Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate you on your re-appointment to the Speaker's chair. I thought you did a good job in the last Parliament and I am looking forward to working under your guidance in this Parliament.
I want to thank my colleague, the member for Edmonton—Strathcona, for sharing her time with me this morning. It is a real honour to do that. I am really excited by the fact that she is with us in this place and will bring her wealth of knowledge and experience to the debates that we will have and contribute in a very positive and exciting way to the development of this new economy that I know we have the potential to put in place in Canada.
She reflects, in very wonderful ways, the great wealth of talent that we as New Democrats have welcomed to our caucus after the last election. There are 11 new members from across the country with experience and knowledge that will only benefit this place and the country in some important ways.
I would like to mention a couple of items. I googled the member for Edmonton—Strathcona before I came to deliver my speech this morning and she is a powerhouse. She has an unbelievable background of experience in her own province of Alberta, nationally and internationally. I will share with the House a couple of things she has done.
She held a senior portfolio as the chief of enforcement for Environment Canada. She founded Alberta's Environmental Law Centre. She served at the international level as head of law and enforcement for the North American Commission for Environmental Cooperation. She spent four years working with Canadian, American and Mexican officials. She served as a senior legal advisor to Indonesia, Bangladesh and Jamaica in instituting programs for effective environmental enforcement for CIDA, Asian Development Bank and World Bank funded projects. This is just the tip of the iceberg to indicate the contribution that the member will make in this place as she fulfills her role as environment critic for the NDP caucus and on behalf of our leader.
I also want to say how pleased I am to be back in this place after the election. It was a tough and hard-fought election. We all worked hard. I dare say that the candidates who ran against me ran good campaigns. It was a clean election and one that we all came out of feeling better about the politics and democracy in this country.
I am just happy that I was the one who came first past the post and that I am able to be here today to speak on behalf of my wonderful city of Sault Ste. Marie in the district of Algoma. It is a riding that is diverse in the ways people make a living and how they take care of each other as a community. It is very important. It is an industrial city with steel, paper and wood. To the east of the city, we have communities that are served by agriculture and farming, and to the north of the city we have the wonderful forestry which is in so much difficulty these days. It is an industry that we have taken advantage of, enjoy and love so much. Lake Superior is in our back yard.
I want to take a few minutes this morning to share a few thoughts that were indicated in the Speech from the Throne, however so briefly, when the government indicated that it understood that it was elected as part of a minority Parliament. I present my thoughts in the spirit of co-operation, which is what I have heard from the government members across the way as they have given their speeches in response to the Speech from the Throne.
In fact, I give my thoughts in the spirit of co-operation because the minister is here today. I will be the critic of that minister's department over the next however number of years that we get to be in this Parliament. When I approached her a couple of days ago to tell her that I would be her critic, she offered to work co-operatively with me and I thank her for that. I say very publicly this morning in this place that I offered to do the same in the interests of the people we all serve. My thoughts will reflect that in just a couple of minutes.
I think I would be remiss if I did not put on the record how disappointed I was with the vision presented in the Speech from the Throne and how disappointed collectively we as New Democrats were with that vision.
No bold picture has been painted as to where we might go as a country over the next couple of years, as we deal with this very difficult economic situation and global meltdown coming at us. We were disappointed with the stay-the-course, steady-as-she-goes, more tax breaks, less government approach to which the government seems so attached. We hope we can help it see some different approaches over the next while as we work together.
Personally, because my critic area is poverty and social policy, I was very disappointed that there was absolutely no mention of poverty in the Speech from the Throne. As everybody knows, in a difficult economy and even in good times, when government makes a shift in a direction that reduces services, reduces government and gives tax breaks to people who are more wealthy, the people who are hit hardest and first are the poor in our communities.
I say that in a spirit of hopefulness. Over the last few days, the Prime Minister has recognized that we might be heading into a recession. It is good that he is willing to say that very publicly, because he has not said that up until now. We hope, in recognizing we have a recession coming at us and the impact that will have particularly on those who are most risk and vulnerable, he will work with his treasurer, his Minister of Finance, and his Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to bring forward programs that will help those who need them most.
I present a few strategies that could be adopted if the government is serious about working co-operatively with us on this side of the House. I invite the government to work with all of us in opposition to fix a few things that could immediately affect the lives of a number of our fellow citizens, neighbours, family members who are losing their jobs as we speak this morning because of the downturn in the economy.
The government, the Prime Minister and his ministers need to poverty-proof our communities. We need to stabilize our communities. We need to move away from the notion that somehow more tax cuts is the answer to everything.
It is very easy because we have all studied it. We actually have studied it to death. The member from Nova Scotia who sits with me on the Standing Committee on Human Resources and Social Development will agree to this as well. We could do it today. We could move expeditiously to reform the employment insurance system, which, as we speak, only now serves to help less than 25% of those who lose their jobs. Hundreds of thousands of people who pay into employment insurance through their employment and work hard expect that fund will be there for them. However, when they apply for it, they find out that they do not qualify or if they do qualify, there is really very little there compared to what was there 10 or 15 years ago and what is there lasts such a short period of time. We need to move quickly. We are all committed to that on this side of the House. We invite the government to work with us to reform the EI system.
I believe the money is there. If we are to be going into deficit spending anyway, we need to be spending money in those areas. Government has a no more fundamental responsibility than to look after those citizens in its jurisdiction who are most at risk and vulnerable. We could move, if we wanted, to use the money we have at our disposal to put in place a more generous child tax credit so families with children do not have to make those very difficult decisions of whether to pay the rent, feed the kids or put fuel in their tanks to heat their homes.
I would ask the government to consider, again in keeping with the need to invest in infrastructure, a national housing program. When we talk to people who deal with poverty and look at poverty, the first thing they say is that we have a lack of affordable housing right now for people.
I hope I have put on the table a few simple things on which the government could work with us. We on this side of the House are committed to making these happen. If it does, it will reflect the co-operation, good spirit and seriousness needed to deal with this very difficult time coming at us. We need to do something significant about it.