Before I begin my speech, may I offer you, Mr. Speaker, some words of appreciation from those of us back home in Winnipeg and Manitoba for your 28 years of service to our country and to express our sadness that you have made a decision to leave this place, to leave federal politics to pursue other important endeavours. We know, after 28 years of service, that you have every right to make this decision and pursue other dreams, but it does leave us sad and wondering who will fill your big footsteps, who will serve as dean of the House in a way that commands the respect that you do, who will offer us the leadership you give to all of us in terms of political issues, spiritual matters and just sheer human compassion for everyone in our society.
We offer to you, Mr. Speaker, our sincere thank you, gratitude and appreciation for your years of service.
Let me start off this very important budget debate by indicating that I stand here on behalf of all of my colleagues in the New Democratic Party as proud Canadians determined to make a difference, to keep our country together, to pursue an agenda that ensures unity above all founded on the principles of human compassion and concern and to build a nation of sharing and caring to ensure that the principles of equality of opportunity and condition are spread and enveloped everywhere across the country.
We stand very much today out of grave sadness and concern with the budget. We had hoped that the present administration would have learned from its first year in government, that it would have read the pulse of Canadians, that it would have found the real priorities of Canadians and reflected this in the budget. I know with the first budget Canadians were prepared to give the government leeway, to be somewhat patient in terms of results, but they are not prepared, after a whole year, to see such a wasted opportunity.
Canadians, without question, are being left more and more on their own and are feeling less and less secure.
It is interesting that 49% of Canadians believe they are just one or two missed paycheques away from poverty. It is an incredible statistic for a country as wealthy as Canada. Despite a growing economy and despite the fact that this is a land of wealth and possibilities, the gap between the rich and the rest of us is growing.
The point of the budget should have been to close that gap, to make life more fair and affordable for all Canadians. It should have dealt with the embarrassing situation of so many in this wealthy country living in absolute abject poverty and homelessness. It should have dealt with the fact that so many low and middle income Canadians are feeling a deep and profound sense of worry, fear and insecurity.
The average earnings of the richest 10% of Canada's families raising children is now running at 82 times that earned by the poorest 10% of Canada's families. This is up from only 31 times, 30 years ago. The after tax income gap has never been this high in at least 30 years and it has grown faster than ever since the late 1990s.
Let us look a little further. Only the richest 20% are making real gains from Canada's economic growth, with the majority of those gains concentrated in the top 10%. That means the vast majority of us, middle income and lower income Canadians, are being left out and left behind.
In some interesting research done lately, the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives tells us that ordinary Canadians are aware of this widening gap and that 85% of us want to do something about it. Canadians want their government to take action to close the gap to keep Canada and Canadians together.
Over the past decade when this gap was allowed to fester, widen and grow, we have had consecutive governments that have ignored this very fundamental issue. Whether we are talking about 10 years of Liberal governments or now a year and three months of Conservative government, the result is the same.
Governments have avoided the problem. They have closed their eyes to the realities around them, turned away from people in need and ignored the most vulnerable among us. They took the easy way out, passed legislation and brought in budgets that tinkered with the situation, dealt with the fringes of the issues and touched the edges of the situation, but they never came to grips with the real economic and social realities happening in this country.
Governments failed to realize that in fact we were on a path in this country that was contrary to everything we know about our history, contrary to what built this great land, what kept us together and what urged our pioneers to go through such hardship in order to build this land.
We have ignored the fundamentals of cooperation and community, of compassion and concern, in order to let a few accumulate wealth and receive all the benefit. We have let governments cater to that sentiment. We have let governments build on this notion of survival of the fittest, this notion that perpetuates the idea that life is a jungle, that all we need to do is work hard and we will make it, and that everyone is given an equal chance.
That does not fit with the reality, does it?
I want to tell the House about a young man in my constituency, Jordan Scott, who recently wrote an article that has been acknowledged as an important essay and a contribution to the fabric of our community. He is 18 years old. He lives in my community, Winnipeg's north end. He lives in a community that is low income and primarily urban aboriginal, close to the heart of downtown Winnipeg.
He says there are a lot of problems, but first off we have to recognize that:
--the residents of the North End are hard-working, upstanding citizens who, through no particular fault of their own, are marginalized because of race and ethnic background. Many of Winnipeg's urban Aboriginal people have moved here from Northern reserve communities, where unemployment reaches staggeringly high proportions in excess of 80%. Once here, they are unable to find jobs because of a lack of skills or education. Lack of work results in high poverty levels, which lead to frustration and despair. Often people turn to drugs and alcohol to escape the frustration in their lives. In turn, paying for these negative supports can and does lead some people to the criminal path, as the lack of work means of a lack of financial resources to pay for the bad habits they turn to as an escape. It is truly a vicious cycle, and once a person is caught up in it, it is very difficult to get out.
Let the words of Jordan Scott be a lesson to everyone in this place, particularly the government of the day, which likes to pursue matters of crime on the basis of absolute punishment and nothing else, without recognizing the root causes of this despair that leads to crime.
That is not to say we should not be doing everything possible to crack down on criminals and to punish those who have victimized others, but it also means that we have an obligation to understand what leads to such actions and what causes despair. And here we have Jordan Scott, 18 years old, who goes to Children of the Earth High School in my constituency, giving advice that is worth all of the rhetoric in this budget and all of the ink in the Minister of Finance's address yesterday.
In very clear language, Jordan Scott points out a path that we must take. It is so self-evident and so obvious that somehow all the powers that be have missed the point. He says:
Firstly, I would look for ways to improve education for children within the community.
Secondly, I would develop partnership programs with post-secondary institutions, and business and industry to target Aboriginal people....
Thirdly, I would work with community based programs to provide adequate facilities for drug and alcohol treatment and counselling.
He gives us a road map and ends by quoting Joseph Brant, who said:
No person among us desires any other reward for performing a brave and worthy action, but the consciousness of having served his nation.
Jordan Scott ends his essay by saying:
I believe that any action taken to help a community, or a nation, is rewarding in and of itself, for when the community prospers, all of us who are part of that community prosper. By helping others, we also help ourselves.
We can see what Jordan Scott is asking of government. He is not asking for a handout. He is not asking for government to give something to people who are down and out. He is asking for the means and the tools by which he and others can help themselves to be prosperous members of our community, to be contributing citizens in our society and to be responsible adults in a very complex world. He is asking government to take the scarce resources that we have by way of this budget and invest those resources in education, training, literacy, child care, counselling, and supports for youth at risk and single parent moms who are struggling to make a difference.
He will be very disappointed with yesterday's budget, because the government chose not to make those strategic investments that would actually make a difference. It chose instead to tinker around the edges, to scatter the money, and a lot of it, in a hundred different places, to sow the seeds over a vast territory but not on fertile ground. It chose not to concentrate that money in areas that would produce the biggest bang for the buck and reap the greatest rewards.
That should be the role of government. Is that not the job of government? To make a difference, to plant the seeds and to give money where it actually can produce other results? Is that not what we should be talking about here today? Should we not be talking about taking the money that is now going to corporations, $9 billion worth of it, started by the Liberal government, $9 billion in corporate tax cuts, and instead investing it in child care and education and housing?
As for this budget, what everybody is asking us is this: how can we not support a budget that has so much money? Let me tell members how. We cannot support a budget that does not make a real difference in the lives of Canadians.
The Conservatives can point to this tax-back policy after they have put all of the available flexibility and all of the surplus dollars against the debt, basically, without coming back to this place for any kind of input, which is something they demanded when in opposition. We remember how they belittled and belaboured the point about lowballing, a concern we shared.
The fact is that the Liberals continually lowballed the surplus and then, without due consideration for parliamentary process or checking with the people of this country, just let that money go against the debt. It was pretty galling to sit here and listen to the Liberal critic for finance talking about vision, long term planning and ideas and imagination when he was part of a government that for 10 years took every bit of flexibility and surplus and put it against the debt without checking to see what the priorities of Canadians were.
Today the Liberals talk about the short-sightedness of the government. The Liberals, over 10 years, took $80 billion in unanticipated surplus, which is beyond money that goes against the debt, I remind members, and put that against the debt. Even though it is raining in this country, they would not fix the roof. Even though people are suffering, they would not help Canadians to help themselves, not at all.
In this budget, as we know, the gap is at its biggest when it comes to aboriginal people. I have talked about Jordan Scott and his pain at seeing a government that does not recognize what is staring it in the face: the obvious way to help people help themselves so they can reap all kinds of benefits down the road.
This budget is invisible when it comes to women. It is a perfect example of the government going forward one little step and then going back two. What did the Conservatives do? They took money from the women's program. They put a bit back. They added a little to it but nothing that would make up for what they did to destroy a program that actually advances the equality of women in a country that should be embarrassed by the fact that the average woman in this country makes $24,000 a year.
I ask them to tell me how that woman who is in the first tax bracket is going to get any of that money for the child tax credit. Is that woman going to get any of the supposed advantage from any of this tax-back policy? Nada. Nothing. No way. This budget does not address those who need it most.
That money, that $310 per person that goes to all families, including those making a million dollars, could have been pooled and invested in a program that would actually create real child care spaces for all those working parents who are desperately trying to find secure, quality places for their children.