Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure tonight to talk about the estimates. I will be sharing my time with my colleague from Winnipeg Centre.
We all know that these debates are very important. For the benefit of the many Canadians who are watching at home, I would like to begin by explaining that this evening we are debating estimates. We are talking tonight about the money that is being spent, but we are also going to talk about the money that is not being spent. I expect we will hear that clearly from that side of the House by the minority Conservative government.
It is important to remind Canadians that the Conservatives inherited from our great Liberal government the best fiscal situation in the history of Canada. Back in 1993 when the Liberals took over as government from the Conservatives, what we inherited to the great surprise to those who were elected at the time was something like a $42 billion deficit. The country was almost at a point of bankruptcy for a variety of reasons. Certainly fiscal mismanagement was a big part of that.
We made a lot of commitments of things that we had wanted to do. Then we got into government and found out that it was impossible. It took years of constraints, of having to cut programs and for Canadians having to cope with all of that while we attempted to get the government out of the deficit position it was in. It was a difficult time.
In contrast to the Conservative government of today, when the Conservatives got in they found an $11 billion surplus. That is a very different thing. They had lots of money to throw around in a lot of places. That is part of the reason for the discussion tonight about some of the areas into which I would like to have seen them put some more money.
Unfortunately, the minority Conservative government has preferred to cut many of the important programs, those that were Liberal, and they will reintroduce them under the Conservative name. Whatever they are called, they were good programs. A lot of them are being reintroduced under the Conservative logo because they were good programs. We knew what the needs of Canadians were. We were out there with our full intention to meet the needs of Canadians and to give Canadian individuals and communities the necessary tools.
Many of the funding cuts made by the Conservatives, in spite of the surplus that the Conservatives had, targeted women in particular, students, many people who are in need of affordable housing and other groups for which the Conservatives have traditionally shown very little concern.
Some $5 million was cut from Status of Women Canada. This is an organization that was established by the Liberal government just a couple of years ago, in order to give women more opportunities to be advocates for the needs of women in Canada, and to make sure that women's voices were being heard loud and clear.
There was $45 million cut from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation programs. This was done at a time when we are hearing more and more about the needs for affordable housing throughout the country. We had a minister of housing under the previous Liberal government who was working with the provinces to ensure that affordable housing would be built throughout our country. We had committed around $675 million to the province of Ontario alone to build affordable housing and $45 million was cut from that.
There was $10 million cut with the elimination of the support for the Canadian volunteerism initiative. That is a really difficult one, given that volunteerism is such an important part of Canadian society today. So many people volunteer the utmost amount of hours. If we had to, we would never have enough money to pay people for all of what they do.
There was $10 million cut with the elimination of the international youth internship program. This was a wonderful opportunity for young people to travel abroad to learn more about other countries and the rest of the world.
The Conservatives cut $6 million from the Canada Firearms Centre. They cut $18 million from youth employment initiatives. We are hearing about that through the summer employment programs. There is a great need for youth employment initiatives to provide opportunities for our young people to talk about careers and focus on where they will go in the future.
There was $18 million cut from the literacy skills program. It is unbelievable the number of people who still cannot read and write in Canada. If we truly want to see people in Canada aspire to be a successful citizen, they need to be able to read and write.
To cut the money out of programs that are the fundamental basics that we need to have a successful country frankly was unbelievable.
The court challenges program, another $6 million, was looked upon as not necessary. If it was not for the court challenges program we probably would not have the Charter of Rights and Freedoms today. These cuts are from programs that are very important in the lives of Canadians.
Let us talk about child care and all the spaces that were not produced. What is early learning all about? Early learning is not about child care. Early learning is about investing in our youngsters from the very beginning so that we can plan a positive future for them. That came out as a result of a lot of work that was done across this country through a variety of agencies talking about how to ensure that our children can compete with those in countries abroad that are investing a lot of money in their children. That was the first social program specifically geared to early learning and child care that was going to put our children at a real advantage over many of the others.
A lot of evidence has proven that early learning contributes immensely to the development of children and helps to give children the best start in life. Canada needs a high quality early learning and child care system, and I am not talking about a babysitting system. Early learning is very important for our precious children to get the best possible start. They need the highest quality early learning opportunities that we can provide in order to ensure that our children can grow and prosper.
Ever since the election of the minority Conservative government, child care and early learning have suffered immensely. The Prime Minister's so-called universal child care plan is not child care. It is an allowance, much like the baby bonus that people used to receive, and it is a meagre one at that. It is taxable. It is unaccountable. Certainly it is not a plan, by any means.
The Prime Minister promised to provide funding for 125,000 new child care spaces. I can still hear the Prime Minister to this day saying how the Conservatives were going to produce 125,000 child care spaces. I have not seen one created yet. Once he got into power he so desperately wanted to cut the funds to child care. The Conservatives have not created one space that they can talk about.
The previous Liberal government had committed to give every child a good start in life. It invested $5 billion over five years for the creation of a Canada-wide system of early learning and child care based on the principles of quality, universal inclusiveness and accessibility, all very important principles.
Ten provinces had signed bilateral agreements to increase investments in early learning and child care. As a nation we were moving forward with our plans to create a new national system. Just getting 10 provinces to agree on something like that was a huge amount of work and something that we all desired. We had to give it time to come to fruition and we also had to have the money. It took that long to get it all together and organized. Sadly, the Conservative government cancelled all of the agreements and undid all of the good work that had been done.
Cutting literacy programs, as I indicated earlier, is another heartless act by the government. Literacy reaches far and wide. To foster a healthy, vibrant economy, we must ensure that our population has strong literacy skills. If Canada is to maintain its place in the world, we must improve literacy skills, especially for our most vulnerable citizens.
How can the Conservative government justify cutting $17.7 million in funding from the adult learning and literary skills program? I have not heard anybody justify it yet. The Conservatives simply say they are reinvesting it differently, and so on and so forth. I have not seen them produce a specific program to indicate they are helping adults who are suffering from literacy issues.
One of the Conservatives' targets is the Status of Women Canada which I mentioned earlier, which has long been on the hit list of social Conservatives. They cut the Status of Women's budget by $5 million, compromising the agency's ability to do important work and to allow for the advocacy of women and women's issues. The minority Conservative government's decision to close 12 regional offices of the Status of Women Canada leaving only four to serve Canadian women is reprehensible.
Canadian women are still only earning 71ยข for every dollar earned by their male counterparts. More and more women are living in poverty and we are still waiting for the government to create child care spaces. The Conservatives stood here and argued with us and said they were so proud of the 125,000 spaces they were going to create. I am looking forward to hearing, and we may hear it tonight in this discussion, where those spaces are and when we can see the official opening of those spaces.
With the closure of the regional offices of the Status of Women, the government is taking away one of the very few remaining resources for women to get the kind of assistance that they need. It will also take away the government's ability to be aware of what are the issues facing women today and what is the government's role in ensuring that women have full access to opportunity.
That is the reason these 12 offices were created across Canada. These offices were established to assist women in advocating for equality. Clearly, the Conservative government is against that goal of equality just by the kind of cuts that it is making.
This year we celebrated the 25th anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, something that I believe every one of us in this House is very proud of. The Conservatives have undermined the charter at every turn. Clearly, by cancelling the court challenges program and the Law Commission of Canada, by endangering judicial independence, and by trying to stack the courts, I do not think they believe in it at all.
A Liberal government would reverse the steps the Prime Minister has taken to weaken the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which we all stand by, which is there to defend each and every one of us.
The charter is the centrepiece of Canadian democracy. Its legacy is too precious for us to remain indifferent to those who would seek to undermine it. The Liberal opposition will not permit the charter to be weakened by a federal government not committed to keeping it accessible to the Canadian people.
We will continue to fight the cuts to the court challenges program, as there are other groups clearly doing the exact same thing because they understand the value of it. It had been cut some years back by the previous Mulroney government and I gather after about five years of protests the Conservatives reinstated the program because they realized just how important that was. For such a small amount of money of $6 million it delivers a huge amount of opportunity for people to be able to get their points across.
No wonder Canadians do not trust this government. From politicizing the public service and cancelling the court challenges program to stacking the judiciary, and undermining the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, this government's ideological attacks are designed to reshape Canada to fit its narrow neo-conservative views.
Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Speaker, to be able to join and participate in this debate tonight. It is important. Every time we talk about budgets, they are important to all of us, not only as parliamentarians but as Canadians. There is always a fair amount of benefits to the country when those budgets are there and it is important that we move forward.