Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill and to support the amendment that would eliminate the provision for corporate tax cuts.
With the current government, it does not matter whether it is a social program or economic development or what the issue is, the solution is always a tax cut. Clearly, these tax cuts are not working. The massive corporate tax cuts made by previous governments have drained so much potential from our federal resources and the current government is continuing along the same path. The high cost of these tax cuts means that we are not investing where we ought to be investing, which is in our communities.
We have seen a growing economic gap in this country. People are working longer and harder, yet they are falling further and further behind. There is a growing number of Canadians who are homeless, a growing number who are badly housed and who are at the limit, in terms of their capacity to assume any more debt. I certainly see it in my own community. There are people who are working for less than $10 an hour, in other words they are poor, who are paying $1,000 a month for an apartment for them and their families. They are under-housed and cannot make ends meet because they cannot support themselves and pay that kind of rent.
Where is the money to be able to invest in a national housing strategy? There are 75,000 families in my city, Toronto, who are on the waiting list for assisted housing. Those numbers are not going down; in fact, they are growing every day. We do not have money to build new facilities for them. We are not seeing new co-op housing or other forms of affordable housing being built. This is an absolute disgrace.
A recent United Way report showed that the number of families falling into poverty in my city of Toronto is double the number in many other communities. Why? Toronto is a fast-growing city. It is the home to many newcomers to Canada. It is the most expensive city in the country. Tax cuts are not fixing the situation.
Tax cuts are also not fixing the situation with the loss of manufacturing jobs. Manufacturing is the biggest sector in our city and yet we have seen the loss of 125,000 manufacturing jobs from our community. These are decent paying jobs. They are full time work. They allow people to support themselves and their families. People are being thrown out of their jobs. Their lives are thrown into turmoil. Often they are only able to secure much lower paying, insecure work.
Instead of targeting a strategy to help the manufacturing sector at a time of a high dollar, at a time of greater competition, at a time of high fuel prices, what we have seen is across the board corporate tax cuts which, frankly, are not helping the companies that are not making profits anyway. These companies cannot benefit from the tax cuts. Those that do benefit are already extremely profitable, multi-billion dollars profitable, such as the banking sector and the oil and gas sector. In fact, we are helping the already overheated sectors of the economy, which pushes our dollar even higher.
The government needs a focused targeted strategy to deal with the crisis in the manufacturing sector. It needs to make a strong investment in social programs. It also needs to make a strong investment in infrastructure programs. None of these things happen with across the board corporate tax cuts.
I want to spend a couple of minutes on the issue of infrastructure investment. It does not matter whether it is engineers, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities or the Board of Trade, in all the studies everyone agrees that we have a crisis in infrastructure spending, that the current government and previous governments have neglected their responsibilities to invest in our infrastructure. Whether it is water or waste management, roads or transit, the proper stewardship has not been exercised in these areas. We need a major commitment to invest in our infrastructure. Corporate tax cuts do not provide investment in our infrastructure.
I have put forward a motion calling for a national transit strategy. It is a disgrace that the government does not have a national transit strategy. Our transit systems are growing as our populations grow, especially in our major urban centres. In a city like mine, in Toronto, we are seeing a growing gridlock with the resulting pollution and drain on people's time. It puts stress on the family. It is a huge drag on business. The Board of Trade has said that the number one thing it would like to see is investment in transit.
This ought to be public investment and not shunted off to a public-private partnership. We saw what happened in the city of London when it had a public-private partnership to expand its subway system. There was a $4 billion cost overrun there which the public is on the hook for. It is false economy to say that we can divert this to the private sector, because ultimately the public will be on the hook for it.
For us to be able to invest the needed moneys in our infrastructure and in our transit, we need a strong tax base. Letting profitable corporations off the hook to the tune of tens of billions of dollars is a colossal mistake. It is wasting our tax revenue. It is missing an opportunity to invest in the services, the programs and the infrastructure that Canadians need.
At this time when our economy has been expanding and doing relatively well, if we cannot now make these important investments, when will we ever be able to do it?
I would argue that to let companies off the hook and not have them pay the taxes that they should be paying based on their very successful profits is a mistake. It is missing a golden opportunity at this point in the business cycle to be able to address the physical and social infrastructure needs that our country has.
Through neglect we are letting our country slide into crisis, a crisis of poverty for a growing number of people, a crisis of a lack of child care, a crisis of a lack of housing, a crisis of a lack of infrastructure, especially transit. With the growing number of seniors in this country, I fear that we will increasingly have a crisis in terms of neglecting the needs of seniors as well.
In conclusion, I would strongly argue that this is not the time for across the board tax cuts. We need to pay attention to the manufacturing crisis and the crisis in other sectors, such as tourism, that desperately need attention from the government. These sectors desperately need attention. Across the board tax cuts do not help them. This is the time to be investing in our country.