Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the citizens of Laval—Les Îles, whom I am honoured to have represented in Parliament for 10 years now, I rise today to discuss the budget presented by the Conservative government.
After a year and two months, this government is still calling itself Canada's new government. This government is no longer new.
It is a government that has tried to walk and even run before it could properly crawl into the hearts, minds and pockets of Canadians.
This government has preached responsibility. This government has preached fiscal responsibility and a competitive and efficient economic union. However, in this budget the government forgot about women, retirees and seniors. It forgot about our humanitarian commitments to the most underprivileged. This government did not present a clear vision for immigration and the role of newcomers to Canada in the building of our society, whose population is rapidly aging. This government has a hidden agenda.
The hidden agenda is the government's eagerness to please everyone while trying to steal a little here and there from the wallets of Canadians, without any thought to the real impact of these last-minute attempts to please.
This government has no vision of Canada's future, because it has not stopped to think about it. It is short-sighted. This budget does not unite Canada; it divides it.
In the newspaper headlines this morning I saw:
“Families frown on measures”.
It was in the Ottawa Citizen.
This not so new government tells us it is investing in Canadians, preserving and protecting our environment and improving the quality of our health care system for all. Yet it ignores the plight of seniors who are falling through the cracks of Canada's medical system without proper home care for the elderly.
I congratulate the government in seeing the values of the new horizons program, which was established by the former Liberal government, and for expanding it. Let us not forget, and sometimes corporate memory is lacking in this chamber, it was the former Conservative government that attempted to deindex the pensions of seniors. If it had succeeded, that measure would have worsened the plight of seniors. This is a piecemeal budget that lacks direction, sound policy and practical options.
Missing from the budget is a more thoughtful and cohesive plan to ensure that the system responds to the needs of seniors, seniors as caregivers, seniors who are less and less able to provide for their daily needs.
In my riding of Laval—Les Îles, over 27,995 seniors, 15,000 of whom are women, are between 65 and 74 years of age. Thirteen thousand people are over 75 years old, and slightly over 3,000 people are more than 85. Only 920 of them are men.
Seniors have told me that they have to choose between eating and paying their electricity bills. Furthermore statistics show that 16% of women, compared to 13% of men, live in food insecurity, this difference being related to household expenses and family structure.
The majority of senior citizens are women, we all know that, women whom this government deems to be equal, as the Minister of Canadian Heritage has said. The Minister of Finance should read the Ottawa Citizen to see just how equal senior citizens are in this fine country of ours.
Budget 2007 is certainly based on the Conservative government's unreal idea of equality by the creation of a partnership fund with a miserly $20 million so there could be real action in key areas such as the economic status of women and combating violence against women and girls.
Where has the government been? Out of one side of her mouth the Minister of Status of Women says that women are equal, and the budget says that something is wrong with our economic status. So the government said to take $20 million and go and partner, in other words beg other federal departments for top ups, to improve women's economic status and reduce partner violence. None of this makes any sense, not to me anyway, and I am sure not to the 52% of women who live and work in this country.
This budget further compounds insult and injury to women of this country. The government ignored the recommendations of the federal task force on pay equity created by our Liberal government. The task force recommended the expansion of employment insurance parental leave coverage. On September 18 last year the Conservative government said no.
The government in its last budget saw fit to cut $45 million from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation budget. Various studies emphasize the link between stable, affordable housing and women's personal safety and economic participation, yet the Conservative government went so far as to reduce by $200 million in federal contributions those moneys over the previous year that would have helped to create new affordable housing.
According to the Canadian Research Institute for the Advancement of Women, abuse in the home can drive women and girls into the streets. The lack of housing puts women and girls at even further serious risk of physical and sexual violence and early death. That is Canada's not so new government. The Conservative not so new government wants women, single women, self-employed women, isolated women, women and girls who are sexually exploited, immigrant women, women who are seniors, to no doubt thank it for these handouts.
Minority linguistic communities also lose out in this budget. As the Liberal critic for la Francophonie and official languages, I feel that this government has constantly ignored Canadians in minority linguistic communities in this bilingual country.
By getting rid of the early childhood day care programs set up by the previous Liberal government the Conservatives have at the same time swept aside the principle of increasing the number of day care spaces in these communities, which was at the heart of our agreement.
This government does not see Canada as a bilingual country. These measures, even though they sound praiseworthy, do not go far enough to achieve language development results. And certainly not in two years.
As the studies show us, it takes a minimum of seven years for a language to be properly developed in a child. I am talking about language development in environments conducive to such learning. Does the government really intend to fulfil its obligations under the Action Plan for Official Languages?
In committee I heard complaints from minority linguistic communities that are worried about not being able to offer services to parents and their children in their mother tongue.
We have heard about children whose mother tongue is that of the minority—French obviously—who have to go to an English-language high school because either the provinces are not fulfilling their obligations under federal-provincial-territorial agreements, or they are not allocating the funding necessary to ensure that the programs are maintained.
Budget 2007 allocates $52 million over the next two years in preparation for the 12th Francophonie Summit, taking place in 2008. This budget is actually offering very little, indeed no incentive, for francophones in Canada who wish to move to minority linguistic communities or even to encourage newcomers from francophone countries to settle in areas of the country where French is the language of the minority community.
Thirty million dollars will not change the situation. Canada needs a strategy planned by its government that shows Canadians the importance of maintaining, promoting and developing pride in Canada, whose distinguishing characteristic as a nation is bilingualism.
That means that services and the possibility of learning both official languages should be accessible and available where Canadians are living and where newcomers choose to settle in this fine country of ours.
While there are some good initiatives in the budget, this is indeed a piecemeal approach to governing Canada. I was going to mention several of the good initiatives, but I see that my time is running out. I will just say that I will wait to see if the government does what it said it will do in the budget and clarifies the roles and responsibilities of the provinces under the labour market bilateral agreements. This cannot be underestimated.
I hope that part of the Conservative government's discussions, which I hope will also take place with business, will ensure that organizations proactively plan--