Debates of Dec. 11th, 2007

Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Whitby—Oshawa, ON]

What have you got against people with families? What have you got against people with disabilities?

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

I will not respond to that. It is beneath contempt.

I will take a few moments to comment on the remarks that came from the Conservative member for Macleod this morning. He spoke to the positives he saw in Bill C-28. I understand his perspective. It is the government perspective and the benefits as he sees them. He advised the House, as we heard again in question period, of 388,000 jobs, mostly full time he said, created in the country this year.

To me that begged the question. In which sectors was there this exciting job growth and could the people in the companies of the manufacturing sector expect a plan from the government to protect the existing jobs and to help create new ones in one of the core sectors of Canada's economy? To the present time, I have not been informed as to where these jobs have been created and in which sectors. I look forward to hearing that news at some point.

However, during the remarks by the member for Macleod, he offered the words to the effect that the Conservative government had taken a decision not to favour one sector over another to provide tax relief to address growth in all of Canada.

I nearly jumped out of my chair at those words. The manufacturing sector in Canada, particularly in my community, is in crisis. We are being told that they are not being favoured. We never asked to be favoured. We have asked for a plan for a strategy from the government to address the needs of this core sector of our economy to assist them and their companies.

In this modern age we often hear the words “a holistic approach to issues and problems”. Quite often that refers to health, but I suggest this is what is needed relative to dealing with our manufacturing crisis today.

The Conservative government simply has to get with the times. If it believes it can deal with our economy solely by tax cuts and then let the chips fall, Reaganomics, or the economics of trickle down, has been discredited and has been branded a failure worldwide. The government must step back from this simplistic approach to economics, step back from the tax cuts for the rich corporations, hoping something trickles down to the ordinary hard-working Canadian.

The government must move to a place where it begins to operate with that holistic view of running the country, an approach which ensures everyone benefits together, not the rich first and something else for the rest at another time, but to where everyone together benefits from the great wealth of the country.

Twenty per cent of my community live in abject poverty. They want to work but do not have a job and cannot even begin to find one. They know the bill does not one thing for them. The question is this. Who are these favoured companies and favoured corporations referred to by the member for Macleod. Without reading a single word of this statement, without a single economics course, because they have been well trained by previous Liberal governments, Canadians can tell us that it is the banks and big oil and gas companies that will reap the benefits immediately from Bill C-28, just like they did for years under the Liberals.

The member for Macleod also talked about the NDP mended Liberal budget of 2005. I did say mended, not amended. That is because we mended it by taking $4 billion plus from the corporate tax cuts and forced the Liberals to put these saved dollars, saved fiscal capacity, into transit, and I see this in Hamilton today with new ecobuses on the street, into education and into housing, the same housing we heard the Conservatives taking credit for just earlier today in the House.

Now the Liberals, who are finally seeing the dollars put together in the budget for their corporate friends, are going to sit on their hands. They are not going to stop this.

The needs today are pressing and will worsen in the future. What is missed by so many here, or they are at least hiding from it, is the lost fiscal capacity of the country. What I found interesting was seeing the government members spend so much time this spring taking credit for the dollars flowing from that NDP modified budget. Again, we heard that repeated in the House earlier today.

With Bill C-28, as with the previous Liberal government, the Conservatives are continuing their corporate welfare program, with large corporate tax breaks very similar to the ones proposed in 2005 by the Liberals. It is estimated that these corporate tax breaks will reduce tax income for our country by $14 billion a year.

This obvious concern should arise for the Liberals. As I said, what about the lost fiscal capacity of the federal government in years to come? We know and members will have heard repeatedly throughout this debate that Canadian cities are facing a huge infrastructure problem.

I want to reiterate that the Federation of Canadian Municipalities demonstrated in its recent report that there is an infrastructure deficit of $123 billion. I have not heard one word in the House to refute that report. Nobody is saying that it is inaccurate. Nobody is saying that it is not true. In fact, it is almost like it does not exist. I cannot understand how the Conservatives can ignore it. How can the Liberals let them? This is beyond belief.

I am going to take a moment to offer a suggestion to the government. I have already spoken about the common sense of Canadians and how a number of them in my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek have been quick to point out to me their surprise when they see that the Conservative government, with its surpluses, is not prepared to invest in my community's needs and community needs across the country.

The government is not prepared, in the words of my constituents, to use common sense to prepare for our future and to repair some of the infrastructure from our past. The people of my riding understand the need to pay down debt, but they cannot begin to understand why such huge payments are being budgeted when there is already so much need in the country.

There is the need to address the infrastructure problem. There is a need for affordable housing. We heard the member for Sault Ste. Marie talk of the tragedy of homelessness across the country. We have heard that 42 people died last year as a result of homelessness. There is also a need for a national drug program.

However, the embarrassing level of poverty in the country is the one piece that should be the catalyst for anybody and any government to act. I have offered that small piece of advice to the government.

Another small piece that I would offer is the need to deal immediately with the $500 per year mistake. Senior are owed that. I think it would be incumbent upon the government to act on that immediately and pay seniors what they are owed.

If there is any reason to redirect the wealth of the country into new programs aimed at eliminating poverty for thousands of men, women and children, I would have to say that this is the reason I stand in the House repeatedly on Bill C-28. In many cases, I am repeating many of the words I have said before, but they have to be repeated over and over again until the shame of poverty in Canada is eliminated.

I had breakfast today with the High Commissioner of India. Many Canadians have a view of India as a desperately poor country, but that country has a strategy such that it is setting about the elimination of poverty in India by the year 2020. Whether it succeeds or not, the very fact that India has that concerted effort is an example that this country must follow.

We had the grand vision of eliminating child poverty by the year 2000. We need another grand vision for Canada. We need leadership from the government and we need it to address poverty now.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

I am glad the member mentioned the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and its work on the infrastructure deficit in Canada. In its report, “Danger Ahead: The Coming Collapse of Canada’s Municipal Infrastructure”, the FCM talks about the fact that there is an infrastructure deficit in Canada of $123 billion.

The FCM breaks that down into separate categories. It says: water and waste water systems need $31 billion; transportation needs $21.7 billion; transit needs $22.8 billion; solid waste management needs $7.7 billion; and community, recreational, cultural and social infrastructure needs $40.2 billion

All of those are services and facilities that none of us are going to be able to build unless we cooperate, unless we do them collectively. Saving $100 a year on our income tax is not going to help us build a waste treatment plant in our community. It is not going to guarantee clean drinking water in our community unless we work together and pool our resources to make sure those kinds of facilities are built.

I know that member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek has a particular interest in sport and recreation in Canada. The recreation deficit is particularly troubling given that a lot of the recreation facilities in Canada that are part of our cultural life and keep us healthy, and which have a lot of community-building activities happen in them, are aging now. Many of them were built as centennial projects and are wearing out. They have had important maintenance deferred over the years and they are crumbling as we speak. This is an important aspect of the infrastructure deficit.

I wonder if the member could talk to us about the importance of including infrastructure funding in this budget and why it is not there to do these important things as pointed out by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities.

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

Mr. Speaker, prior to answering the direct question, I would like to speak about my community for a moment. Hamilton itself has an infrastructure deficit of $4 billion. We have a very old sewer system that is in significant trouble and is causing us huge problems each and every year.

However, let us take a look at the deficit in sport, whether it is in the physical structures, where we could invest in and build those facilities to encourage youth to come back and take part in day to day activities, the kinds of structures that help our athletes when they are planning their goals. We have the Beijing Olympics before us and the Winter Olympics are coming up. There is so much investment needed for the actual athletes themselves in their preparation.

As for those programs that we draw from and in which we develop those athletes to give them that opportunity to represent Canada on the world stage, all of that has gone by the way. The fiscal capacity has been reduced to the point where, if we are not investing in our sports facilities and our sports individuals at this time, the crisis that is going to happen will push this even further down the list. It is a tragedy to see the loss of that fiscal capacity.

[Joe Comuzzi, Conservative, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I compliment the member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. He started his speech by saying that there was, and I wrote it down, a deficit in sport in Hamilton. I thought immediately that he was going to refer to the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. I would like him to comment on that, because he did not even mention them and I think that was a deficit in the Hamilton sports scene.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would be glad to comment on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. When we are talking about the realm of investment, it is not investment from this federal government, sad to say. The owner, Mr. Young, has made a significant investment in the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and we look forward to the Grey Cup coming our way soon.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted that the member ended his statement by saying we need a new vision for Canada related to fighting poverty, because that is exactly what the leader of the Liberal Party announced a few weeks ago.

His is the only comprehensive platform in Canadian history, by a government or an opposition, that is so detailed and goes to such lengths, with the targets of reducing poverty by 30% in Canada in the next five years and for Canadian children in poverty by 50% in the next five years. He would make the tax credit for children refundable. There is the expansion of another benefit for children. He would make provisions for the working poor so they can get off social assistance and back to work without being overly penalized.

There also are provisions for seniors so that qualified seniors who want to get back in the workforce are not penalized too much and do not lose too much from the pensions they are now receiving. Also, there are provisions to increase the income for very poor seniors.

All of this will lead to these specific targets. As we know, the Conservative government is not too keen on targets, certainly those related to climate change. Again, the targets are that 30% of Canada's poor will no longer be poor in five years, nor will 50% of the children who are now poor.

As the member said, this is something that is very much needed in Canada. It is an anti-poverty strategy. This has very exciting potential for the future should we form the next government.

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

Mr. Speaker, that lights a spark, because that member with that plan had a plan for Kyoto too and that did not work out so well for our country. That was the government across the way, which for 13 years practically destroyed the Canada health and social transfer system.

The Liberal government destroyed EI. It was changed from unemployment insurance that people could count on, whereby 85% of the workers who were laid off and lost their jobs could count on something to help them. Now we are at a point where that is at 40% nationally. In Hamilton, we are running at 22%. That is a disgraceful record.

I anticipate the same failure the Liberals had with Kyoto.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, obviously Bill C-28 is an important bill because of what it does not do.

It does not address the crisis in homelessness and poverty.

It also does not address the crisis in our employment insurance program. As the member quite rightly pointed out, it was gutted by the previous Liberal government to the point where in my own city of Toronto I know that almost 80% of unemployed workers do not get employment insurance. That is where we are today. It used to be that about 80% of unemployed workers got EI.

Could the hon. member comment on the failure of both the current and the previous government to address the crisis of poverty but also on the contribution that the devastating changes to the employment insurance system have made to that crisis?

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

Mr. Speaker, the question goes to the heart, I think, of one of the significant reasons for poverty in Canada. When a person has had the good fortune, the luck--because it is not due to the rules any more--to actually make it onto employment insurance, the number of weeks have been cut back. The end result is that those people who are unable to move on at some point wind up on welfare. They end up on social service assistance programs.

One of the reasons it is not spoken about that often is that the change was part of the offloading. The Liberal plan was to offload responsibilities for certain services. This was done to move the burden from the income tax base and put the load on the property tax base. As a result, we see the municipalities bearing the burden.

However, those people who are on social assistance do not count toward the unemployment figures because they are not looking for work. In the scheme of things, if we were to really look at the unemployment numbers of our country, we would see that they are at least three times higher because of those who are not measured.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to Bill C-28 and to express my opposition to it.

It is a fundamentally wrong direction for Canada. It is explicable that the Conservatives, who tend to take us in the wrong direction, could present an economic statement of this manner to the people of Canada and therefore bring in this bill, but it is impossible for me to understand how the opposition could de facto support this direction, which is absolutely the wrong one for Canada. I want to elaborate on my concerns about this statement and why I believe it is the wrong direction.

As I said earlier, one of my major concerns is around the tax cuts and what they mean in terms of eroding the resources that we need collectively to build this country. If we want to not only maintain our standard of living, maintain our industrial sector, maintain a level of civil society, but also to improve all of those things, and improve the environment and improve our social climate, and deal with the major issues facing us today, and improve our economic standing in the world, then gutting our fiscal capacity to act is not the way to do it. I want to address the very serious issue of tax cuts.

This statement continues not only the present government's but also the previous Liberal government's mistaken path of huge corporate tax cuts and other tax cuts. It takes us down the wrong path for Canada. Over the next five years the revenue that pays for the things Canadians say they want, the programs and services, and all of the things we tell each other we want, will drop by $60 billion based just on this economic statement.

I remember when there was a huge debate because the previous government failed to bring in a national child care program that was going to cost us $2 billion. What a terrible shame that with all of these resources we have failed to invest in our children.

There are cuts to the GST, to personal income taxes and to corporate income taxes. The latter, which by 2012 will drop to 15% from 21% today, is really an outrageous corporate giveaway. This notion of having to attract investment, cut taxes lower and lower and do away with more and more for the people of our country is nothing but a race to the bottom. It really is quite unworthy of a developed country such as Canada.

As I said earlier in the House, this latest economic statement really is the continuation of a 20 year race to the bottom in terms of trying to cut our way to prosperity which clearly has not worked. It diminishes our country.

There has been a conscious plan by the current Conservative government and previous Liberal governments over the last 20 years. They were supposed to have been looking out for the interests of our country and yet they have cut $250 billion out of the fiscal capacity of this country, out of the revenue we need to act on behalf of Canadians and in fact build our country.

I ask Canadians to think about the difference this revenue would have made in our country and the kinds of things Canadians say they want. Canadians are repeatedly frustrated that their politicians are not acting on the things that we have forgone because of these tax cuts. I want to list some of them.

One of them is a national child care program to invest in our children, a program that invests the money where it counts most, in the very early years of our children's lives.

Another is a national pharmacare program. Yes, we have a medicare program thanks to Tommy Douglas and the NDP, but no one's health should be jeopardized because they lack the funds to pay for the pharmaceutical drugs they need.

Yet another is a home care program. Whether it be disability, illness, age, whatever the cause, people are best cared for in their own home. They should have the care they need to be able to stay in their home. It is more economical for society. It is better for the person to be able to stay in familiar surroundings. It is the best kind of care we can deliver for people who want and need to stay in their home. We have failed in this area.

Another is social housing. I have spoken many times in this House about people in my riding of Parkdale—High Park who have fallen through the cracks because of the high cost of housing in the city of Toronto. There are many people who work below the poverty level. People who work for less than $10 an hour simply cannot afford the level of private rental housing that is available in the city of Toronto.

I am very proud that in our community as a result of a community initiative a very small housing facility just opened last weekend, thanks to the help of the United Church. We are so far from being able to address the needs of Canadians when it comes to affordable housing. It is quite shocking. In my city over 75,000 families are on the waiting list for affordable housing. These families are not going away. Their lives are not improving. They are not getting off the list. The list just keeps getting longer and longer. Even those families who are not on the list for affordable housing are often paying a greater and greater amount of their income for their housing needs. Many working and middle class families are getting dangerously deep in debt. They are very concerned about what any change in interest rates could mean for their finances. There is a huge stress on families today because of the lack of affordable housing.

Add to that the challenge of tuition fees for young people who start out in life with tens of thousands of dollars in debt heaped on their backs. What a way for young people to start out , to look at building their career. It is a time when they want to take chances, to travel, to try new things, to learn new things. Instead they are saddled with phenomenal debt because of the lack of investment in post-secondary education by a government that would prefer to give it away to very profitable corporations.

I must speak to the staggering infrastructure deficit in our country. It is huge. It is getting bigger, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars. We are falling further and further behind each and every year because of the lack of investment by the Conservative government and previous Liberal governments to maintain, improve and grow our infrastructure. Whether we are talking about water and sewage, roadways, transit, social and community infrastructure, the lack of investment means that our cities are in very poor shape.

We have seen bridges fall down in Quebec. We have seen drains break in the middle of winter in downtown Toronto, which have to be repaired on a case by case basis, at a huge extra cost. We see gridlock on the streets of our major cities. Someone has to explain to me how this is good for business. How does this gridlock in our crumbling infrastructure make Canada a more competitive country? How is that good for business? It is not.

Whether it is the board of trade or other business organizations, right across the country everyone knows it is bad for business. It is a drag on our competitiveness as well as being a terrible drag and a terrible burden for people who live in our communities who are trying to go about their daily lives.

The lack of transit infrastructure means that people spend hours stuck in traffic. People are moving further and further afield from the centre of our major cities which means they have longer commutes. They get stuck in rush hour traffic. It is a vicious cycle which the current government is doing nothing to help, and the Liberals when they had the chance with many surplus budgets did nothing to help. We have to address the issue of infrastructure in our cities.

It is tragic that we have had the opportunity because of surplus budgets to make these investments but have not done so. I see a lot of back patting by the Conservative government and by previous governments about how deficits and debt have been reduced. What I see is that the debt and deficits have been pushed off the plate of the government and on to the back of individuals.

I see people with more and more personal debt. I see people in my community going to payday lenders and rolling over debts week after week. They are spiralling further into debt. I see that anxiety about how to make ends meet being shuffled off to the individual. It is the least efficient way to deal with collective needs.

I cannot go out and buy my own piece of subway or road. I guess I could buy my own personal swimming pool, but I would rather invest in our community facilities, our community swimming pools, our community child care centres and schools. These are the things that we build together. When we put our tax dollars together we can build so much more than if we each take our own little piece and try to scratch and scramble and invest it ourselves.

We see so many people who believe the advertising of the investment companies and they put their money into mutual funds. People throw their lot in with the market and then find that when they need the money it is not there for them, that the money is lost because it has been gambled away. What we really need are secure retirement incomes. There is no better system than the Canada pension plan, where we all pool our money together so that everyone's money is secure and it is there for seniors when they need it.

If we want to take some of the $250 billion that the government has forgone through tax cuts, why not invest more of that money and make life better for seniors? Why not give more of that back to seniors?

By the way, the billion dollars that the federal government has shortchanged seniors by miscalculating the cost of living could be given back to seniors too. That is another billion dollars that seniors would be very glad to have.

The argument for cutting taxes is that it will make companies more competitive. I think it is important that we do well in the economy and that businesses be competitive and do well in the world, but I would argue that even on the basic grounds of making Canada more competitive, I do not think this tax cut agenda is doing it.

In 1999, the year before the previous prime minister, the member for LaSalle--Émard, introduced his huge tax cuts, Canada was fifth in the world in competitiveness and--

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Burnaby—Douglas.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Parkdale—High Park for her intervention in this debate this afternoon. It has been a very important one.

We have seen a trend over the last decade or more in the governments that we have had. We have seen Liberals and Conservatives pursuing the same kinds of policies, the same mistaken approaches to managing our economy and to managing and addressing the needs of Canadians.

We have seen both Liberal and Conservative governments fail to estimate correctly the size of the surplus. It announces surprise record surpluses and then directs that money directly toward the debt, without considering the needs of Canadians and without considering what else might be necessary in our communities, what families might need and what seniors might need.

We have seen both the Liberals and Conservatives adopt a flawed approach to program and economic planning in Canada. We have seen many other occasions where the Conservatives only seem to be improving on the bad Liberal record of 13 years when they were in government, where promises made about important new social programs were not kept or flawed approaches were adopted.

I think the best example would be the Liberals' failure for 13 years to address child care. They promised it continuously but never put something into action until the very last minutes of their government.

We have seen those kinds of approaches for many years. I wonder if the member could comment on why the current government seems to be adopting so many of the same directions as the previous failed Liberal approach on these important issues.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it really does beg the question of why government after government, whether Liberal or Conservative, takes the exact same economic approach to the running of our country.

What is that approach? That approach is to cut back on the role of government. How does it do that? It does that by starving our budgets. We should all pay down our debts but it is a question of degree. Do we aggressively pay down our mortgage if our roof is falling in? No. We need to have balance. However, neither of the previous parties in government have had balance. What they have done, step by step, almost by stealth, is starve our governments of funds and then argue that they did not have the funds to invest in the significant social, cultural, environmental, economic infrastructures that this country so badly needs.

I was saying earlier that before the tax cut era Canada was fifth in the level of competitiveness. After seven years of tax cuts, guess what? We are in 16th place. Even by their own measure of economic success, they are failing. Who are we losing to? We are losing to countries like the Nordic countries that in fact have a higher tax regime. Why? It is because they are more successful societies. They are investing in their people, in their economies and in their infrastructures, and, guess what, it pays off.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague whether she thinks the Conservative government is being somewhat shortsighted by only using the budget surpluses to pay down the debt. We all know that the manufacturing and forestry sectors have suffered greatly because of the overheating of the oil industry. The government is suggesting that we use the budget surpluses to pay down the debt and give gifts to the big oil companies. We should remember that if a company did not generate a profit in the last year, a 1% tax cut across the board will hardly help.

I would like to know what my colleague thinks about the Conservative government's shortsighted policies.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one of the reasons we have such a crisis in the manufacturing sector is because of the high dollar. Why do we have a high dollar? One of the major causes is the fact that we are increasingly a commodities dollar, a petro-dollar.

What happens when we give across the board tax cuts, as we are debating in Bill C-28, is that we reward the oil and gas sector and the large banks and insurance companies, which are already making multi-billion dollar profits, and we further threaten the manufacturing sector, which is the most value added, most beneficial sector of our economy in terms of the spin-off jobs and the overall value.

The handling of the manufacturing crisis and the boom in the commodity sector is just exacerbating this situation. It is jeopardizing our manufacturing sector. I do not know whether it is from a bias toward the polluting industries, the oil and gas sector, or a lack of experience with the manufacturing sector, but we could do permanent damage to our valuable manufacturing sector and, frankly, we will see the impact of the current high dollar, not tomorrow, not next month but in two or three years to come. We have not seen the worst of this yet.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I was glad the member for Parkdale--High Park talked about the way seniors were being shortchanged because of the error that was made in calculating the indexing of guaranteed income supplement pensions.

The member noted that there was a huge surplus available right now to go into some of our social programs and that the government has chosen not to correct that error that was made and ensure that the seniors who lost that $1 billion in income would receive it. The previous Liberal government also refused to correct that error.

I wonder if the member would talk a little more about why those governments are refusing to help some of the most vulnerable people in our society, seniors who have the lowest income of all of our elders. Why would the government not use some of that money to address that shortfall in their income and to supplement their income so they can have a reasonable life in their so-called golden years?

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a lot of seniors in my riding of Parkdale--High Park and I hear from them quite often about the issues they are facing: concerns about high drug costs, housing costs, people who want to stay in their homes and the lack of home care.

They have a lot of issues and they are concerned about their incomes. They worry all the time whether they will be able to stretch their income to meet their needs. Costs are going up way faster than their income.

When I tell seniors that, due to a miscalculation by the present government and previous governments, seniors are owed a billion dollars that they should rightfully have in their pension income, they are absolutely shocked. They know that if the shoe were on the other foot and they somehow miscalculated their taxes and owed the federal government $50 or $100, they would be afraid that the government would come down on them like a tonne of bricks. To be sure, the government would ensure that money was collected.

Seniors are baffled, as I am, and I am also quite angry that the government would allow that money to be denied to the seniors of our country. A billion dollars is a huge amount of money. Surely, out of the $250 billion that the country has forgone in taxes over the last 20 years, we would think that it could find 1/250th for the seniors of our country.

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

Mr. Speaker, I was interested to hear the member for Parkdale--High Park talk about high interest rates and their impact.

In my community of Hamilton, and in Hamilton East particularly, I have been talking to people regarding the impact on companies. I had the owner of one company say that by December he would be finished, which would mean 276 jobs lost and that was unless the dollar dropped by 15%.

I presume the same impact is happening in Toronto.

[Peggy Nash, NDP, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Yes, Mr. Speaker. We have lost over 125,000 manufacturing jobs in Toronto. It is a disgrace and we are still waiting for the government to do something about it.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this debate gives us a golden opportunity to remind Canadians of the disastrous effects the Conservative government's policies are having on the economy.

Bill C-28 is barely getting any reaction from the Liberal Party of Canada, but that is nothing new. I must admit that as a new member in this House, it is a wonder to me to see how—and my colleague from Toronto just talked about this—some people who are close to the Liberal Party of Canada have managed to pass themselves off as being concerned about poverty and food banks. In fact, the Conservative government is currently granting tax reductions and giving big gifts to the oil companies and the banks. But Liberal members are doing nothing.

If the current government manages to force the passage of Bill C-28 before Christmas by virtue of its seat count, then we will miss out on quite the show. The leader of the Liberal Party of Canada has publicly said that he wants to make sure Canadians understand that, after the holidays, the fun will be over, that he will prove the skeptics wrong, that we will have to hold him back or he might hurt the Conservative Party. What we have seen instead this fall is a Liberal Party of Canada that is keeping the Conservatives in power.

I would like to say a few words about what that means. Before becoming a minister in Quebec for a number of years, I was part of the opposition for nine years. I know what it is like to be in the opposition. The job of the opposition is to do two things: make the government accountable, in other words, be the public's conscience and ask the right questions, but at the same, hope that our policies will one day lead us to power. In other words, it is our job to be a government in waiting.

In the NDP, we have clear policies and we are absolutely ready to be in power. Just look at the depth of talent on the NDP benches in this House. We are a political party with a great number of people who have extensive experience in public administration. It is absolutely extraordinary to see the Liberal members sitting on their hands when they could be defeating the Conservative government if they voted just once with us. But they will not. Why? I guess they must be happy enough with the Conservatives' policies or they would be helping us defeat them.

Day after day, they criticize Conservative policies during question period, and at the end of the day, when the time comes to vote against the Conservatives, the Liberal Party drops the ball. It does not have the political courage to stand up and vote. Last night, we witnessed an unprecedented spectacle in this House during the vote on Bill C-28, which is now before us. This is the Conservatives' Christmas bill, their $14 billion gift to oil companies and banks. Some Liberal members showed up to vote against it because the infamous Atlantic accord was part of this bill.

How many of them showed up? Ten or so. Not even enough to form a party in Parliament. The so-called official opposition can no longer call itself a recognized party in Parliament because the members of the official opposition no longer even show up to vote. They are afraid they might defeat the government on what might be considered a matter of confidence.

People who made the mistake of voting for the Liberal Party of Canada are really questioning that decision. The members of the NDP are telling people to take a good look at our policies and who we are. When I look at my colleagues who were once ministers in British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario or, in my case, Quebec, people with a great deal of experience in education, industry, their churches and their communities, I realize that the NDP possesses the kind of wealth and social vision to do a good job of running a government that would renew Canada's reputation as a peacekeeper, international cooperator and environmental steward.

What do we have instead? We have a Conservative government that is embarrassing Canada internationally and that drew us into the quagmire of war in southern Afghanistan. Only the NDP has adopted a clear position against the war in Afghanistan, in favour of the withdrawal of our troops and a comprehensive, stable process for the development and maintenance of lasting peace in Afghanistan.

The Conservatives are embarrassing Canada on the world stage by not trying to achieve an objective that is supposedly shared by all political parties, that is, committing 0.7% of our gross domestic product to foreign aid. In that regard, they are the worst government in the history of Canada since the 0.7% objective was adopted. We are farther than ever from that objective, which is so crucial if we want to help our fellow human beings around the globe.

We need look no further than the conference currently under way in Bali, Indonesia, to understand just how much the Conservatives are embarrassing us. We sent our pitiful Minister of the Environment there to embarrass us. It is bad enough to have to watch his buffoonery here every day when he gets up and talks about a file on which he clearly has not done the least bit of work. He reads quotations and spews nonsense of that nature, when what Canadians really want to know is what will be done to fulfill our obligations to future generations.

Those who have the opportunity should go to McGill University to meet the extraordinary people who work at the Centre for International Sustainable Development Law. These people understand that sustainable development is not just a slogan invented over the past few decades. Sustainable development is a legal obligation we have towards future generations.

Canada ratified the Kyoto protocol five years ago, even though this protocol is celebrating its 10th anniversary today. Because Canada ratified it five years ago, it is part of Canada's domestic law. The Kyoto protocol is an international obligation, but it is an integral part of our law, which means that it is a legal obligation.

The Conservative government prides itself on respecting law and order. Yet this law and order government is becoming irresponsible and even an international outlaw because of its disrespectful behaviour toward future generations. It is casting a shadow over a generation of Canadians who have worked hard to earn our country the utmost respect of the international community when it comes to the environment.

I know that whenever the Kyoto protocol comes up, the Conservatives inevitably point to the seats opposite them and say it is the Liberals' fault, because they did nothing for 13 years. We agree, and we will always agree that the Liberals did nothing. On the contrary, instead of meeting the Kyoto target, which is to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 6% compared to 1990 levels, the Liberals saw emissions increase by 33% in the 13 years they were in power. This is shameful, and it is the worst performance in the world.

Eddie Goldenberg, the former Prime Minister 's chief of staff, was kind enough to remind us, during a recent presentation to the London Chamber of Commerce in Ontario, that when the Liberals signed the Kyoto protocol, it was purely because of public opinion. He said that it was to galvanize public opinion. Eddie Goldenberg is admitting that, as was the case with the Kelowna Accord and all other Liberal measures, their actions were exercises in public relations.

This is why the NDP now has such support in Quebec and the other provinces. Citizens realize that the Liberal Party of Canada is but an empty shell, a creature of the 1960s designed to keep Quebec in its place and now being superseded by political parties that understand that what is truly important in life is to look after our neighbours and our society, and that we have to look after our planet.

That is the NDP vision. Unlike the Liberals who have never looked after these interests, unlike the Conservatives who do not wish to do so, and unlike the Bloc who cannot, the NDP is the only political party with representation throughout Canada, from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, that speaks to Canadians about real issues.

One of the nicest compliments I received in the recent byelection in Outremont was from someone living at Father Dowd Memorial Home. After my presentation, a severely handicapped gentleman beckoned to me and said something that touched me deeply. He said that it was the first time that a federal candidate had come there and spoken about human beings rather than about the Constitution, or disputes, or differences that too often are the subject of debate in Quebec.

Like those voting in the Outremont byelection, many Quebeckers have realized that the NDP is the only credible party in the House of Commons speaking for peace, the only credible party speaking out against war in Afghanistan, and the only party standing up for the environment. Our leader has a great deal of experience in environmental issues. This very afternoon, he is introducing an important bill that has received support not only from David Suzuki, but also from the Pembina Institute. This bill would put us on the path toward real greenhouse gas reductions so that we can respect the right of future generations to experience the same standard of living, the same quality of life and the same living environment we have experienced. That is what the NDP is all about. We are a political organization that puts people first, unlike the Conservatives.

This brings me back to Bill C-28, which is before us today. The primary goal of this bill is to use State moneys for their intended purpose, that is, to help people, to help with infrastructure, and to help create programs for people. We want to give that money to people. Who do the Conservatives want to give that money to? They want to give it to big oil companies and banks.

The outcome of all this is bizarre because the overheated oil industry pushed the value of the loonie up. Such a high Canadian dollar is making it very hard to export products. As a result, people across Canada are losing their jobs. Many people in New Brunswick and Quebec who work for Shermag have recently lost their jobs. This is not because the company is badly managed. In fact, it is an outstanding company that makes quality products. The Conservative government does not seem to understand that. It has destabilized Canada's relatively stable economy made up of primary resource sectors, processing sectors, a manufacturing sector and, of course, an oil sector based mainly in the west. There was wealth, but there was also balance.

The Conservatives are in the process of killing the manufacturing sector, getting rid of not just workers, which is bad enough. Because of this, many families will have to do without come Christmastime. This is primarily because the Conservatives could not care less about people's lives. They are not interested in helping people. Their only motivation is an economic dogma that has convinced them, even if they are wrong, that the last thing a government should do is get involved in the economy. But by proposing tax cuts, regardless of the size of the business or profits, they are, in fact, getting involved in the economy. Some oil companies in the west would get $40, $50 or even $60 million presents all at once.

These businesses, in western Canada, will earn even more in the oil sector. This will create a greater imbalance in our economy and will destabilize us even more. It will push the dollar even higher, which will cause an even greater drain on the manufactured goods sector of the economy, the industrial sector, particularly in the east, in Ontario, Quebec and New Brunswick.

These are good jobs being lost, and the Conservative government does not care at all. It does not care because it does not believe that the government should get involved, any more than it believes the government should get involved in the environment. There are important things to be done with a little vision.

There was a press conference today with the leader of the NDP and Daniel Breton, who is the president of the Coalition Québeckyoto. Daniel Breton is a visionary.

Today, he drew a comparison to what Quebec managed to do in the 1960s, when it decided to be the master of its own destiny. This operation in Quebec, which was called, “Maîtres chez nous”, was decried, castigated and criticized. Some predicted the worst, that this would fail. Some 40 years later, where are we now? We have Hydro-Québec, a government corporation that is a world model of good management. Quebec will be able to produce 4,000 megawatts—or 4,000 times a million watts—thanks to wind energy, now that these projects are being built or have been approved and are going through.

This is clean and renewable energy. With a little vision, a little self-confidence, we could do the same across Canada. Unfortunately, the Conservatives have absolutely no self-confidence and they certainly have no vision. They do not believe for an instant that the government can play a role in this.

This makes me think that if the Conservatives had been in power in Europe during the planning of the high-speed trains, which now crisscross Europe at 300 km an hour, they never would have been built. This required vision and confidence in the fact that government has a role to play and can be a driving force in achieving these big projects.

If our government here in Ottawa had just a bit of vision, Canada could become a world leader in clean and renewable energy. In remote villages the woods were cut a long time ago, but a tremendous amount of forest biomass was left behind. In fact, tens of millions of tonnes of forest biomass was left to slowly release carbon. Instead of allowing that to continue, imagine using infrastructure already in place, namely the roads and bridges that are already built, to transport this forest biomass to what would become a methanol production plant.

We can use ethanol, we can produce wind energy, we can use hydraulic power and wind power to produce hydrogen. We could become a world leader in hydrogen energy, which is clean energy and is renewable for future generations. But no, we are digging up the oil sands. We are in the process of using relatively clean fossil energy, namely natural gas, to melt the sand and extract, at a high environmental cost, the bitumen contained in the oil sands of western Canada. It is outrageous. It is the antithesis of sustainable development. It is absolutely not sustainable. This cannot last long, but such is the Conservative government: it does not believe in the future.

We in the NDP have a vision for the future, a vision that takes into account our primary, unending and inescapable responsibility towards future generations. And we will do everything we can to meet those expectations. We will oppose this government and its far right plans. We will oppose the war in Afghanistan and we are the only ones who oppose it.

Indeed, the Bloc Québécois supports the Conservative government regarding the war in southern Afghanistan until 2009. Its members are still unable to explain why it will suddenly be a bad war in 2009, yet it is not a bad war right now. The Bloc Québécois owes an explanation to voters. Bloc members had a very hard time explaining this in Outremont.

The Liberals are responsible for the debacle in Afghanistan and they are also responsible for the worst performance in the world when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. They too have some explaining to do to voters.The Conservatives, on the other hand, who incessantly hide behind Liberal negligence and incompetence, will have to explain themselves to future generations.

They must stop hiding behind the Liberals to make excuses. They must stop hiding behind the United States, China, India and Brazil and trying to justify the unjustifiable regarding how the oil sands are being developed in the west. It is starting to have a destabilizing effect on our economy and even on the planet. And this government is the primary driving force. We, on the other hand, will do all we can to propose a vision of the future, a vision of hope, a vision that takes into account our obligations towards future generations.

Message from the Senate

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Royal Galipeau]

I have the honour to inform the House that a message has been received from the Senate informing this House that the Senate has passed a bill, to which the concurrence of the House is desired.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-28, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 19, 2007 and to implement certain provisions of the economic statement tabled in Parliament on October 30, 2007, be read the third time and passed.

Budget and Economic Statement Implementation Act, 2007

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Outremont for his speech this afternoon because it was very helpful in understanding some of the problems with the Conservative government's approach to the budget and its mini financial statement.

I wonder if he would agree with me that there is a fundamental flaw in the bill. It puts all the government's eggs essentially in one basket, that being the corporate tax cut basket.

We have seen time and time again that these types of corporate tax cuts do not deliver the kinds of benefits that they proclaim. Reaganomics and the corporate tax cuts that were done then did not trickle down to people like they were supposed to. The tax cuts proposed by the member for LaSalle—Émard, when he was finance minister and then prime minister, did not trickle down to ordinary Canadians so they could improve their lives.

I heard the member for Outremont talking about a more balanced approach that would see us using some of the funds available to address the needs of Canadians and the important concerns about the environment. I heard him talk about the importance of not gutting our fiscal capacity with these irresponsible corporate tax cuts.

I wonder if he might talk a bit more about how he sees this issue.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is quite right. In putting all of its emphasis on tax reductions for large corporations, the government has failed to realize that a lot of people are going to be left out.

It is not a figure of speech to talk about a prosperity gap in Canada. If we look at the most recent statistics published by the most neutral source available in this country, Statistics Canada, and we divide income into five brackets, those are called quintiles, we will notice that it is the middle quintiles, literally the middle class, that has been the hardest hit in the past 20 years.

Contrary to what we might hope because Canada is a prosperous country, the people who are working hard in this country, the middle class, are actually taking home less than they were in 1989. That is not an opinion. That is a matter of documented statistical fact.

The people at the highest end of the earning spectrum are earning up to 25% more than they were in 1989, but if individuals are in the middle quintiles, the third, the fourth or the fifth, chances are they are among Canadians who are actually earning 4% to 5% less even though they are working harder.

More and more families have two breadwinners. That does not take away from the fact that modern families are having more and more difficulty making ends meet. That is the way things are in my province of Quebec and that is the way things are in a lot of other places in Canada. It is a crying shame that the Conservative government does not understand that.

What is equally scandalous is that the posers from the Liberal Party of Canada, who love to talk about the role of food banks and community groups and things of that nature, have been sitting on their hands. They are in fact backing the Conservative Party. They are maintaining the Conservatives in power. We find that scandalous.

Canadians have a right to know that the Conservatives are being kept in power because of weak leadership in the Liberal Party of Canada and that party's incapability of coming to any real decision. The Liberals keep voting for all of the government's bills, including this one.

It would be interesting to see, after all his posturing and posing and chest thumping, the leader of the Liberal Party, when he gets back from his Christmas holidays, become Mr. Tough Guy when it comes to the Conservatives. It will be really funny to see what he is going to do with Bill C-28 if it is carried over until after the holidays. I think I know. He will do what he has done with every other Conservative bill, sit on his hands.