Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time this afternoon with the member for Vancouver East.
When I stated in the House a couple of days ago that I could not support the Speech from the Throne, I did so because the throne speech laid out an agenda for this Parliament that completely ignored the concerns of hard-working Canadians in this time of unprecedented economic uncertainty. It did not address their fears about lost jobs, lost pension benefits, lost EI benefits and lost savings. As an agenda for economic recovery, the throne speech was a lost cause.
The right-wing hecklers on the government side tried to shout us down. They said that a detailed economic plan would be inappropriate in a throne speech. They said that we should wait until Thursday, when the economic update would be tabled. That would be the time for action on the economy, they said. That would be the time for bold strategic measures that would offer hope to Canadians. That would be the time, they led us to believe, that the Minister of Finance would morph into a northern Obama, vigourously attacking the economic crisis and protecting Canadian families from its ravages.
Yesterday the finance minister attacked all right, but instead of attacking the recession, he attacked democracy, he attacked workers, he attacked women and he attacked seniors. Of all of those attacks, his attack on democracy, I suspect, is perhaps the least sexy for those watching this debate on television this afternoon. After all, party financing is insider baseball and hardly tops most Canadians' list of concerns, so let me dispose of that one quickly.
Jean Chrétien knew the Liberal Party was hugely dependent on donations from large corporations to finance that party's election campaigns. In fact, 80% of the party's financial support came from Canadian companies, not individual supporters. To kneecap his successor, Paul Martin, he made corporate donations illegal. All parties would now have to raise money without the support of corporate and union donations, and individual donations were capped.
As partial compensation, he implemented instead a system whereby each party would get $1.75 annually per vote garnered in the most recent election. This is the subsidy that the economic update suggests will be cut as of April 1, 2009.
I can see eyes glaze over all over the country as I discuss this item, so let me just say this: as a proposed measure of fiscal responsibility, it amounts to one-twentieth of 1% of just the increase in the government's overall spending since it took office in 2006. It has nothing to do with attacking the economic crisis. It has everything to do with implementing the strategy of Conservative adviser Tom Flanagan, who said in his book, “The path to Conservative political dominance is to financially bankrupt your opponents”. It was an out-and-out partisan attack.
The same is true of the government's attack on workers. At a time when Canadians are deeply worried about the future of the their jobs, the government's sole response was to propose a ban on the right to strike for public sector workers. That measure is completely unconstitutional and therefore serves no purpose other than signalling the government's intent to attack workers instead of helping them through this difficult economic time.
Leaders in countries around the world are taking bold steps to invest in the economy and to protect and create jobs. They are offering a 21st century version of the New Deal.
Here in Canada, we got no deal at all. There was no new infrastructure spending that could have helped workers, suppliers and communities. There was no mention of a stimulus package for transforming the auto sector. There was no investment in the new energy economy. There was no mention of innovation or of research and development. There was not a word about addressing the need for more workers in health care, aged care or child care.
The job creation package Canadians so desperately need is nowhere to be found in this update. To add insult to injury, there is not even an investment in restoring the social safety net, and this precisely at the time when Canadians most need it.
In the manufacturing sector alone, we have lost over 350,000 jobs since the government came to power. As I said during question period the other day, EI claims in Ontario are up 14%. Claims are up 30% in Windsor and a staggering 96.4% in the finance minister's own backyard of Oshawa.
Ontarians are urgently looking for reform of the EI system. On average, they get $4,600 less a year than workers get in other parts of the country, yet the economic update does nothing to make EI more equitable or more accessible for workers who have lost their jobs.
EI is an essential part of poverty prevention. The government's silence on this cornerstone of our social safety net is a direct attack on the very people who have paid into this system all their working lives.
Some of those people, of course, are now pensioners, and they are profoundly worried about their retirement savings.
The economic update announced a 25% reduction in the amount of mandated minimum registered retirement income fund withdrawals, and, to be fair, that is at least a step in the right direction. However, for seniors who have watched their retirement savings disappear before their eyes, a moratorium on mandatory withdrawals would have gone much further in dealing with the anxiety that they are feeling.
Other pension measures are even more disturbing. The government announced that it is planning to allow pension plans under federal jurisdiction to double the length of time required for solvency payments from 5 to 10 years. The conditions are that companies must have the agreement of pension plan members and retirees by the end of the year 2009 or they must secure a letter of credit to cover the five-year difference to protect pensioners. That is certainly good news for companies but is it really good for members of the pension plan?
I will cast it in this light. The way the system works now, if an employer under funds the pension plan and uses that money for other corporate expenditures, retirees and other beneficiaries of that plan, in essence, become financiers of the company. They lend companies money for their business. However, unlike other financiers of the company who lend money, they did not get to make a decision about whether they wanted to take on that risk and, in these uncertain economic times, I very much doubt that it is a risk that most beneficiaries would be willing to assume.
If the government were serious about wanting to support workers instead of attacking them, it would have replaced its vague language on proposed “consultations on issues facing defined benefit and defined contribution pension plans” with strong language on the need to work with labour, business and other levels of government to discuss mechanisms, like a pension insurance fund. Or, it could have adopted provisions of the very first bill that I introduced in the House after being elected in 2006, the workers first bill, which would have given workers' pensions super priority in cases of commercial bankruptcy.
The primary focus of pension reform must be to protect the pensions of workers but that, of course, is not what we find in this economic update. What we do find, however, is yet another attack on women. It eliminates the ability to make pay equity claims retroactive.
In the most inflammatory language, the government suggests that pay equity is a problem because it is inherently litigious and adversarial. It goes on to say:
This costly and litigious regime of double pay equity has been in place for too long. We are introducing legislation to make pay equity an integral part of collective bargaining.
This is yet another direct attack on the hard-fought gains by Canadian women and it is an attack that is driven purely by the right-wing ideology of the Conservative government.
The stage for this was set in the last Parliament. The Conservatives then cut funding to Status of Women. They cut funding for the court challenges program. They cut funding for the arts. They even cut funding for children's literacy. This had nothing to do with fiscal responsibility. It was an ideologically-driven attack on programs that supported the most disadvantaged in our society.
Canadians deserve more from their government and Canadians need more from their government. They need to know that the government shares their worry about their jobs, their pensions, their savings and their homes.
Political leaders around the world and every senior economist in Canada agree. Hard-working families need action now. They need a bold plan, strategic investments in our ailing economy and economic stimulus now but, inexplicably, the economic update does not deliver.
The vote that I am casting on that update next week is not a vote that I am casting for myself. I will be casting it for the seniors and hard-working families in my riding who sent me to Ottawa to fight for them. They are under attack and I will not take it sitting down. I have stood up for them in my community and I have stood up for them in the House.
When I rise to cast my vote in opposition to this update, I will again be standing up for those Hamilton Mountain residents who entrusted me with the responsibility to make this Parliament work for them.