Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to participate in this discussion on the country's economic situation and to do so on a day of historical importance, a day when Canadians have seen unprecedented collaboration among parliamentarians and a new degree of co-operation that bodes well for the future. In fact, it gives people great confidence and hope.
It is just minutes after a formal declaration was made by the three opposition parties in this House. The Liberals, the New Democrats and the Bloc have come together to indicate their will to form a government and to support a government and create a Parliament that in fact addresses the real needs of Canadians, not a government that ignores Canadians at their time of greatest need, at a moment in the history of this country when government and Parliament have an obligation like never before to be there for the people of this country.
I do not need to tell members that we are in one of the most serious economic crises this country has ever faced. We have not seen the end of it and already people are worried about their jobs, their homes, their savings and their pensions. People are worried about how they are going to support their families, how they are going to make ends meet. People are wondering how they will deal with the ravages of an economy that is out of control, where people are being left in the cold without hope of security in the future.
That is how important this is today. That is why we are here in this House today on an unprecedented basis working together as New Democrats, as Bloc Québécois and as Liberals, saying to the government that we no longer have confidence in it, that we do not believe the government is able to address the concerns of Canadians.
In fact we all thought that the Conservatives had heard Canadians during the last election. We thought they recognized that the Conservative Party only received 37% of the votes and that the Conservatives needed to cooperate in this place. Instead they chose to ignore the ravages of the economy. They chose to ignore the needs of Canadians. They chose to proceed with an economic statement that has no stimulus, that has no protection for people, that has no understanding of the real needs of ordinary people in this country.
In fact, as my colleagues raised in the House today, we saw on one particular issue regarding equality for women, pay equity, the government chose to use its economic statement to pursue a pet project of its own, to kill pay equity in this country.
It is not just what is in the economic statement. It is the fact that at the recent Conservative convention in Winnipeg, which I and some members from the Bloc witnessed, Conservative Party members, sponsored by the caucus of the Conservative Party here in Parliament, put forward a motion to change the definition of pay equity from equal pay for work of equal value to take it back to 30 years ago and define it as equal pay for equal work. That is not pay equity. We have to understand what is in this economic statement. That is not equality for women.
We are standing here united in the belief that this is the precise moment when we have to ensure equality for everyone in our society, for women, for people living with disabilities, for our first nations. This is a time when we need to be working with Canadians so that they can help themselves to ensure a decent future for themselves and their families.
Let me say in the little time that I have left that we had the belief that the government understood some of that and was going to come to this House with an economic statement that addressed those very issues. Instead, as some of the commentators have said, they woke up to a disturbing reality, an affront to reason and public policy, that public reason had been discarded and the economic challenge had been ignored.
Whether we are talking about economists in the business sector, economists in the labour movement or grassroots organizations, every one has come to the conclusion that the government did not address the economic situation of the day. It ignored the realities of Canadians and in fact chose instead to attack those very people and organizations in our society with whom we must work to build a stronger society.