Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise and speak to the budget bill as it relates to values behind decisions that are made and how they relate to the city of Surrey, which is now 400,000 people.
I talked with officials of the city of Surrey before the budget was brought down. I asked them what they saw as being legitimate needs in Surrey, things for which they had asked the federal government, things that would make a significant difference in the quality of life of the near 432,000 people of Surrey. Incidentally, we have more babies every day at Surrey Memorial Hospital than I think any other hospital in Canada. There were a number of things both for B.C. and Surrey that were particularly important, but we did not see them in the budget.
As always, we wonder whether people who prepare the budgets can see south of the Fraser River. In this case, let me use a couple of examples.
The city of Surrey is a growth city both residentially and business-wise. It was very important for it to have transportation so people could either live and work in the community of Surrey, or perhaps live somewhere else and work in Surrey, or live in Surrey and work somewhere else.
While there was a significant amount of money for the Skytrain on the north side of the Fraser River, Surrey needed about $5 billion to invest in a provincial transit plan that would bring transit equality just to Surrey in terms of the number of buses needed. For a young mom or dad to get their child from Cloverdale to the hospital and to a specialist is truly an all day outing in our community. That money was not there. There was no real indication other than a few new buses. that people recognized that a the city is big and growing quickly. It is an economic driver. People need to recognize the kind of transportation needed for a city of Surrey's size. It also has a new university.
Surrey is quite a wonderful and interesting city. It is very urban and residential. There is lot of industry, but we are also very blessed to have a large amount of agricultural land reserve. We desperately needed and asked for infrastructure dollars from the federal government for flood work. Money needs to be spent on dikes to protect the riverbanks so farmers' fields will not be flooded. That money is not there either.
It is as if a message has been given to Surrey that the government has recognized other people, but Surrey is still this little growing community and it does not think that it deserves that kind of money.
In terms of policing and what that means to the city of Surrey, the 2,500 new police officers who we keep waiting to see, the budget states they are to be front line officers. The city of Surrey, the city of Delta and others have spoken very strongly of their needs. We could all use more police officers everywhere, but in the Lower Mainland we have a number of integrated teams, drug teams, gang teams, homicide teams and child exploitation teams. We need the dollars to support those teams so they can do their work.
It is as if the federal government is saying that it knows better, that these officers should be used as front line officers and the integrated teams can find money wherever they can. However, much of the Lower Mainland has said that those integrated teams work well and it needs more support for them. We have not seen that.
It is a very small program, but the federal government has put money into it before but has decided not to it this year. It is called SHaRP, or the salmon habitat restoration program. It has employed 180 post-secondary students who have been able to save money to go to post-secondary education or to reduce their enormous debt load. They have done riparian work. They have repaired not only the riverbanks, but the bottoms of the river for the salmon. The program has done superb job. It has been written about across the country. As a result of the federal funding not being there, although it was requested before the budget, it will be unable to function this year in the way that we had hoped. Again, it is another example of being unable to see the local needs or having someone in Ottawa make a decision about what the local needs might be.
People across the country talk about homelessness. The issue really is not homelessness. The issue is where do people live long term. We can build more homeless shelters, and I have no doubt that we will and that they will be full. However, where do people go when they leave a homeless shelter? There is no such thing as affordable market housing in the city of Surrey, where an average apartment is $800 to $900 a month.
Many people living in our homeless shelters are working full time. They cannot afford to pay rent in the city of Surrey. They live in a homeless shelter. They get up in the morning, go to work, work all day, do something for a couple of hours until the shelter opens, then they sleep at the shelter, sometimes sitting up, and go back to work in the morning.
It is not that these people are not trying; they are. Until the federal government looks at a national housing strategy, not homeless strategy, we will simply build more homeless shelters, but people will not in any way be able to put down long term roots either for themselves or, heaven forbid, afford to support a family.
The gasoline tax is now being returned to the city, and I give people credit for that. The Conservative government has done that. It has been lobbied very hard by many cities and by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities. It does make a difference.
Other people have spoken on the issue of child care. However, the $100 a month does not make a difference for child care. One cannot find any kind of child care, one cannot probably even find child care for a day a week or a day and a half a week for $100 a month. Children who are eight and nine years old come home after school by themselves. Children from zero to five, for whom that $100 applies, are in child care where parents have no idea what goes on because it is not licensed and they are not sure it is safe. It is the worst feeling people can imagine.
People can say, “Stay home with your children”. I am sorry, at $8.35 an hour to pay rent and buy groceries in an urban area that it is not possible without support for children. This has been completely ignored. Not only is it ignored, but the position the Conservative government has taken about child care has been very deliberate.
We were hoping very much to be able to have some money for the World Police and Fire Games in British Columbia this year. Some of the sites are in Surrey. There was a significant amount of money put into the World Police and Fire Games when they were in Quebec. Now that they are in British Columbia, there is no contribution from the Conservative government for the World Police and Fire Games, which bring almost as many people as the Olympics do.
We also look for support for softwood. People think about manufacturing jobs as being cars, and it is very critical in Ontario, but softwood as well is a manufacturing industry. We saw no money whatsoever for the tragedy of the pine beetle that is destroying the trees in British Columbia forests.
For the city of Surrey and the goals that we had for this budget, the hopes we had for this budget, the lobbying that had gone on from our council, we do not see very many initiatives that will make a difference in the everyday lives of people who live in our city.