Mr. Speaker, this is an important debate for Canadians to follow. It is unfortunate that the NDP seems to have a majority in the House right now because we are very concerned about this issue.
We are talking about the $125 million infrastructure deficit that is now growing at $23 billion a year and is estimated to be a $400 billion deficit by 2020. That is important because when we talk about what this infrastructure deficit means, we are talking about the quality of life of people in cities and towns right across this country.
We are talking about the kind of transportation options that people have, whether or not they can actually take a SkyTrain or a subway train or a bus to work and have those kinds of options. We are talking about whether or not people actually have safe water to drink and whether or not people are going to be spending more time in hospitals because of water-related illness because our water infrastructure is not being kept up.
We are talking about waste water treatment. Whether it is in Victoria, British Columbia, or right across this country, it is to make sure that the waste that our society creates is actually dealt with in a way that is environmentally effective. We are talking about the actual quality of life in our cities when we talk about social or recreational facilities.
We know that the quality of life of most Canadian families has eroded over the past 20 years. In fact, for two-thirds of Canadian families, since the Canada-U.S. Free Trade Agreement was signed, their real income has gone. For two-thirds of Canadian families, even though they are working longer and longer hours, they are getting less and less pay.
So, essentially, their personal quality of life is diminishing, they are working longer periods of time, and they are getting less money in their pockets, which is why the debt load for most Canadian families has doubled over the same period.
Yet, at the same time, we are seeing this deterioration of our public infrastructure, and that is fundamentally important. When we are talking about the public infrastructure deficit, we are also talking about the safety of people driving to work, whether or not we are going to see the kind of overpass collapses that tragically took place in Minnesota recently because there was not the upkeep on the transportation infrastructure.
So, when we are talking about transportation infrastructure, transit infrastructure, water treatment, waste treatment, and social and physical and recreational centres, we are talking about the very quality of life that is at stake. With a $400 billion deficit growing over the next 12 years, one has to ask what has actually happened.
Under the former Liberal government the cutbacks started. We used to, up until the 1980s, maintain an infrastructure investment of 5% growth per year. That was decimated under the Liberal government. Now the Conservatives have come to power. What have they done? In their own words, today, they said that they are going to invest $33 billion over seven years. That is their own words. I am not trying to change what they have said. The parliamentary secretary was very clear: $33 billion over seven years.
What does that mean? Simple math tells us that is less than $5 billion a year, when the infrastructure deficit is growing over $22 billion a year. What that simply means is that we are going deeper and deeper into a hole that affects the quality of life and safety of Canadian families from coast to coast to coast.
Every single year, the deficit grows by another $18 billion because the government is not taking it seriously. That is even assuming that it will invest the money that it is pretending it will invest over the next seven years.
We have seen, with the pine beetle funding, big announcements of around $200 million going to support pine beetle programs in British Columbia. And after that big announcement and after the media had packed up and gone home, we have seen the devil in the details: only $24 million, in other words only about 12¢ on the dollar, has actually been invested in pine beetle programs.
So, the Conservative government, like the Liberals before, is making this promise of $33 billion over seven years. Even if the Conservatives keep their promise, and we strongly doubt that, this government has very little credibility on financial matters. We have seen how they treat fiscal matters, and I will come back to that in a moment. Even if they invested this money, we are going into the hole almost $20 billion a year over the next 12 years. The deficit will get worse and that will have an even greater impact on Canadian families.
Let us go back to the fiscal prudence of the Conservative government. It is shoveling $17 billion off the back of a truck to the wealthy corporate sector. We have $1 billion a year going to one of the wealthiest industrial sectors in North America, the petroleum industry. The government is willing to hand out all this money to the wealthiest and most profitable Canadian corporations while it is underfunding Canadian cities.
What does that mean? It is like the Canadian people sent the Prime Minister to the store to buy bread, eggs and milk, and instead, the Prime Minister bought a whole bunch of candy. He did not buy the bread, the eggs and the milk for his brothers and sisters waiting at home. He then comes back and says that he has 25¢ left, that he has a surplus, so he will give that up to the corporate sector.
The Conservatives are not investing in what Canadian cities and Canadian families need but they are giving billions of dollars to the corporate sector that does not need it because it has record levels of profit. The net result is that our water safety is in peril. Our transportation safety is in peril because we know that the highway systems, built in the 1950s and 1960s, have now come to a useful end and serious renovation is required.
It means that our transit systems, such as the SkyTrain system in British Columbia, continue to function undercapacity, even though the need is staggeringly great, particularly in the South Fraser region of the lower mainland. It also means that waste water treatment is not put into place so our environment continues to deteriorate. The quality of life that Canadian kids have with regard to recreational and cultural facilities is virtually non-existent.
That is how Conservatives handle their fiscal management. They buy candy or they buy Ferraris and go gambling rather than taking care of the house itself, repairing the roof, making sure the kids have shoes on their feet and that the bread, eggs and milk are on the table and in the fridge. That is what is so deplorable.
Let us look at the impact in my riding. In Burnaby--New Westminster, there are crying needs. Mayor Derek Corrigan and the Burnaby Citizens' Association have done a phenomenal job with scant resources. They tried for years to get the former Liberal government and now the current Conservative government to fund lake rejuvenation projects for Burnaby Lake and to apply for funding for SkyTrain, not the P3 model that is excessive in the costs, because the financing costs are higher when they go through the private sector. As we know, they have to build in the profit component so obviously they will spend more. Any accountant can tell us that.
Instead of providing for SkyTrain funding, public transit funding so the people in Burnaby, New Westminster, south of the Fraser and other parts of the lower mainland actually have transportation options, they underfund. They provide scant pennies when dollars are needed.
We have seen the chronic underfunding in policing, in the RCMP. This is something that started under the Liberals and continues under the Conservatives, something that Burnaby City Council and Mayor Derek Corrigan have been speaking very clearly about. We are talking about underfunding in a whole variety of areas.
This past spring, we saw the underfunding in flood control. The federal government is not stepping up and providing that necessary funding. Instead, it is going off and buying candy when bread, eggs and milk are needed on the table. As a result of that, municipalities, like Burnaby and New Westminster, suffer the consequences.
In New Westminster, Mayor Wayne Wright and New Westminster City Council have been pressing for funding as well for a variety of infrastructure projects. There has been talk in New Westminster for some time of a museum and arts centre, that physical and recreational infrastructure that is so desperately needed. The federal government is not there because, instead of investing in that much needed infrastructure, those fundamentals of bread, eggs and milk for Canadian cities, it chooses to go off and shovel money at the corporate sector again.
That is just not acceptable. Under the current Conservative government and under the former Liberal government, we have seen time and time again that the needs of the main streets of the cities of our country are neglected, while both of these same old, same old political parties shovel money off the back of a truck to the corporate sector.
Canadian cities need the fundamentals taken care of. They need funding so they can take care of waste treatment plants and water treatment plants to ensure water is clean and healthy. They need funding to upgrade their transportation infrastructure so it is safe. They need much more funding for public transit because it is good for the environment. Funding is important to ensure Canadian cities thrive.