Mr. Speaker, I stand before you today to express my disappointment with the recent budget announcement. As a newly elected MP, who has been entrusted by the voters of Mississauga—Erindale, I came to the House with a sense of great responsibility and a determination to protect the interests of Canadians. Above all, I am committed to working positively with the members of the House for the collective good of our nation.
I will be honest. I was looking for reasons to celebrate the budget. It contains some reasonable proposals. We all welcome the idea of reducing taxes. The more I studied the budget, the more concerned I became. I felt like someone who has just been told that they won a fancy car, but after the excitement had faded and after reading the terms and conditions, I realized that I had to keep up the hefty monthly payments, which I cannot afford.
The Conservative government had the benefit of inheriting one of the strongest fiscal conditions in recent history. Instead of building on the best track record of the G-7 nations, it opted for a one-dimensional, short-sighted approach. If we believe that the federal government has a role to play in investing in the prosperity and unity of our country, we will find that the budget misses the mark. The Conservative budget will weaken our federal government, as it shows a disregard for its responsibilities to the public.
The budget has serious shortfalls. Raising income tax less than seven months after it had been reduced by the previous government is unacceptable. Reducing the GST should not be at the expense of increasing income taxes on the lowest income tax bracket. If the government truly believed that the GST cut would balance out this increase, why did it not opt to raise income tax on the highest bracket instead of the lowest?
Also of concern, the Conservative government is breaking a major election campaign promise. It committed to help new Canadians in accrediting their foreign credentials. The Conservatives committed no money and outlined no plan to deliver this promise. Taking steps toward the creation of an agency does not fulfill their promise, and it is just not good enough. I know I have the unfortunate task of breaking this news to thousands of new Canadians who live in my riding.
However, even more disheartening, is that early learning and childhood programs have been neglected and hundreds of thousands of child care spaces across Canada are at risk. Working families have been advocating for more choice in affordable and high quality child care. The government is ignoring their call and cancelling the agreements that were struck with the provinces. Despite what the government claims, this will take away the choice for most working families and set our country back more than 30 years.
In the Peel Region alone, the previous Liberal plan, which had already been negotiated and agreed upon with the province of Ontario, would have created about 2,100 new child care spaces. Now it is all gone because of a government that wants to take the choice away from working parents.
The hopes of many parents have been devastating and the plans of many child care facilities have been destroyed. There are 1,100 children on a waiting list right now for child care spaces in the city of Mississauga alone. Those families were not forced by the Liberal government to sign up for that waiting list. Now these children and their parents have to fend for themselves because the Conservative government does not care about them.
The proposed taxable $1,200 is a great child bonus that will be helpful to any family, but will it actually cover the cost of child care? The average cost of day care in Mississauga is about $800 to $900 a month. With that calculation, a parent requires $9,600 a year to cover child care expenses. That is far more than what the government is paying a family for the whole year under its plan and that is only if the parents are able to find a quality space for their children.
What is next? Will the government end funding public education and give parents money and say the choice is theirs?
In my riding there is a great disappointment that funding has been reduced and will come to an end. Waiting lists for fee subsidies and special needs resourcing exist now and are growing, but the Conservative plan will do nothing to help the situation. The notion that its proposal offers a choice is outrageous and must be exposed. It takes away their choice. Parents who work hard and contribute to our economy and prosperity will soon realize that they cannot afford nor find quality spaces for their children. This takes away any choice they have and may require one parent, who is often the mother, to stay at home with the child.
I would like to draw attention to a recent study conducted in Alberta. The study showed that given the lack of quality, affordable child care spaces in Alberta, the participation of women in the workforce has declined to one of the lowest in our country after being one of the highest. A government sponsored early childhood learning program not only ensures quality and accessible spaces, but it provides parents with a real choice. A parent can choose to stay at home with their child and possibly receive the child tax benefit, which could amount to thousands of dollars per year, or they could choose to use a high quality day care program and maintain a career of their choosing. It is a shame that the government does not realize that.
If one believes the government does not carry the burden of ensuring the collective good of its citizens and can afford to fend for themselves, then one would cheer the budget. However, like the majority of Canadians, I feel the government has the responsibility to invest in its citizens, in its future generations and to build for the prosperity of our nation.
I point out that the budget failed miserably to address the environment, education, multiculturalism, immigration, resource and development and aboriginal needs. We in Ontario have seen what a simplistic, short-sighted ideological government can do. Premier Mike Harris, who was here on Tuesday cheering on the architect of the horrendous financial and social failures in Ontario during the nineties, and who also happens to be the current spokesperson for this budget, has left deep wounds in Ontario from which we are still trying to recover.
If I did not care and if I were a cynic, I would have chosen to stand by the sideline and watch with interest how the government is digging a hole for itself and let it expose its incompetence on its own. However, my concern is the government will not damage its credibility, but irreversibly damage the fiscal and social foundation of our country.
The government has chosen to mortgage the future of our country and hide the fine print from Canadians. It has no plan and no vision.
On behalf of children, students, aboriginals, farmers, immigrants, environment, working families and all Canadians, I ask the government not to allow ideology to dictate its action. I ask them not to do it for me, not to do it for the people who voted for me, but do it for the people who voted for them expecting that they would treat them with respect.