Mr. Speaker, I am sharing my time with the member for Parkdale—High Park.
I rise today to talk about how an unbalanced economic agenda that is heading in the wrong direction is hurting the lives of people in Surrey North. I want to talk about perception and about reality.
As we stand here today, we are in the position of having seen the strongest economy in 40 years, low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment in many places, and strong economic growth. The perception would surely be that Canadians are doing well and they should be doing well, but what is the reality? Let me tell the House about the people in the city of Surrey and my riding of Surrey North. The reality is that they see an ever-widening gap between themselves and others--not narrower, wider--in spite of what they are told about the great economic times we are in.
Let the good times roll. Let us look at what concurrent Liberal and Conservative policies have really meant to Surrey North. The times have certainly rolled, but they have rolled back.
What do people need to be safe and healthy and contributing citizens? A job, and an economic policy supporting jobs not just in Alberta but throughout the country.
Let us start with finding a place to live. How does someone who is single and earns minimum wage do that? For someone in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia in Surrey North who earns $8 an hour and works a full week, the after tax monthly earnings are $955.20. So that person takes that paycheque and goes out and tries to find a place to live. The average Surrey basement suite or small apartment is $791 a month. If the person were to rent that, the person would be left with $144 for food, bus fare, and probably second-hand clothes. Heaven forbid if that person were to have an emergency of any kind.
Currently, Surrey needs 2,000 transitional housing units and 5,000 permanent units of affordable housing. What kind of economic policy would ignore a national housing strategy? People in housing can contribute. People who are living on the streets are not able to be part of anyone's economic housing policy. We are told that having a job is a cure for poverty. In no way is that the case in Surrey North.
Our food bank sees 14,000 people, a large number of whom are from Surrey North and 42% of those people are babies and children. The Prime Minister has said that the number of children living in poverty is probably only a quarter of the number that is quoted. I would like him to go to the food bank with me and tell that to the mother whose little girl said to her “Mommy, I'll try not to eat so much”. He should try telling her that those numbers are over-estimated. That is what his economic policies are doing to people. Little children are having to say, “Mommy, don't worry, I won't eat so much”.
There are people who work but they have to live in homeless shelters. They are earning minimum wage. They are trying. They are living in homeless shelters because they cannot afford a place to live. They get up in the morning and they go to work. They are using the food banks because they have no place else to eat. What kind of let the good times roll does that look like for the people in Surrey?
There are middle class residents in Surrey North who sit around the kitchen table and talk about their futures. They may be people in apartments or people in their own homes. They worry about not being able to pay next month's mortgage. Why? Because people are facing job losses and they are being ignored by the government. I am talking about manufacturing jobs.
Everyone forgets that manufacturing jobs are also about the wood industry. In the wood industry, when every single sawmill on the Fraser River closes, people are out of work. In the riding of Surrey North there are many, many, many people who are out of work. There is no retraining. There was nothing in the budget for the pine beetle epidemic. Those manufacturing jobs in the wood industry are completely gone. Untargeted tax cuts certainly are not helping those people at all. They may be helping people in the tar sands, but they are not helping the people in Surrey North who worked in the wood industry.
Those people are also worrying about whether they can send their sons and daughters to post-secondary education. When the NDP amended the 2005 budget to remove $4.6 billion in tax cuts and put that money toward housing and post-secondary education, the Prime Minister found it to be completely irresponsible. For those middle class people in Surrey North sitting around their kitchen tables, it is absolutely not irresponsible. It was a bit of help, but they still have a very long way to go because of the tuition costs. They know that many of them are not going to be able to send their sons and daughters to post-secondary education.
The government's economic policy also ignores children. Surrey North has a reading standard that is lower than the average in British Columbia. That should not be a surprise. We have a poverty level that is higher than the rest of British Columbia. A child who is not nourished cannot learn. That is not a secret to anyone. There are children who are going to school hungry. It is no wonder our reading standards are below the provincial average.
In conclusion, there may be economic policies that are being celebrated by Conservatives across the country wherever they may live, but in Surrey North there are more people living in poverty than in most other places. We always have had more children living in poverty than the B.C. average. They are children who learn less well than other children because they are poor, because they are not sleeping, because they do not have safe places to live. There are people living on the streets who are very interested in contributing to their community, but it is very hard to be part of an economic policy when people who are working have to live on the street because they cannot afford a place to live.
This is where an unbalanced wrong-headed economic approach takes us. Those people in Surrey North are not seeing the good times roll.