the unemployed and people who lost their jobs who have been affected.

When the Liberals were in power, the surplus in the employment insurance fund was about $7 billion a year. The debt was therefore paid down on the backs of men and women who had lost their jobs and who had families to support. Children attending school needed money, but the grants to help them were cut.

Even that was not enough for the Liberal government. In 2001, it said in regard to employment insurance that even if a citizen only made a technical error in filling out a statement, it would be considered fraud. For the Liberal government, it was really vague but all infractions were considered fraud. If a citizen forgets to declare a week’s work on his employment insurance statement, that is fraud. The citizen has to return the amount due to employment insurance, as well as penalties and interest. Not only is this the citizen’s own money, but he has to pay interest on it.

So who is paying down the debt?

When the Conservatives arrived, they did not do any better. If we look at the Conservative government’s last budget, there is absolutely nothing for employment insurance. The Conservatives said that they had already studied a possible program for older workers. What kind of program are they considering? They say that they are going to provide training. I can understand that this would be on a voluntary basis. But with all due respect for the Conservatives, are they really going to take someone who is 60 years old with a grade eight education and give that person a chance to go to school, reach grade 12 and then do four years of university in order to be able to work? It is nonsense. What kind of a program is this?

They missed the boat. Where I come from in Baie-des-Chaleurs, we see boats going past and sometimes say that someone missed the boat. That is what the government did.

However, the NDP, in the Liberal government's last budget, used Bill C-48 to get $1.5 billion to help students pay down their debts. We had to resort to force to get this allocation. The Liberal government did not want to fall and it accepted our offer. I think this is one of the first opposition party budgets that has been voted on in the House of Commons. I think I am not mistaken. How did they come up with this money? The Liberal government at the time wanted to give major corporations $10 billion in tax cuts. Of that money, we used $1.5 billion to reduce student debt, $1.6 billion to help people who needed housing, $900 million to help municipalities with their infrastructure, $500 million for foreign countries and $100 million to help workers when a company goes bankrupt and its employees lose their pension fund. The NDP was thinking about ordinary Canadians, who do their civic duty and go out and vote.

Nevertheless, who is responsible for this country's debt? It is certainly not the workers who get up in the morning, pack a lunch and spend the day working hard for a living. They did not create the debt. But when it came time to pay down the debt and balance the budget, this was done on the backs of the workers, the citizens, and older persons.

We had to put up another fight against the government to help our veterans with the veterans independence program for veterans of the Second World War, 1939-1945. We cannot even take care of these people. We have to use a piecemeal approach.

Nonetheless, when we look at today's federal government budget, after we promoted the idea of having strong child care services in the country and help working people have a national child care system, the Conservative government refused and decided instead to give $1,200 for every child under the age of six.

What have we done? Have we helped the system? I say no. I am not the only one; our party also says no. We are not the only ones who think this. I believe that nearly all parties say the same thing. The Bloc will say that this is a matter under provincial jurisdiction, and I respect this, but it believes in child care centres. Even our party, how many times have we talked about Quebec, and not because of the Bloc? We often use Quebec as an example, because its programs are genuinely progressive. That is why we want to implement its child care program throughout Canada. The Conservatives’ system, on the other hand, is modeled on the American system. It hands out money and tells people to look after their own problems. At the end of the day, has this helped children? Has it helped working women? I say that it has not helped them at all.

Once again, I say that we are missing the boat. This Conservative government presented a budget in the spring, and on September 25 it announced that it was making cuts, cuts that will do harm. When we see the cuts made to the court challenges program, we have to wonder.

Will the cuts to the court challenges program prevent people in the community from making their cases in court?

On that point, we have to talk about official languages. Minorities in Canada have used the court challenges program on more than one occasion. I will offer an example. The food inspectors in Shippagan who were transferred to Dieppe, New Brunswick, won their case because of the Court Challenges Program. One person acting alone would never have got the case to court.

In the riding of Acadie—Bathurst, where I come from, people in French-speaking areas were moved to Miramichi, where 70% of the population speaks English. Even the people of Miramichi said that it was crazy to move a community somewhere else. The communities were able to get their case to court because of the court challenges program. They won their case. That was the first time in the country that a legal challenge had been brought before a judge and accepted. This is now legal precedent in Canada.

We have to think about our minority communities, whether they are English-speaking or French-speaking. I do not believe that an individual could have fought that fight alone. It is unimaginable.

Let us look at the RCMP in New Brunswick, the only officially bilingual province in Canada. Once again, communities defended themselves in court and won their case. Indeed, from now on, the federal government must make bilingual officers available to the people of New Brunswick. They won their case. Imagine what happened next. It was not the Conservatives who challenged it; it was the so-called good Liberals, who are supposed to be perfect, who challenged it in the Court of Appeal. If the court challenges program had not existed, they could not have appeared in court and the debate would not have continued.

Now, the Conservatives are in power and, in my opinion, they are the same bunch, because they are here to defend capitalism and not the social aspect of anything. Nothing has changed. The Conservatives did not withdraw the appeal. The Conservative minister responsible for the file rose in this House to say that we cannot give money to Canadians so that they can fight in court those who legislate, that this did not make sense, that the government enacts good laws, and that they must be respected.

Yet, why were some of these court cases successful against the government?

In order to strike a balance, we should stipulate that, if a citizen wins his or her court case in the lower court, the government cannot launch an appeal with taxpayers' money. The government does use public money to appeal these cases. It should not be allowed to do so, since this upsets the balance between the two parties. There is absolutely no balance.

I was very sad to see what the Conservative government did to the court challenges program. It cut the program, which allowed citizens to challenge the government on its decisions and laws. By doing that, it has removed the tools of democracy. If the government is making the law, then the court will be paying for judges and lawyers, yet citizens cannot get the same money. They cannot be equal. The government uses taxpayer money to contest court judgments. It is a sad thing if we cannot have a balance and provide the tools to allow citizens to go to court and challenge the decisions or interpretations of laws of the government.

Look what was done to the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa. The hospital used money that was in the court challenges program. If it had not, the hospital would have closed. I challenge anybody today to say what happened with the Montfort Hospital was not right.

Who are the Conservatives to say that their laws are perfect? Who are the Conservatives to say that they follow the law? The Conservatives have said that nobody should be sitting in the Senate if the individual is not elected by the citizens of Canada, yet they appointed Michael Fortier to the Senate. They said that was okay because he was a good person so he did not have to be elected. They say that they do not believe in an unelected Senate, but Michael Fortier was appointed to the Senate, not elected. Twice the Conservatives broke their promise. They broke their promise on who should be in the Senate. Who are they to say that he is a good person when in a democracy, one has to be elected by the citizens of Canada.

We are not asking much. If someone is a minister, we believe that person should be elected by the people and answer to the people. We cannot even question the minister about the budget. He refuses to go to committee meetings.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Accountability.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Yes, it is accountability. Every day the same minister gets up in the House and pounds on the Liberals about Bill C-2, which is being stalled in the unelected other House. At the same time, the Conservatives have a minister sitting in the other House who is not elected, is not accountable and does not answer to Canadians. This is wrong. Conservative members should be in the House, accountable to Canadians, accountable to the House of Commons, the people who have been elected by Canadians. This is completely anti-democratic.

Canada is supposedly the best country in the world, yet we have 1.4 million children going hungry. There are more homeless on the streets of Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver, than we have ever had. How could the Liberals be happy or proud about that? They said they had to pay down the debt, but they did on the backs of Canadians.

This is entirely unacceptable. The Liberals have absolutely nothing to be proud of from their 13 years in power. They made cuts to health care in 1994 and now more cuts are being made today. Our grandparents and our children are in hallways in hospitals across the country: in Montreal, Moncton, Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver. It is unacceptable to take money to pay down the debt at the expense of people who are sick. The Conservatives are doing no more than the Liberals did.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my hon. colleague's speech and it was quite interesting to hear the NDP's viewpoint, even though I find that there are many problems with his calculations and his logic. His logic leaves a great deal to be desired.

For one thing, it should not surprise our colleagues in the NDP that Canadians do not have confidence in them to form a government of Canada because of their ideas on economics, let alone mathematics, considering my hon. colleague just talked about 13 years of Liberal government.

Yesterday happened to be the 13th anniversary of the 1993 election in which Mr. Chrétien and the government were elected. I was first elected in that year, as my hon. colleague knows, before I took my involuntary sabbatical, as I call it, between 1997 and 2000. My hon. colleague should know that 13 years occurred yesterday. Therefore, the Liberals were in power for 12 years and 2 months. However, the NDP thinks that is 13 years, which is completely illogical and it kind of fits with the rest of his thinking about the deficit and so forth.

Earlier this year we saw the report on poverty in Canada, which indicated that it had been reduced over the past decade. That is totally contrary to what he said. The statistics, the facts are contrary to what he has told us and he knows that, but he wants to create a new myth that things have become so much worse. He knows and, more important, Canadians know that the Liberal government had to deal with the deficit. He thinks we should have ignored it and let it grow and grow. He fails to recognize that the Conservatives left us a $42 billion deficit, which was destroying our economy.

Canadians supported the measures we took and re-elected our government several times. His party never did anything to support any of those cuts, which put our country in much better shape. They helped us build a much better economy and created millions of full time jobs, which made the country and people better off and gave them a better quality of life and standard of living. His party voted against every one of those budgets and every measure ever taken to put our country in better shape.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague said that maybe I do not how to count between 13 years and 12 years and 2 months. It seems to me as if the Liberals were in government for 20 years. That is why I got mixed up in the count.

When one looks at the NDP, which government in our country balanced the first budget? It was done in Saskatchewan, under Roy Romanow. Programs were not cut the way the Liberals cut them. He said that it was getting better in our country. There are more food banks in our country in the last 12 years and 2 months. Did we have that many banks or credit unions open? The types of banks we have inherited from the Liberals are food banks.

People are poorer and students are poorer and in debt. That is what we got from the Liberals. Our whole system of health care went down the tubes. Now we have privatization of our hospitals. The Liberals shut their eyes to it, were blind to it and the Conservatives are no better. They are closing their eyes to what is happening to our health care. In 1994 the Liberals cut so much in health care. At one time the federal government used to pay 50% of the cost of health care for every province. That went down to 15%, and the member is proud of that? I would not be proud to be a Liberal today.

[Shawn Murphy, Liberal, Charlottetown, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I have been listening to the hon. member and I am totally confused. A year and a half ago, after 13 successive years, the Liberals had 8 successive budgetary surpluses and they announced a lot of tremendous programs such as the Kyoto accord, the Kelowna agreement, tax cuts for lower income Canadians, affordable housing, public transit and post-secondary education. Much of this came about with close consultation with the New Democratic Party. Then all of a sudden for some reason, which has never been explained to me, the New Democratic Party, which the hon. member was involved with back then, voted against all these programs. Now we have the mess we are in today.

The member across is a handmaiden to this mess. He was involved; he is a conspirator. My simple question is, why?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague wants to know why. It is because the Liberal Party got caught in a sponsorship program in Quebec and then Canadians decided to kick we know what. That was what happened.

By the way, my colleague from P.E.I. referred to 13 years. He should talk to the member for Halifax West. He said that the Liberals were only in government for 12.2 years. I thought the member was here when he said that. However, I can see I am not the only one who does not know how to count. My colleague from P.E.I. in the Liberal Party does not know how to count either.

Why were we in a mess over the 13 years, or the 12.2, years that the Liberals were in power? It was because they paid the debt on the backs of the poor. They paid the debt on the backs of the people who were sick. They paid the debt on the backs of our seniors and veterans. That was not right. When it came time to cut the taxes to big corporations, they were ready to give them a break of $10 million.

The Liberals say the NDP never voted for one of their budgets. We did it last year, accompanied with Bill C-48, the NDP budget, which was a good budget.

[Robert Vincent, Bloc, Shefford, QC]

Mr. Speaker, earlier on the hon. member spoke of cuts. These actually totalled $13 billion. They found a way to starve organizations that advocate for literacy, women's rights and the rights of Canadian francophones and Acadians.

I would like to hear what the member for Acadie—Bathurst has to say about the fact that the government says it is cutting waste while at the same time keeping annual tax benefits of not less than $250 million for oil companies.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Shefford raises a good point. That is exactly what I was saying. The government gives money to big business and its Bay Street friends. The government says that it will cut the fat. But is that what it is doing when it cuts the funding of organizations that advocate for the status of women?

Canadian women worked very hard to achieve equality for men and women, and that was done with the assistance of organizations. One woman did not do all that. Women had to band together, they had to obtain funding in order to establish a balance between the government and communities. That is where the government has decided to make cuts.

The government always gives to big business but it cuts funding for and takes away money from ordinary people, whether they are francophones or anglophones living as a minority in a region. They try to make us believe that the money was used to pay friends of Liberals and lawyers.

I am sorry, but Michel Doucet, a professor at the Université de Moncton, worked almost for free to further the cause of individuals living in a minority situation, as he received only half his pay. I can guarantee that there was no fat there. The government has cut the fat of the most disadvantaged and that is unacceptable.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have talked about a lot. Since 2000, there have been billions of dollars of surplus, but 1.2 million children are living in poverty and no progress has been made in reducing it since that time. The child poverty rate is stuck at around 18% since 2000, which is no progress whatsoever.

The number of children living in poverty has risen by 20% since 1989. It has got worse. Low income couples with children are still $9,900 below the poverty line. The poverty rate is virtually unchanged at 12%, and 41% of the food bank users in 2004 were children. That is approximately 325,390 children.

There is absolutely no progress. Will the member of Parliament from the NDP acknowledge that those are the facts in front of us?

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

I would like to give the floor to my colleague.

[Sukh Dhaliwal, Liberal, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. Earlier today I took part in a meeting of the Standing Committee on Status of Women. I might have made a statement during the proceedings that some may have found inappropriate. I simply wish to apologize if I offended anyone and I withdraw anything that may have been offensive.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

The Chair thanks the hon. member for the point of order.

In response to the question from the hon. member for Trinity--Spadina, the clock has run out but I will allow the member for Acadie--Bathurst a few moments to respond. I would ask that he keep an eye on the Chair, please.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, for stopping the clock for one minute.

The answer to this question is simple. We have a $50 billion surplus and yet 800,000 people do not qualify for employment insurance. With those 800,000 people who do not qualify there are children. That is why I said that we have more food banks now than we have ever had and there are children there too.