Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary brings a lot of commitment to this whole process.
Although we cannot support the budget, I do recognize that there are some aspects to it that are important and do make a difference, some of which we as New Democrats have fought for.
I want to mention that I raised in the House the fact that the credit for bus passes, which only applied to monthly users and unfairly discriminated against those who purchased weekly bus passes, had to be changed and the government did that.
I want to recognize that there is some money for education in this budget.
On the child care front, it is still dismally addressed in this budget with $1 billion cut before our eyes. The government did take the little bit of money it had set aside for business created day care, which was $250 million, and is giving it to the provinces so they can create spaces but that is a drop in the bucket.
What is important to say, which I said in my letter to the minister before his budget, is that we need more than tinkering. We need more than this usual small-minded tax cut for every ill. As I said in my letter:
After more than a decade of short-sighted tinkering around the edges, the time has come to again strategically leverage the competitive advantages that we have and to seize the opportunity to create new ones.
That is missing in the budget.
If we go through the budget we see nothing on housing. It has no housing strategy and no national transit strategy. It has nothing on employment insurance and does not establish a $10 minimum wage. It has no poverty reduction strategy. It has no plan to end student debt. We see no cancellation of the corporate tax cuts. It says nothing about pharmacare, home care, long term care or improved access to health care for aboriginals. It has nothing for coordinated training of medical professionals and it has nothing for catastrophic drugs for the Atlantic region.
The budget provides no significant new money for aboriginals. We see only one-quarter of the money we wanted for child care. We see no money for autism. We see no ban on bulk water exports. We see nothing for the pine beetle infestation. We see nothing for seniors and no increase in OAS. We see no action on veterans. We see nothing for forestry, FedNor, ACOA and western diversification.
All the rhetoric in the world will not cover up the fact that this budget is severely deficient when it comes to meeting the needs of average Canadians, working people, middle class families, ordinary folks, everyday men and women who have worked hard to make this country what it is.
We will vote against this budget unless the government comes to its senses.