Debates of April 23rd, 2007

Budget Implementation Act, 2007

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my hon. colleague, who I thought gave an inspired speech, a very simple question. The Conservative government raised taxes on the poor. Does he think that the Conservative government violated one of the basic principles of a government, that is, to care for that group which is most needy in our society, and does he not think the right thing to do would be to drop the taxes on the lowest income earners in this country?

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Mr. Speaker, obviously in the budget a year ago the Conservatives raised income taxes on people in the lowest income bracket. It was an outrageous thing and I have no excuse for it.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

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.

[Rick Dykstra, Conservative, St. Catharines, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I certainly heard a lot of ideology from the member. However, we are trying to speak to the pragmatic part of what Canadians are looking for.

I heard a lot of ideology preached today but I did not hear a lot of facts. The member spoke specifically about social housing and said that it was not in the budget. I was astounded to hear the member say that because incorporated within the context of the budget is $800 million for social housing that were allocated in the 2006 budget to be carried over two years. All of those funds, every last cent, were put into a third party trust account to ensure that it would be spent in the way it was supposed to be.

Why did the member not support that part of affordable housing, which obviously was to be invested across this country: $312 million in Ontario, for example, and millions in British Columbia?

I do not know whether the Liberal government in British Columbia has yet determined whether they should or should not be spending that money but those funds, for the last two budgets, have been allocated directly into that fund.

In terms of tax fairness, we can talk about a lot. In fact, there were measures within the budget that she and her party said they supported but are now voting against. However, speaking specifically to the point that she made about affordable housing, which is factually incorrect, it was in the 2006 budget and she can rest assured that it is there in 2007.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is thank God for the NDP that we were here to get at least that amount of money in a previous government budget and then to force the Conservatives to carry it over. I pointed out correctly that there was no new money in the federal budget to deal with the housing crisis across the country. I would correct the member on that point.

One of the things that slipped through in the budget that was of a lot of concern is that the Conservatives have fundamentally changed Canada's drug strategy. I am not talking about prescription drugs, but illicit drugs. They have basically changed the so-called four pillar approach, law enforcement, prevention, treatment and harm reduction, and have dropped harm reduction. It was buried in the budget. This should be a very alarming signal to a lot of the organizations across the country that have worked very hard on harm reduction: things like needle exchanges and the safe injection site in my riding in the downtown east side.

This brings me back to my point that this was very much an ideologically driven budget. The Conservatives have ignored real evidence that is out there in terms of what works. Whether it is on a drug strategy, on a housing investment or on public transit, they have ignored the evidence out there and have basically produced a budget that is at the very core of their political and ideological agenda.

That is why we need to get up and tell the government that its budget is a failure, that it does not work for most of the people I represent. It might contain the odd thing here and there but overall the major points in people's lives, whether it is housing, child care, jobs, EI, dealing with the drug strategy or support for women, none of those things are in the budget.

[Lloyd St. Amand, Liberal, Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the speech of the member for Vancouver East. She mentioned various groups that have been, in my phrasing, left behind as a result of the budget. She mentioned students, artists, aboriginals and a few others but she made no mention of single seniors.

All that I get from the budget is a provision for pension splitting among senior couples but nothing whatsoever in the budget which provides for single seniors. I am wondering if the member opposite agrees with that and what her thought is about that.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I concur that the issue of seniors, particularly single seniors and particularly women who live below the poverty rate--I forget what the percentage rate is but it is very high--are another part of our community who were completely overlooked in the budget.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak in the House to what I think ordinary Canadians want to see in a budget and juxtapose that with what we actually get from the government.

The budget is the foundation. It is a critical social contract that any government has with its citizens. What we have seen in this budget is a contract that seems to have been broken.

I listened carefully to one of the government members who asked about supporting the budget because of affordable housing. I am glad my colleague from Vancouver set the record straight. If we had not been here in this place to ensure corporate tax cuts were not put at the front of the line ahead of affordable housing, many of our citizens would not have any supports at all for affordable housing.

When Conservatives say that we should have supported the budget, the last budget or this budget, because of the money for affordable housing, it would be laughable if it were not so serious. The fact is that the government has no interest in investing public dollars in things like affordable housing.

We need to recall that in the last budget at the last hour the government put money into trusts for things like affordable housing for aboriginal peoples and first nations. The government wanted to get a deal from us to support it on the budget if it would commit to keeping the money that was already committed and put it into the next year's budget. Of course we said no because the money was already there. It then put it ahead into the budget.

That is the real story on the government and affordable housing. It is just taking money from Bill C-48 and putting it in place and saying that it has actually done something. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is abandoning people on the issue of affordable housing and that affects all of us.

If we look at what is missing in the budget, it is long term care and home care for seniors. I have spent the last couple of months going door to door in seniors' residences in the downtown area here. It is appalling. We have seniors who are abandoned. They are not getting the care they need when they need it. They get one level of government giving a pittance of support and another level of government taking it away. They are tired of that. They are tired of government not being there for them.

Families are being squeezed. I had a gentleman come into my office just two weeks ago. He is feeling the squeeze on his income as he tries to help his mother. He needs to be there for her because no one else is. He does not begrudge supporting her but he is wondering where his government is, the government to which he pays taxes. He wants the services for the taxes that he pays. I want to be very clear. He does not want another tax cut. What he has been saying to me is that before we start into more tax cuts he wants to see home care, pharmaceutical care and support for his mother. He would like a nurse to see his mother, not for any luxurious kind of visit but for basic primary care. He is not getting that from his government and we are not getting it from the budget, which is why we cannot support it.

When we look at how the government is treating seniors, it is not good enough to say that they have a deduction here and a deduction there when the core services that they need in their community are not there for them now.

With all due respect to the government, before it comes to this place and passes out another tax cut, it should take an inventory of what is going on in the communities. Before it proposes another tax cut, it should take a look at the waiting lists for housing, the waiting lists for long term care and the waiting list for home care and tell my constituents, tell the seniors in my community that it is good enough that they get up to an hour a week. It also should not fob it off on the provinces because that is the politics of shame when it does that.

When we look at what is in it for seniors, the budget fails. When we look at housing, it fails. When we look at students, it is interesting. We need to look at the bookends of our society, those who helped build this country and now need our support. They were there for us when they helped put this country together and built our communities.

Let us look at the other bookend, the students. I paid $1,200 for my tuition. If we were to ask the students in my constituency who are attending Carleton University or the University of Ottawa how much they are paying for tuition, it would blow us away. Tuition is from $5,000 to $6,000.

What are we doing for young people to get post-secondary education, or training for jobs, or just a hand up to help them move along in terms of the next step in their lives, which is education? We are failing them. The budget contains nothing of any substance for them and that is not good enough for them. It is also not good enough for their parents who are being squeezed.

As we have mentioned in our party, the prosperity gap is ever widening. We are talking about people who are on the margins, who are falling off the table, and not only them. What is stunning is that we are seeing our middle class being squeezed so that they are now having to make very difficult choices and often, as members will appreciate in this so-called sandwich generation, are making choices on who to help, their senior parents or their sons or daughters who are trying to make it in university or post-secondary education. That is not right.

When we had a $13 billion surplus without a debate about where that money would go, it was absolutely wrong. We could do better. We should do better and this budget does not do better.

I recall the former government and that party at the time asking where the debate was on where the surplus would go. They were high and they were mighty but where are those words now? They are gone. They have evaporated at the cost of those who are most vulnerable in our society. We can do better.

When we sit around the kitchen table and talk about what is important in our families, do we look at the hole in the roof of our home and say that we should go build a white picket fence? No. We deal with what is important. We deal with the hole in the roof. We have a hole in our roof and it is called the prosperity gap and that hole is getting ever bigger and wider. The government seems to think it is fine so it will put a toll on the road outside, hand us a nickel and say that it is fine. Well it is not fine. It is not good economics and it is not sound investment. It is very poor policy.

I will now turn to where this budget fails, not just for seniors and young people, but on the infrastructure of this country, I will just turn to our cities. It is very clear, from mayors of small towns, big towns and big cities that our government needs to do more. It needs to do more to build the infrastructure to make our cities livable and make them environmentally more sustainable.

We should not have to wait for a health advisory before we send our children out to play but that is what is happening. My colleague from Windsor told me horrific stories about kids not being able to go outside on some days because of the quality of the air. We could have done something about that. We could have had a transportation policy that would have helped all our kids and all our citizens in the long term but hat is not in this budget.

Quite frankly, the fact that people can write off their bus passes, which we had to ensure the government fixed because it messed that up too, is not good enough because these buses are not going far enough. This city does not have a train because the government would not support our the light rail plan.

We need to see more substantive commitments and better commitments, which is why our party cannot support the government's budget.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development]

Mr. Speaker, I am surprised when the member says we have not done anything for education. Our party has spent more on education than any government has. Just this year we have proposed to increase the Canada social transfer by $800 million per year beginning in 2008-09 to ensure that the provinces have the resources they need to maintain and strengthen Canada's colleges and universities, including better access. We also raised the minimum amount of the Canada education savings grant, which goes directly to help poorer families.

Another initiative of the government that certainly helps a lot of people is our national anti-drug strategy. As the member knows, drugs cause many problems among poorer families and many families in my province and on the streets. In fact, it is his party which suggests that is why there is so much homelessness: because we do have some huge problems with crystal meth and other illicit drugs. We have taken that under our control with an anti-drug strategy.

Some of the things that party has asked us for we have implemented in our budget, but we have done it with a strategy and a focus so that we are going to help the real people, the real people who will benefit the most from it. The money will not go just to governments, for example, just like our universal child care benefit goes directly to the child.

The government is addressing education and the drug strategy. I think the member has become carried away with rhetoric when he speaks about what we are not doing.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think I was carried away with rhetoric when I talked about how much I paid in tuition. I am not sure what the member paid in tuition. Maybe she would have an opportunity to tell us and compare it with what students are paying right now. Did she pay more than $1,200 a year? Perhaps, but the reality is that right now students are paying $6,000 a year for tuition. That is a fact. That is not rhetoric. The member can ask any student.

The other issue the member brought up was the fact of passing this money on to people, “real people”, as she called them. I am not sure what she meant by that, perhaps to distinguish them from other people, I suppose. As for the money that is being passed on for child care, my colleague from Toronto has pointed out that it is not real child care. In fact, what many people are waking up to now is that this money that was supposed to be there for child care is actually being taxed back.

Finally, if she wants to talk about a drug strategy, let us talk about why people turn to drugs. They do not turn to drugs because everything is going well in their lives. We have to take a look at the social determinants of health. These people do not have a job. They do not have a place to live. They may not have the supports within their community. That is one of the indicators of health. That is one of the ways to fight drug abuse.

How about having some nurses and public health officials, real people, if I may quote her, to be there for them when they need that help? They are not in our communities. They are not in our schools. We need those public health nurses there. That requires real commitment from the government and that is not in this budget.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I know that the member for Ottawa Centre and I have similar ridings in that we both have large immigrant populations. He will know that Statistics Canada recently reported that the prosperity gap for immigrants is increasing in Canada. It is now over three times as likely that an immigrant will live in poverty in Canada.

One of the things this budget does is promise more money around the issue of international credential recognition, but what it does is put forward some money toward a referral agency. I find that a little insulting to the people who are struggling to have their credentials recognized and work at the professions that they were called to and have been trained for and have experience in. They have knocked on every door in this country to try to find work in their field and have been denied at every step along the way. They do not need a referral agency. They need some real help. I wonder if the member could comment on that issue.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have failed in this regard. We understood there was going to be a strategy that would be comprehensive. Sadly, as the member has pointed out, it is a referral service. The men and women who need this help need more than--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Thunder Bay—Rainy River.

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, this budget of 700 pages should have said a lot, but what it does not say also speaks volumes.

I am going to address some remarks today to regional economic expansion, particularly for Ontario with regard to the FedNor program.

When I was mayor of the city of Thunder Bay and also president of the Northwestern Ontario Municipal Association during particularly difficult times in the 1990s, regional economic expansion programs such as FedNor were essentially in many cases the only economic activity for many communities during those difficult years and certainly the only source of support.

Recently, the province of Ontario, and I recognize the province for coming through, has allocated more resources through a program known as the heritage fund. Nonetheless, when we try to compare what that means province by province, territory by territory and regional program by regional program, we find that regional economic expansion is not mentioned in the budget. We can compare Ontario's $60 million from its heritage fund versus a $36 million funding program from FedNor, which has been reduced by $5 million from what it was the year previously.

We know that these programs are essentially the catalyst for economic diversification and growth in many areas. Let us talk about what not restoring the budget cut means. Most of Ontario's municipalities are eligible for FedNor. There is a total of 446 municipalities in Ontario, of which roughly 420 would have populations of less than 250,000, so we are talking about a huge number of municipalities that are simply going to have to compete for relatively small amounts of money. With decision making now left in the minister's hands, it really emphasizes the need for a full time minister for this particular portfolio.

When people read that budget of close to 700 pages and do not see any mention of this whatsoever, they get a little nervous. We cannot blame anybody for feeling that way because people who understand regional economics know that underutilization of a resource is as bad as the underfunding that accompanies it.

FedNor itself is what one could describe as under-resourced. An appropriate response in the past budget would have been to restore the money that was cut and indeed ensure that there was more local authority so that we could see some of these larger projects in the half a million dollar range. This really is the time in the regions and the small communities of Canada for the government to not only get more involved but to restore the confidence and commitment that it used to have.

This of course is not a complaint about the field staff. We have excellent field staff across northern Ontario. Indeed, the federal definition of northern Ontario extends into the southern Ontario Muskokas, whereas provincially it is at the French River.

I am not complaining about the fact that as an MP I do not get invited to or notified of the announcements. It is the business community that is coming to me and saying that businesses cannot wait for 15 months or 18 months for notification of whether they have been successful or not or whether it is going ahead or not. These time delays have now become unconscionable. The budget should have addressed this.

No decisions means that business and non-governmental organizations are wallowing in an era of not knowing and that is very difficult. If there is one thing that I can impress on the government side today it is that the Conservatives must realize that in small communities a little actually goes a very long way, and that kind of support would be very helpful.

As I have been touring northern Ontario and talking to people, the business community says it does not need any more worries and uncertainty. With the budget not mentioning the regions, it means that these communities need to be reassured. It is time for us in government to recognize the needs of regions and to recognize that governments really should not be excluding these major parts of our country.

Diversification is talked about throughout the budget, but if the tools are not there for small communities to utilize, how is government going to help these communities get through that transition?

When I was president of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, I was part of the team that lobbied the federal government and the provincial government to ensure that gas taxes were utilized for communities large and small. In Ontario, we were successful in having the government allocate 2¢ per litre for public transit, a very significant contribution. Each municipality using it is very grateful for it.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities lobbied for a share of the gas tax to go into infrastructure or into those projects deemed worthwhile by communities. The second component of that was the GST rebate. The third part, of course, was infrastructure funding, and one of the concerns is that we do not see this in the budget.

Although there is reference to some continuation of this funding, what municipalities need and have been asking for is that it be permanent so they can plan long range knowing this funding is not going to end in three or four years. They have to be able to plan further ahead because many of their projects, such as their water systems and the revamping of waste treatment plants, are very capital intensive. These become very large commitments and are very demanding in terms of time.

My riding of Thunder Bay--Rainy River extends from Lake Superior to the Manitoba boarder, which means driving 7.5 hours over two time zones. We have 27 communities. When people in my riding see that the previous allocation of $298 million over three years had to address somewhere in the vicinity of 420 municipalities, we can see that there was a vast concern that there would not be enough to warrant supporting the municipalities with infrastructure deficits.

Let us address it in that way. The cost of applying for even that limited amount of money means that small communities that do not have the resources to pay for engineers and designers in the first place are essentially saying that if they had money they would do it but they do not have the money, and now they have been reduced to what is essentially a lottery system.

People who are applying want the federal government to apply a fair funding formula. There was a gap. I believe that almost all members here, whether they represent an urban or rural area, or a hybrid of those, understand that municipalities are applying because they have determined needs. They are not applying just for the fun of it. This means that we have to eliminate the lottery system and get into some sort of priority system, because for a municipality that applies in year one for funding and does not get it and still does not get it in year three, that does not help it repair the bridge it wants repaired. I am asking the minister to reconsider that.

Just as important for pockets of the country, although many of the urban people may have a difficult time understanding this, high speed broadband is something that all Canadians deserve in much the same way as we expect effective telephone service. We have now come into an era where it is almost indispensable for business, for health and for education. That need also is a glaring gap in the budget.

For all the good things in a surplus budget, there are some things that still need to be addressed. I ask the government to reconsider them.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that was an excellent speech by my hon. colleague. I have a fairly simple question for him.

When the Conservative government came to power it made what I think was a massive financial blunder. It actually dropped the GST, a consumption tax, then raised the lowest tax and also lowered the basic personal exemption. Most economists would say that reducing a consumption tax is one of the most inefficient ways of stimulating the economy. A much better idea is to keep money in people's pockets.

Does my colleague not think a much more intelligent idea that the government should have adopted would have been to reduce the lowest tax rate from 15.5% to 15%, which is what we did, or lower it further and raise the basic personal exemption, rather than the blunder of decreasing the GST, which is a very costly and inefficient way of attempting to stimulate the economy?

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, one thing about the value added taxes around the world is that their goal is essentially to assist the lowest income levels. By reducing them so they do not actually help, or say a person who buys a Mercedes for $100,000 ends up paying less tax than someone who buys a lower priced vehicle, then we are defeating the whole purpose of value added taxes such as the GST.

A number of people have come to my office and said that they thought the taxes had been lowered but theirs had gone up. The fact that taxes went up from 15% to 15.5% really shocked many people. Those are the people who walk to my office and probably do not even take a bus. They certainly do not drive there. They can see the difference quite tangibly.

For someone who has a lower income .5%, it is a great deal of money. We have to understand that these people really budget their money accordingly. For them, it is very difficult to try to understand what the effect of a large scale GST cut will mean when it affects them directly in a very personal way.

From an environmental standpoint, I also believe value added taxes such as the GST kept at its previous level would have been more helpful in addressing many of the concerns we have.

[Bill Siksay, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, one aspect of the budget that concerns me greatly is the facilitation of the entry of temporary foreign workers into Canada. The government has sunk a lot of money in the budget into expediting that process, making it easier for temporary foreign workers to come to Canada to work, but there is no guarantee that Canadians will get first crack at the jobs available in Canada.

There is nothing, for instance, that ensures the mobility of Canadian workers to travel across the country to take up a job in another part of Canada. There is the whole problem of flawed labour market studies, which do not estimate the availability of Canadian workers properly and overinflate the need for foreign workers.

There is also the problem of temporary foreign workers often being some of the most exploited workers in our country. We have a long history of that. Employment and workplace standards are not well policed for temporary foreign workers. There is nothing in the budget to ensure that with increased numbers of foreign workers coming here those standards are going to be maintained.

I do not think anybody wants to see projects not being completed because there are no workers to do the job, but should Canadians not get first crack at those jobs and should there not be something in the budget to ensure that happens?

[Ken Boshcoff, Liberal, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the question is valid because over the course of time in meeting with representatives from national Canadian unions and labour groups trying to move skilled workers from province to province, they are finding different standards and having difficulties getting them transferred.

The question in terms of unskilled workers is as valid because there are probably enough people in the country who would willingly move to other places for employment should they get the type of assistance that should be addressed in the budget. By that I mean some kind of mobility allowance, retraining and assistance. If there is an obvious need and we have to go to the length of advertising in other countries when we know we have unemployment rates of 6% and 7% and sometimes higher in some of the regions, it is the regions that suffer—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Windsor West.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to the budget. It is very important for Canadians to look at the budget in a holistic sense. At the same time, with only 10 minutes, I will focus my comments around manufacturing and, in particular, the auto industry.

It is important for me to acknowledge that not everything is bad in the budget, but there are so many problems with it that it is not worthy of support and it is not what Canadians expected. We did not expect to see a government so quickly adopt its predecessor's tactics of withdrawing from any type of vision of what Canada can be and where we will go in the next century.

It is important to note on the manufacturing side that plenty of warning signs have been out there. Since November 2002, approximately 250,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost in Canada. This is billions of dollars of annual tax revenue, not only from the companies, but also the workers. When workers lose their job in the manufacturing sector, the Canadian Labour Congress, was apt to point this out, they usually lose about 25% of their income when they try to find another job.

I know the government members have been attempting to concoct a type of strategy around the environment, one that placates some people and one that they feel they can sell to Canadians, but it is not working. The most recent was the Minister of the Environment who put out a doomsday scenario that manufacturing would lose. At the same time he has been a wilful part of the government not addressing the manufacturing sector.

It is important that I not only criticize, but that I offer solutions as well. That is what happened with the industry, science and technology committee. Committee members took a full year to study the issues under manufacturing. We understood that the industry was hemorrhaging losses, that workers were feeling more discontent with their future. They felt there was an opportunity that would be lost, and we witnessed job after job loss.

We expected the budget to reflect some of the recommendations that we unanimously supported. That meant we all had to compromise. It takes a lot of will, a lot of effort, but it shows the gravity of the seriousness in the manufacturing sector when all political parties, despite their ideologies, their backgrounds and their political manoeuvring, decide to come together and bring forward a unanimous report with over 22 recommendations.

Those recommendations were put forth to the government to act upon and not a one of them was recommended, not one, despite the unanimous support of the committee that tabled the document in a minority Parliament. What type of totalitarian government do we have that will not even listen to the democratic will of members of Parliament as opposed to lobbyists?

It is unfortunate. There was one half measure and it was a capital cost reduction allowance. It is a very good thing and it needs to be done, but it is for two years. I put in a specific amendment for five years, which would be reviewed for a potential further five years. What did the Conservatives do? They did not act on it. I do not understand that we have all the evidence in front of us and they only provided it for two years.

In particular, the auto industry is suffering quite significantly right now. In Windsor, Ontario my constituents go home every single night with a more uncertain future. DaimlerChrysler is looking to spin off the Chrysler division. Ford is not making renewed investment when the timetable shows that it should. General Motors, because of the budget and because of the government's decision to continue to pursue a deal with South Korea that will put the auto industry on the auction block, has put its investments on hold.

That is what has happened. It is unfortunate because good things are happening in our plants. Good workers are in those plants. Value added jobs are in our plants. Conservatives have ignored that. They have gone with the ideological point that it will give general corporate tax reductions, but that is not what is necessary.

We have seen incentives to some of these plants to try to keep them here, but ironically sometimes those incentives result in less jobs because there is no strategy. The most recent, the most egregious one was the fee bates that were introduced in the budget.

I will go through 10 reasons why these fee bates are very curious and problematic. We all want a greener community. We all want a greener economy. We have been pushing for a green auto strategy for years now, one done with the CAW and other vested partner groups, including the automotive manufacturers. They have looked at our information. These issues are very important.

These are the fee bate policy flaws.

The first is it damages domestic automakers. There would be $67 million of levies on domestic vehicles, which is 80% of all levies collected, and it would transfer $47 million in benefits to Toyota, with 75% of the rebates to Toyota, almost half of all the fee bates go to the Yaris.

Almost all the fee bates we have right now will go to one particular model of a car made overseas. I do not know why any Canadian sitting at the dinner table right now wants to see their taxpaying money going to Seoul, Beijing and Korea. I do not know anybody who wants that, but that is what will happen. The Yaris, in particular, will really benefit. Happy to be Toyota, too bad to be anybody else.

The second is it damages the Canadian subcompact market. A thousand dollars per Yaris makes up almost half of all rebates. It undermines the ability of other dealers and manufacturers to sell equally beneficial subcompacts competitively.

What that means is, with a low-end vehicle like the Yaris and other subcompacts, there is little or less margin for profit, so the $1,000 is a bigger economic incentive than if the vehicle is a higher price. We are actually putting some of our Canadian vehicles in a wider gap of problems to compete with that vehicle because it has the $1,000 rebate. It is significant. They cannot make it up. In fact, I think Volvo is looking at disabling some of its safety equipment so it can get a little more fuel efficiency and qualify for the fee bate. That is not right. That is done without public policy. Why are we forcing people to choose between safety and fuel efficiency? Why not have a public policy that does both?

The third is it is a disincentive to Canadian green technology. The policy levies a $1,000 to $2,000 tax on Canadian made advanced technology engines, cylinder deactivation, yet it offers a $1,000 rebate for an imported conventional gasoline Yaris vehicle without any significant advanced technology.

That is important because cylinder deactivation, which is a Canadian innovation, is something that reduces more greenhouse gas emissions because it gets to some of the higher polluter vehicles. Therefore, we are getting to the lower end hanging fruit, which we can get right away, and punishing Canadian technology. I do not understand that.

The fourth is it hurts suburban families. Levies of up to $4,000 per vehicle are passed on to suburban/rural families purchasing these larger vehicles, which offer needed utility. We know there is a disincentive, for example, for those families that require those larger vehicles for their personal and other businesses as opposed to moving for a greener technology that would fix this.

The fifth is it will not impact segment choices. In terms of the market, the fee bates will not shift the actual public policy to producing and purchasing smaller vehicles.

The March report for vehicle production, manufacturing and selling is out today. Interestingly enough, after the introduction of the fee bate program, luxury SUVs are up 15.1% and large SUVs are up 8.6%. We have a policy that has not even moved in the direction it is supposed to move. There are all kinds of issues. I know the list has been interesting in terms of monitoring. Cars go up on the list on the website then they go off. It is unacceptable.

The New Democrats, and it is important that I conclude with a couple of points about this, have been asking for a green auto strategy, one that looks at procuring the jobs in our own communities. Investment is important and it can be value added. This is why we supported the capital cost reduction allowance for machinery and equipment for five years instead of the two years. Right now those companies have pretty well decided upon the two year window.

The fact is the oil and gas sector gets 100% for another eight years. Manufacturing, which is being obliterated by a high dollar and bad trade policies that the government is pursuing, only gets 50% for two years. The oil and gas sector is booming. Then the other manufacturing sectors, aerospace, textiles, get 100%. We are asking for good sound public policy, public policy that looks at trade issues, manufacturing issues and ensures that if we give incentives, they get to the workers' floor so our workers can compete fairly. They are only asking for that.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about the incentives for vehicles. There was a story about an incentive for a vehicle that would not even have access to the proper fuel to take advantage of that.

Because the member comes from an auto constituency, could he comment on that?

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the interesting thing about the ethanol pursuit is there are only two stations where we can get E-85 to actually put into vehicles. It is amazing that we do not have the infrastructure to provide the facilities to get cleaner fuel.

Interestingly enough, the government has also let the oil and gas sector off the hook on standards. Canada does not have any standards. There are standards in the United States. On top of that, the U.S. is investing in the infrastructure, the fuelling stations, to get the cleaner technology and fuels. That is being done through a series of incentives. The U.S. is also making the oil and gas industry come to the table.

When we did our manufacturing study it was interesting. Canada's oil and gas sector in terms of its profits puts back less than 1% into research and development. That is less than 1% for research and development from our most profitable industry. It is unacceptable. Canadians deserve better than that.

[Colin Carrie, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I was amazed to hear the member's opening comments, because I had the pleasure of attending numerous meetings across the country with the member during our manufacturing study.

As the member mentioned correctly, recommendations were put forth by the committee to the Minister of Finance. Where the member is incorrect is that the Minister of Finance has actually taken the recommendations of the unanimous report that the member supported and out of the 22 recommendations, he has addressed most of them in the new budget.

I want to ask the member if he actually read the budget and took the time to look at the recommendations. It is unprecedented that a Minister of Finance has listened to a committee and virtually implemented most of the recommendations in a unanimous report.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would differ with my colleague on the industry committee. If we look at the recommendations and compare them to the budget, we would find rhetoric around some of those issues, and there is no doubt about that.

Implementing some of those measures did not happen. I did not see anything about the South Korea trade deal. I did not see a whole series of things for which we advocated. The most obvious one is the capital cost reduction allowance. Why would the Conservatives move that from a five year recommendation to a two year recommendation? I do not understand that.

I do not understand how the oil and gas industry continues to get the best all the time, not just once, twice or three times, but all the time, while in manufacturing we are hemorrhaging job losses right now. We are not telling manufacturers that they can come forward with a plan for two, three, four, five years, protect the workers, protect the sector, protect the jobs now and we will be there with them.

It is more than just automotive. Tool and die, for example, is another group that requires some type of support system now because of unfair trade practices. The government did not touch that.

The most important thing we have to get our heads around is that we can do things in our country if we want to, but most important, we have to stop undermining ourselves by subscribing to international obligations which hurt our workers directly. The first thing we have to do is protect ourselves from injurious trade deals that have cost us so much already.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has done a lot of work to protect the jobs in his community. I would like him to talk about what we need to do in order to produce value added jobs and to protect the jobs that we have.