Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today with an opportunity to speak to the budget implementation bill, especially from the perspective of residents of east Vancouver.
A budget is a test and measure for any government. To me a budget is about who gains and who loses. When we look at the Conservative budget that was brought out a couple of months ago, it was very clear that many Canadians felt they had lost. When we look at a riding like east Vancouver and see some of the pressing issues that people are dealing with on a daily basis, there was really nothing in the budget that helped people.
It strikes me as a massive contradiction that on the one hand we can spend billions of dollars in Afghanistan, I think more than $4 billion to date, on a war that is simply unwinnable, a mission that is totally wrong for Canada, yet we can ignore pressing issues in our own country, such as homelessness or lack of affordable housing.
British Columbia is getting ready for the Olympics in 2010. There is certainly a lot of pride and activity taking place, but there is also a lot of concern that as we approach the Olympics things are going to get very expensive, that we do not have the right kind of investment in our social infrastructure and that a lot of people are going to get left behind.
One of the recent initiatives that took place was a remarkable process that brought together representatives of government, the city, NGOs, local community groups and business. It was the 2010 B.C. in the city housing table that looked at issues around the Olympics, with particular focus on housing.
It was remarkable that this diverse group of organizations and different interests came together and agreed that for the 2010 Olympics we needed to build a minimum of 3,200 units of social and affordable housing in the city of Vancouver. If it is not done, then we are going to see a real tragedy take place. Already homelessness has doubled in Vancouver in the GVRD over the last few years.
I raise this because to me housing is a very basic human right. Housing is a very basic issue that affects Canadians. If there is no adequate, safe, affordable, secure housing, then pretty well everything else in one's life is going to go wrong. It is a basic thing that needs to be there.
When we look at the fact that homelessness has actually doubled and there are many more tens of thousands of people who are threatened to be or are on the verge of being homeless, then to me it is simply astounding that in the last federal budget put forward by the Conservative government there was no new money for an affordable housing strategy. There was no new money for even a housing strategy that would have focused on the so-called marketplace, nevermind co-op or social housing, which I know the Conservatives generally are ideologically opposed to.
This is a very glaring omission in the Conservative budget and it is something that concerns us greatly, not only in my own community of east Vancouver but in British Columbia generally. Even the B.C. Liberal government has woken up to the reality to some extent on the housing crisis in British Columbia. It recently announced a number of initiatives that would begin to at least take some initial steps to deal with the housing crisis that is going to loom greater and greater as we approach the 2010 Olympics.
The large question that people have is this. Where is the federal government? Why is the federal government not at the table providing a strategy and the funding complement to ensure that people are not sleeping on the street, that people are not paying 40%, 50% and 60% of their incomes on housing, and that people have the right access to secure, safe and affordable housing?
That is one very severe problem with this budget. On the one hand it is spending billions of dollars in Afghanistan, continuing with $8 billion corporate tax cuts, and yet it is not focusing any money to a basic need such as housing.
Let us be very clear; it is not a lack of fiscal capacity. The federal government is rolling in cash. We have seen a $13 billion surplus last year. We have seen a $5 billion surplus this year. The last two Conservative budgets are very ideologically driven. They are driven in terms of offering a few tax incentives. They are driven in terms of providing a few individual incentives, but they do nothing to eliminate the growing inequities that we see in our society where the gap between poverty and wealth is getting bigger and bigger.
A budget is an opportunity for any government, but particularly the federal government, to look at that big picture, to look at that macro picture, to look at the fact that we have lost 250,000 manufacturing jobs since 2002, to look at the fact that we have a housing crisis, to look at the fact that most women in this country find it harder to keep pace, and most families find it harder to keep pace because they cannot find child care and if they do, they cannot afford it.
Those are some of the measures and it is very disappointing, which is an understatement, to see that this federal budget did not address any of those questions. Most of the groups that I know and work with in my riding have been struggling even to keep going. Many of them faced a lot of difficulties in even knowing if they would receive the limited funds to continue in the new fiscal year, whether it was arts groups, housing groups who rely on emergency housing programs, or women's programs.
Even at that very basic front line service delivery level, many organizations have been thrown into near crisis because they could not get a clear answer as to whether or not their very small operating funds were actually going to come through under the Conservative government. That is a pretty sad state of affairs.
In the aboriginal community there are many organizations that are really struggling to make ends meet. The demands that they face in terms of providing emergency programs, shelter programs, training programs are enormous. The need out there in the community is simply enormous. In the 10 years that I have been an MP, whether under the Liberal government and now under the Conservative government, we have seen these demands get bigger and bigger. What has happened in this country is that the social safety net that people used to be very proud of, not only does it have holes in it but it is really now non-existent.
There are many artists in east Vancouver. There is nothing in this budget, even a simple thing like tax averaging that would give artists a little bit of a break.
Within the NDP we voted against the budget because we thought it was a dismal failure. It was not placing priorities where they needed to be. It is a budget that is clearly directed toward corporate elites in this country. It is not a budget that is directed toward meeting the needs that people have on a daily basis, whether it is health care, drug costs, housing, child care, support for aboriginal people, dealing with children's programs, and the list goes on and on, not to mention students.
How long have we stood in the House and talked about the terrible situation that students face where their debt load has increased and tuition has tripled in the last 15 years. Again this would have been an opportunity for the federal government to take some real concrete steps in saying that if we believe in our future generation, we are going to make sure that post-secondary education is accessible. Unfortunately, it is becoming less and less accessible because the federal government has moved away from supporting post-secondary education.
I have to say that from the point of view of my local community, from the point of view of a national perspective and even our international obligations, this budget gets a failing grade and that is why we are opposing it.