Debates of Jan. 28th, 2009

Financial Statement of Minister of Finance

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his question. The only thing I can say is that, as a Liberal, as a duly elected member of Parliament, I have never thought it was fair to put the interests of Ontario ahead of those of Quebec.

On the contrary, I have always thought that politicians in this House must balance the interests of all the provinces and the federation, and treat them equally. That is precisely what we have all been criticizing this government for.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, today the Leader of the Opposition has called the Prime Minister misguided and castigated his fiscal policy, his November economic update and a lack of genuine financial support for the vulnerable, the jobs of the present and the jobs of tomorrow.

In his speech he said that yesterday's budget was a “flawed document”. He berated the government for failing to keep its promises, the policy on pay equity and the lack of child care. As late as January 20 of this year, the Leader of the Opposition told the Ottawa Citizen that the attack on women and pay equity was “mean-spirited, pernicious, ideological and unprincipled”. He said, “It is shameful that our country is moving backwards instead of forward. It is time for all Canadians to stand up and say together: 'we have had enough'.”

With the Liberal-Conservative alliance, the Liberals refuse to change and have given up hope. First the Liberals hid behind the curtains, then they walked out. Now they have given up and for the 45th time plan to support the Conservatives.

Is this the Liberal definition of leadership and courage? Is it how the Leader of the Opposition stands up to a mean-spirited and misguided government?

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for her always temperate and ecumenical comments.

She refers to a Liberal-Conservative alliance. No such alliance exists. We have made it perfectly clear, in the amendment put forward to the House, that we will hold the government to account. We regard this as a flawed document. We will insist that it delivers the money and the commitments that it has made to Canadians in respect of some of the social values her party and mine happen to share in common, but no alliance exists with the government.

Let me make it very clear. The amendment we have put forward today holds the government on a very tight leash. If it fails to live up to its commitments, it will be defeated.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the hon. member on his elegant and eloquent speech. He has done a great deal to elevate the debate in the House.

The amendment effectively proposes a series of confidence accountability motions, which reflect his deep unease with the government, and his unease with the government is justified.

The Conservative government inherited a $13 billion surplus and turned it into a $64 billion deficit. The Conservative government squandered $12 billion in ill-advised tax cuts. Sixty days ago the Conservative government said that it had a surplus, but now it has a $34 billion deficit.

The Conservative Party campaigned against taxation of income trusts, but now it taxes income trusts.

The Conservative government reversed itself on interest deductibility. It pitched the fiscal framework out the window.

The Conservative government has proposed a phoney asset sale in its current budget.

In light of the foregoing litany of incompetence, does the hon. member truly believe that the so-called five year plan to get us back to fiscal balance is a realistic plan?

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague and friend from Scarborough—Guildwood well knows my respect for his economic expertise in his public service.

He asked an excellent question. That is precisely why we have put the accountability measures in the amendment this afternoon.

We are deeply skeptical, as he is, that the deficit projections the government has presented in the House to Canadians are based on sound economic argument. We are very skeptical of the government's estimates of economic growth in 2009 and of its revenue estimates in 2009-10 and 2011-12.

We do not want to sit here and listen to the government tell Canadians fables. That is why we have proposed the accountability measures today, which we hope will pass in the House of Commons.

[Mike Lake, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, I take this opportunity to extend my appreciation for the hon. member's support of the budget and the decision to agree with commentators from around the world who have lifted Canada up as an example to the rest of the world in terms of how we conduct ourselves in the difficult global times that we face.

The London Telegraph wrote an article during the recent G8 summit that lamented the lack of leadership among G8 leaders. The paper singled out our Prime Minister saying that if the rest of the world had comported itself with similar modesty and prudence we might not be in this mess.

The World Economic Forum ranked our banking system as the number one most secure banking system in the world.

The OECD and IMF have indicated that Canada will be the strongest country coming out of this global economic downturn.

Our government has been recognized as the only government in the G8 over the past three years that has run a surplus. Other governments have all run deficits in each of the last three years.

I thank the Liberal Party for its support of our budget. We look forward to working with those members in the future.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Etobicoke—Lakeshore, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member particularly because he has the honour to represent the city of Edmonton, a city that I regard with the deepest affection.

He did, however, make some reference to the record of a government and I think he was slightly confused. The record of which he was speaking was the record of the government preceding his own.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, confronted with a serious global economic crisis, the people are right to be concerned and they have turned to Ottawa, hoping that the federal government would do the responsible thing and help them.

Quebec's government and National Assembly also expected the federal government to help rather than make matters worse. This crisis requires extraordinary government expenditures and could have been an opportunity to build a future with a combined focus on social justice, the environment and the economy. With this Conservative budget, the government has dashed all hopes. It is hostile to Quebec, does not provide people with appropriate and sufficient help and lacks vision for the future. In fact, one need only scratch the surface to catch a potent whiff of the Conservative government's partisanship and ideology in this budget.

I want to tell all members of this House this: a vote for this budget is a vote against Quebec, against social justice, against an economy for the future. There is no way the Bloc Québécois would ever vote for this budget, which goes against everything we believe in.

This budget is totally unacceptable to Quebec and to people who, in times of economic crisis, are entitled to expect appropriate and sufficient help from the federal government. In anticipation of the budget, Quebec made its needs clear, and its National Assembly even unanimously passed a motion. The Bloc Québécois did the responsible thing, putting forward as early as last November a realistic and detailed plan backed up by figures, a plan that reflected the broad consensus in Quebec on a number of issues.

The Prime Minister was aware of all that. This means that he knowingly ignored Quebec's demands. Instead of helping Quebec, the federal government decided to deprive it of significant assistance to weather the crisis. The Conservative leader has chosen only to meet the demands from Ontario in particular. For example, his government is providing more than $4 billion in stimulus that will primarily benefit Ontario. The automotive industry, which is largely concentrated in Ontario, will receive $2.7 billion. Southern Ontario will receive $1 billion. But Quebec's forestry and manufacturing sectors will only get a few million.

The government is offering $350 million to Atomic Energy of Canada, to the nuclear sector, once again Ontario-based. The Prime Minister again comes along with his community adjustment fund, a program strongly criticized in Quebec, which offers more money per capita to Alberta than to Quebec. This plan, based on last year's model, offers far more per job lost in Alberta than in Quebec, even though the manufacturing and forestry crisis has hit hardest in Quebec. While thousands of jobs have been lost in Quebec, a goodly number of the workers will still not have access to the employment insurance program, and older workers are still marginalized.

We would have at least expected the Conservative government to respect its past commitments. But no, it goes even further by depriving Quebec of financial means. Capping equalization will mean a considerable loss to Quebec. We are talking funds for health, education, family policy. This decision will therefore have unfortunate consequences for the entire population of Quebec. Then the Conservative government adds on a gift to Ontario, which will mean an additional $250,000 loss to Quebec as far as equalization is concerned, by conferring special status on Hydro One.

By unilaterally modifying equalization and by increasing the fiscal imbalance, the Conservative government is breaking its past promises, just as it did by reiterating its desire to trample over Quebec's areas of jurisdiction in connection with securities regulation, loans to municipalities and funding to colleges and universities, and other infrastructure expenditures, thereby going over the head of the Government of Quebec.

Then we have the refusal to eliminate cuts to culture, a very important sector of the Quebec economy, and the refusal to eliminate the cuts inflicted on economic development organizations.

This budget runs totally counter to the spirit and the letter of the Kyoto protocol, and thus also to the economic interests of Quebec and of the environment. This budget sounds the death knell as far as the Conservative government's so-called federalism of openness is concerned.

I call upon hon. members in the other opposition parties to think things through well before voting in favour of this budget, or letting it get through one way or another, because letting it get through is tantamount to abandoning Quebec, and there will be a political price to pay for such an attitude. The Bloc Québécois, faithful as it is to the interests of Quebec, will vote against this budget without a moment's hesitation.

This budget again bears the mark of a conservative ideology that is bankrupt everywhere in the world. It is hard to imagine what would have happened with a majority Conservative government in a position to impose untrammelled its last-century ideology.

But we must not be fooled by the gloss on this budget. The tax cuts, which are presented as targeted measures to help the most vulnerable and the middle class, actually have the reverse effect. The most vulnerable people in society do not pay tax. The tax cuts are not targeted. For example, a family with two children and an income of $150,000 will get more than a family earning $40,000. These tax cuts help neither people who lose their jobs nor companies that do not turn a profit. By the Conservatives' own admission, in opting for corporate tax cuts, they chose the measure that would stimulate the economy the least. That is what I call putting ideology before the economy.

The government had the means to help the most vulnerable members of society by funding construction of new social housing. The Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation has an $8 billion surplus. The government should be using that money to help people. Instead, everyone but aboriginal people, seniors and the disabled is being left high and dry.

For seniors who have been unjustly deprived of the guaranteed income supplement, the budget offers no justice and no remedy. Yet if anyone can be considered vulnerable, it is seniors who are living in poverty and are entitled to the guaranteed income supplement. Aside from social housing, there is nothing for these poor people in the budget.

We all know that more than half of women who lose their jobs do not have access to employment insurance, even though they pay into the plan. They will still not have access to employment insurance, and this is a serious injustice.

Meanwhile, the rich and large corporations that shelter their money in tax havens can continue to do so with impunity. The big oil companies that have been hosing us for so long will continue to enjoy generous tax breaks. The Conservative government sweetened the pot by providing hundreds of millions of dollars for carbon capture projects that will benefit no one but the oil companies. The major banks, which have been hugely propped up by the Conservative government, have no real obligations in return. And in return for the billions of dollars they will receive, the big three auto manufacturers do not even have to promise not to outsource to Asia or elsewhere.

The Harper government's budget will therefore create even greater social inequalities.

[Royal Galipeau, Conservative, Ottawa—Orléans, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to raise a point of order.

I am sorry to have to interrupt the House, but the hon. leader of the Bloc Québécois just called the Prime Minister by his last name. He has more experience here than I and should know he is not allowed to do that.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Barry Devolin]

I thank the member for his assistance. The leader of the Bloc Québécois, I am sure, will not do that again.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

I humbly accept this most relevant of remarks.

The government’s budget will therefore further exacerbate social inequalities. Finally, the Conservatives are continuing their attack on the rights of women by making pay equity negotiable. That is ideology over rights. No member of this House who does not share the outdated, bankrupt Conservative ideology can possibly vote for this budget, or allow it to pass, without betraying his or her convictions. Voting for this budget, or allowing it to pass, means voting against social justice. The Bloc Québécois, loyal to its convictions, will vote against this budget without a moment’s hesitation.

One of the great challenges facing us in the 21st century, as well as one of the great opportunities, is how to harmonize the economy with the environment. Quebeckers know very well that it is in our vital strategic interest to reduce our dependence on oil, first, in order to help fight climate change and second, because it is in our economic interest. Now that the U.S. administration has announced that it intends to join the countries fighting against climate change, Canada is isolated, the only country in the Western world still in the same camp as Saudi Arabia. In this regard, as in so many others, the Conservative budget is going against the flow, trying to take us backwards instead helping us move ahead into the future. Not only are the Conservatives giving the oil companies hundreds of millions of dollars but they are also ending the wind energy program.

The automobile industry will receive $2.7 billion in federal government assistance without any fuel consumption requirements being imposed. Here, too, Canada is falling behind and is starting to become the laughingstock of the Western world. Voting for this budget or allowing it to pass means voting against the economy of the future: the green economy.

The Bloc Québécois, ever faithful to the interests and values of Quebec, will vote against this budget without a second’s hesitation.

I will soon be introducing an amendment to the amendment. It basically repeats the motion passed unanimously in the National Assembly, along with a few other elements. When the time comes to vote on it, all the members from Quebec will face a very clear choice: a choice for or against Quebec. All Quebec members who vote against this amendment to the amendment and in favour of the Conservative budget will be choosing Canada over Quebec.

This budget sounds the ultimate death-knell of the Conservative Party’s so-called open federalism toward Quebec. If the Liberals vote in favour of this budget, as they apparently will, they will show that the Liberal Party of Canada has returned to its tradition of turning its back on Quebec at the first opportunity.

The new leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, who declared on March 30, 2006, that Quebec “has the right to be master of its own house”, now seems to have decided to act exactly like his predecessors and to set aside his recent and fleeting convictions. I urge Quebeckers to take note of what happens in the next few hours in Ottawa. I invite them to think about the fact that no matter which party is in power in Ottawa, Liberal or Conservative, the interests and values of Canada always take precedence over the interests and values of Quebec. As it was in the past, is now and ever will be. The only party that puts Quebec first in this house is the Bloc Québécois.

It is not a coincidence that all elected Bloc members truly believe that the only valid future for Quebec is full political freedom—Quebec sovereignty.

I move, seconded by the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain, that the amendment be amended by deleting all the words after the words “on condition that the Government” and substituting the following:

maintain the right of women to settle pay equity issues in court, and abandon its preference for tax cuts for the well off, instead redistributing this revenue to the neediest members of our society, particularly by responding to the unanimous demands of the National Assembly of Quebec as formulated in the motion adopted on January 15, 2009, to assist workers, communities and businesses hit by the economic slowdown, support at-risk sectors, particularly manufacturing and forestry, in the same way as the automobile industry, and enhance the employment insurance program by making the eligibility criteria more flexible, and on condition that it maintain the equalization program in its current form and relinquish the idea of setting up a pan-Canadian securities commission.

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

The hon. member for Brossard—La Prairie has the floor for questions and comments on the amendment to the amendment.

[Alexandra Mendes, Liberal, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie has just stated very eloquently the flaws in the budget presented to the House by the Minister of Finance yesterday. We are convinced that a Liberal government would have done much more and much better to address the current crisis. We are also convinced that a Liberal government would not have crippled, as irresponsibly as the Conservative government did, our ability to react.

The leader of the Bloc Québécois is true to the mission he has always stated as his, namely to defend Quebec's interests and those interests alone. I must ask him though how it would be responsible on our part, as members of a Parliament that is barely three months old, to reject all the measures contained in the stimulus package proposed in this budget.

Under the watchful eye of this House, many of these measures will allow Canadians, including those who live in Quebec, to help kickstart the economy, something that the Premier of Quebec, Mr. Charest, has himself recognized as a fact. By voting in favour of this budget, we are first and foremost fulfilling our role as official opposition in a responsible manner.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I heard my Liberal colleagues asking a lot of questions during question period and even my colleague noting in her initial remarks that I pointed out significant flaws in this budget. I believe she shares my opinion in this regard. She is indicating that she does.

She had other proposals. We are proposing an amendment to the amendment, based on the unanimous motion of the Quebec National Assembly, represented by Premier Charest himself, which contends that reductions in income tax favour the well off, as my colleague's party leader has said, and which opposes pay equity being negotiable. She is in agreement on all these points. I do not see why she cannot support our amendment to the amendment, keep what she considers good in the budget and improve it with the good things from the coalition, since that party indicated its willingness to do so immediately.

The opportunity is there, but they are not going to take it. They prefer to support those across the way, whom they are criticizing. They must show some consistency, sometime. I encourage her to act accordingly and take a stand.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I was elected in 1997 and that was because the people of Acadie—Bathurst had decided to send an MP who was prepared to go to bat for employment insurance. In all my time in this House since then—nearly 12 years—our consultations have revealed that workers wanted an end to the two week waiting period and improved eligibility for employment insurance.

I would like to congratulate the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. He saw that, with a coalition, these things could be made to happen. Today, it is a real shame to see that this vision has been lost under the new leader of the Liberal Party. And yet, he signed an agreement, as did the Liberal Party. He was among the 76 MPs who sent a letter to the Governor General to advise her of the lack of confidence in this government. The Liberal Party, an opposition party, said that it had lost all confidence in the Conservative government.

Given yesterday's budget, does the leader of the Bloc Québécois think that we can have greater confidence in the Conservative Party today and that the Liberals have decided to do the right thing? Or could the coalition have taken their place?

The public must not be made to think that it takes two or three months to table a budget. One could have been tabled in the House in less than a week. Either the House has confidence in the Conservative Party or it does not. In the latter case, we should vote against this bill. We would thus give a chance to women who have been denied the right to take their fight to the courts.

I call on the leader of the PQ to respond to this.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased the member has asked me such a clear, precise question.

I would like to use an example. He talked about employment insurance. Eliminating the two week waiting period would have cost some $1.2 billion. The Conservatives preferred to maintain tax havens, which cost $1.5 billion a year. This shows where they stand. They allow people to take money out of the country, which does not help our domestic economy, even though, by eliminating the two week waiting period, they would be allowing people who have lost their jobs to put money back into our economy.

People who lose their jobs do not use their employment insurance cheques to buy shares or invest in tax havens; rather, they use them to feed their families, pay the mortgage, pay their loans, buy clothes and so on.

This is the decision facing all hon. members here today. Members who make this decision will be able to look their constituents in the eye and tell them that they defended the interests of Quebeckers, of all Canadians for that matter, rather than the interests of large corporations, especially the oil and gas companies.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments from the leader of the Bloc. However, I want to take this opportunity to make sure that members of the House understand the actualities in terms of equalization payments which were discussed during his presentation.

The budget, on pages 189, 190 and 191, talks about equalization payments. The total in transfer payments is $49.1 billion, of which $22.6 billion is the health transfer which has a 6% increase built in and will continue in this budget, and $10.6 billion is the social transfer which has a 3% increase and is continued in this budget. This leaves about $14 billion for equalization payments. This is based on a formula that was agreed to by all the provinces. In that formula there are increases in equalization, including for Quebec.

The table on page 190 of the budget indicates how Quebec has done with respect to equalization. In 2006-07 it was $5.5 billion. It went to $7.1 billion the next year. In 2008-09 it is $8 billion and in 2009-10 it is $8.3 billion. Increases are happening in equalization. That formula is in place. It is happening in this budget. Quebec is getting its fair share. In fact, the next province closest in equalization payments gets $2 billion, not $8.3 billion.

With all the information that he has been provided, all the commentary from the Quebec business leaders, Quebec chambers of commerce, Quebec arts groups and Quebec mayors, why is the Bloc leader not supporting the budget? It seems that the people of Quebec support the budget.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, what surprises me about what he is saying is that, of all the groups he mentioned, some of them did support the budget, but they all denounced the cap on equalization in the same press release. He should have read to the end of the press release, instead of stopping after the first three lines. There is unanimous agreement about equalization and about the securities commissions.

Furthermore, what he forgot to say is that the Prime Minister wrote to the Premier of Quebec in 2007, telling him that the formula could henceforth be used to calculate the sums that would be paid in equalization. Yet by capping it, Quebec loses $1 billion this year and up to $2 billion in 2010. What this Prime Minister did was break his promise and go back on his word.

And while he claims that all the groups he mentioned and everyone else in Quebec support them, we just have to look at the results of the last election. Quebeckers decided that a Prime Minister who spent his time following in Mr. Bush's footsteps was not someone who represented their values and interests. I have often denounced the fact that this Prime Minister imitated Mr. Bush. I have one piece of advice for him: he should now follow in Mr. Bush's footsteps.

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to share my time with the hon. member for Outremont, the NDP finance critic.

Yesterday we saw what happens when a government cobbles together a budget which it does not really believe in. It is a budget that will not protect the most vulnerable, will not protect the jobs of today, and will not create the new jobs of tomorrow.

The Conservative budget, unfortunately supported by the Liberal Party, gives $60 in tax breaks to large business for every dollar to people out of work. During the past two months, more than 100,000 people have lost their jobs, yet there is nothing in this budget to help more laid-off workers access employment insurance benefits.

Two-thirds of women who need employment insurance cannot get it even though they pay into it, and this budget refuses to change that. Workers losing their jobs today will not get any EI faster when they desperately need it to put food on the table. What good is an extra five weeks for the majority of workers who cannot even get the first week of employment insurance?

What does this budget mean for the most vulnerable? It means that employment insurance will be just as hard to get as before. It means that housing will be just as scarce. It means that people are facing a future that is just as bleak. Families on the edge, losing their jobs, homes and savings, can take nothing from this budget.

This budget will not safeguard jobs. Forestry, mining and agriculture are not going to get the support they need through these tough times. Equalization payments have been capped, forcing some provinces into impossible choices in these difficult times. Few jobs will be saved. This budget will not create any jobs either, especially those green jobs for the future economy of the 21st century.

The infrastructure program hinges on amounts that must be matched by provincial, territorial or municipal governments, but these government have no money. They will not be able to follow through. The plan will not work and jobs will not be created.

Infrastructure funds will come far too slow to make a difference soon enough. That means too few shovels breaking the ground and too few jobs for Canadians at the time that they are losing their employment. And because there is no made in Canada buying policy, we cannot even be sure that any spending on materials will help our own forestry and manufacturing sectors.

Tax cuts will not work the way fast-flowing infrastructure funding would have worked, but that is where this government has decided to spend big.

According to the government's own figures, for every dollar in corporate tax cuts, we get a mere 20¢ improvement in GDP. For personal tax cuts, for every dollar spent, we get only a 90¢ improvement in the GDP. However, for infrastructure spending that actually flows, we get a $1.50 improvement to the GDP for every dollar spent and with real support for low income earners we also get a $1.50 improvement in the GDP. But that has not stopped this government from putting the lion's share of the spending in this budget into the least effective tools to improve our economy, namely, those tax cuts.

This budget contains no serious measures to seek a greener economic future. Less than 1% of the stimulus spending could be described in any way as green spending. This is at a time when the United States is seeking a green recovery to create a more sustainable economy. The Prime Minister has shown no such vision. Instead of investing in renewable energy, this budget gives millions to nuclear energy and unproven technologies like carbon capture and storage. This is just a handout to the big polluters. Anything green in this budget is purely cosmetic. We know this government will cut environmental regulations before it funds green alternatives; we have seen that in the past.

This budget attacks pay equity for women. It does not construct affordable housing for the numerous low-income families in our cities who are now homeless. It does not create child care spaces for children of working parents.

To those who need better child benefits most, there is virtually no help at all.

It makes post-secondary education no more accessible for our youngest and our brightest at a time when they need that hope.

The budget is not good for Canada. It is not good for Canadian families. Even those few proposals in this budget that are not flawed have no guarantee of being implemented because the Prime Minister has broken his commitment to Canadians before. He said he opposed budget leaks and then he ordered them to happen.

He promised not to appoint unelected senators, but yesterday, 18 new senators joined the Senate—a new record for patronage appointments. He had legislation passed for fixed election dates, but he called an early election, going against his own legislation.

Now, the Prime Minister has delivered a budget containing measures that he has spent his entire lifetime opposing, but he expects Canadians to have confidence in him now, to trust that he will actually get the job done. The record of this Prime Minister tells us that he will not. This is not only a question of the content of the budget, it is a question of confidence in the government. We do not have confidence that the Prime Minister will keep his commitments.

Despite all this, the Conservatives will stay in power because the new leader of the Liberal Party has decided to keep them there. It is an important decision that will have serious consequences for millions of people. It is the same poor policy as that of his predecessor, the member for Saint-Laurent—Cartierville. When the Liberals vote for the budget, with or without the minimal amendments, it will be the 45th time they have voted to keep the Conservatives in power.

So, because a budget vote is a confidence vote, on behalf of the tens of thousands who are going to be thrown out of work but will not get any help from this government or this budget, on behalf of the people who have waited too long for child care or health care, on behalf of the seniors who have lived too long in poverty, and on behalf of future generations who are counting on us to take strong, urgent and bold action on the environment, we will vote no confidence in this government.

Our former leader and respected member of this House, Tommy Douglas, once said, “Courage my friends, 'tis not too late to build a better world”.

I am disappointed that others in this House are not willing to show that same courage and that same conviction at this important moment in time. Meaningless amendments will not change the fundamental failures of this budget or repair the trust that this government has broken with the Canadian people.

We cannot support such a budget or such a government.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the leader of the NDP has a reputation of opining on budgets and other major issues without even seeing them. In this particular case, the budget has incorporated significant progress in certain areas, which in fact were the areas that opposition parties had advocated. We did not get everything, that is true, but some progress has been made. The call now is for the government to show that it can be accountable to deliver, but if it does not, it is on notice that Liberals will not support it.

Will the NDP be supporting the official opposition amendment to hold the government accountable so that Canadians will get the help they need?

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, let me disagree with the hon. member in suggesting that significant progress has been made in this budget. I must say I even heard his own leader, in a press conference, enumerate the failures of this budget. He gave quite a long list but then came to the conclusion that he was going to prop up the government.

We in the NDP had expected something different. We know that there was a positive choice available but, unfortunately, his party has chosen for the 45th occasion to support the current government. Can we have confidence that measures needed for our economy today will be adopted by the government, propped up by the member's party? No, we do not have that confidence. Are we willing to vote confidence in this motion by supporting an amendment to the budget that is being proposed? No, we are not.

[Mike Wallace, Conservative, Burlington, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the leader of the NDP talks about trust and confidence in the government and the motion in front of the House. I recall that during the election he talked about working together and making this place work. How does he let us know as members of Parliament that we have confidence and trust in him if he is one who will claim weeks before a budget is even presented that he will not support it without reading it? Where is the confidence on the part of members of Parliament and Canadians for a leader of a political party who has made up his mind that he and his party are taking a position on a policy piece that they have not even seen, read or have any idea of what was going to be in it?

We have asked for specifics about what NDP members would like to see in the budget. I can say as a member of the finance committee that there were no specifics from them. I would ask the member, where is our confidence in him and his ability to lead?

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I met with the Prime Minister myself and presented to him a series of initiatives and ideas that the NDP felt we could work together on. Sadly, his reaction to me was, “I guess we are just going to have to agree to disagree”. In other words, the Prime Minister had no intent, really, of working together with my party and that became apparent in the economic statement for all to see.

We have also lost confidence in the government's ability to really tackle the issues that are facing families as they sit down to try to pay the bills at their kitchen tables. Perhaps the most egregious example, if I may, is the fact that there was no understanding. When people get thrown out of work and are given a bit of severance pay, the first thing the government says is that they cannot even apply for help for two weeks.

Then it says that people have to spend all of their severance pay, impoverish themselves and grovel, that the money they were supposed to be able to put aside for tough times must be spent before they can ask for insurance from a fund that they paid into for years and that built up over $50 million of surplus, and that was stolen by the previous government. That theft was maintained and enshrined in law by the member's party so that money will not be given back. That money belongs to the working people and they need it now to put food on the table. That is why the NDP has no confidence in the government.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Outremont, QC]

Mr. Speaker, to understand what is going on here today, we have to look back to the events following the October 14 general election. For the third time in a row, something unique in the annals of Canada's political history, the people of Canada elected a minority government. A government, in other words, that did not enjoy the support of a majority of the House and that had to work with the other parties. During the election campaign, in fact, the question came up frequently, because the situation, the polls, were indicating that this would indeed be the case.

Imagine then our surprise at the current Prime Minister's statement during the election campaign that he had learned his lesson from the last time and would, in the future, be able to build and work with other parties, as that was what Canadians wanted. He reiterated this once elected, assuring all voters that he would change his tune and his style—divisive, fractious and vindictive—which we had seen for two and a half years. That style is the hallmark of the Conservative government. He had a chance to prove his mettle. Did he have what it takes to be a head of state or only to carry out a vendetta?

We saw him in November. The Conservatives arrived in the House and rather than attack what was already the worst economic crisis in 75 years, they attacked the right of women to equal pay for work of equal value. They attacked welfare rights by gratuitously, without either provocation or justification, taking away the public service's right to strike, even though 104,000 public servants had signed contracts only days previously. And, finally, they attacked the system of funding for political parties, which, I would remind you, was established in the wake of the Liberal sponsorship scandal.

The question, then, is whether we can place our confidence in people who behave like this, even when they are in a minority position. Let us see exactly what was said. On November 27, 2008, the present Minister of Finance said the following in this House:

The days and years and decades of those chronic deficits are behind us and no matter what 2009 brings, they must never return.

That was November 27, 2008. If that was not enough, on December 2, 2008, the same finance minister said:

Mr. Speaker, what is being proposed by the separatist coalition is a $30 billion spending program. That would put our country into a structural deficit for a long time. As Don Drummond of the TD Bank said, this would be a disaster that would launch us into a structural deficit.

The question is still there. Should we believe them?

I had a chance to meet with him about two weeks ago—like our party leader who said he had met with the Prime Minister to discuss these matters—and I quoted his own words back to him, namely that governments were incapable of deciding which sectors in our economy had needs that should be met and which did not. He calls it choosing the winners and losers. That is his way of denigrating the fact that government can have a role to play in the economy.

I read him the quote that appeared in the Globe and Mail and asked how he could expect us to believe he had undergone some kind of conversion, that he had fallen off his horse on the road to Damascus and henceforth saw things quite differently. He replied, looking me straight in the eye, that he still thought just what he had been quoted as saying.

The real question is this. When we see this new alliance between the new leader of the so-called Liberal Party of Canada and the neo-Conservative Party, how can we still find people in Canada naïve enough to believe that the Conservatives will do what they say in their budget?

It is all too obvious. They just want to get beyond the six-month time limit. All the constitutional experts who have written on the subject recently—35 experts all across Canada—agree that once six months have passed, the government will be able to call an election when it wants, but before that six month period is up, the opposition will have to be given a chance to govern. An opportunity has arisen: the progressive forces in the House—which represent 63% of the electorate and have a clear majority of seats—put their very real differences aside, shook hands, and said they would form a government in the interests of the country as a whole. They would put their differences aside and focus on what unites them. That is what was proposed.

Once again, we have looked at the proposals in the budget. Funds will be spent on infrastructure, among other things. What we have seen, though, is that not one dollar in five was actually spent on the programs that have already been proposed. It is still a sham. In addition, this time they are spending money that is not even theirs because they say in their figures that in order to reach 1.9% of GDP, they are including money that they assume the provinces and cities will spend, even though they do not have it. It is totally absurd. The 1.9% of GDP was put in the budget to look a bit like what the G-20 and OECD had suggested, that is to say, a country like Canada should spend 2% of GDP if it wants to have a real chance of re-igniting its economy.

The budget we saw yesterday is a fiction, and again we will see the Liberals complicit in it over the next few months. This will make 45 times that they have voted in favour of the Conservatives and expressed confidence in them. We are entering the fourth year in which the neo-Conservatives, the most right-wing government in Canadian history, have been kept in power by a party with the word Liberal in its name.

I can, however, assure the members of one thing: the people who voted Liberal last time, thinking—wrongly, as it turns out—that the party would actually stand up to the current Prime Minister, were all mistaken. Now these people have realized that they were conned. We, the members of the NDP, are calling on all those who wish to build a better country. We are urging them to join us, to work with us if they want to see a fairer, more egalitarian society when it comes to women's rights.

The Liberals gave us a stunning display of self-righteousness this afternoon during question period. One after the other, they rose in the House. One member asked why the government wanted to take away women's right to equal pay for work of equal value; another rose to ask why the government wanted to take $1 billion in transfer payments away from Quebec. And so it went during the whole question period.

The only thing they forgot to mention was the fact that they will be voting in favour of all of the measures they just criticized. That is bald-faced hypocrisy. They should be ashamed.

This is where Conservative arrogance meets Liberal mediocrity. What a splendid pair. They are about to make a mistake of historic proportions. It took a lot of courage to sign the coalition documents, which are still available online. People can see that everyone had to put a little water in their wine.

We are strongly opposed to the war in Afghanistan. That is and has always been our position. But that would not have stopped us from working as a team. However, I want to say something very important. The part of the budget that supports this attack on women is shameful. The fact that the Liberals are supporting it is unspeakable.

How can anyone, in the year 2009, support a proposal that deprives women of the right to go to court to ensure that their rights are recognized and respected? Rights are non-negotiable. The problem is that third-rate deals were being negotiated at the expense of women. That is why we need a law and recognition of such things as women's right to equal pay for work of equal value. That is what pay equity means. It does not mean that two people doing the same job should not receive the same pay. That has been taken care of, but pay equity is being set aside with the Liberals' loathsome support.

[Josée Verner, Conservative, Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce that our government will support the amendment put forward by the Liberals. We welcome the support of the opposition so that the budget can be implemented as quickly as possibly. As always, we welcome the opportunity to report on our progress.

Will the hon. member also support it?