Mr. Speaker, before I begin, I would like to say that it is an honour for me to follow my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, who gave an excellent speech on the budget.
One of the first things this budget brought to my mind was an interview I read a number of years ago with the then labour secretary in the Clinton administration, Robert Reich, who is, of course, a political and philosophical liberal.
In the interview he was talking, in frustration, about the neo-conservative winds that were still sweeping the United States at that point, that had begun with the Reagan administration. He was railing in a sense against these neo-conservative winds because those winds were denigrating longstanding, respected social safety net programs in the United States that had been in place for many years.
At the time, the economy was good, everyone was happy, people were prospering and forgetting in a sense that some day they might need those programs such as employment insurance and different forms of medical insurance. Previouis governments had been using this change in political culture that had been engendered by the good times to further denigrate these programs and make them seem dated and less valuable.
Reich said that one day middle-class Americans, who were earning good wages and salaries, would need those programs. He felt it was the role of the government, the Clinton administration, not only in its discourse but in its concrete actions, measures and policies to restore support for these programs. Now, of course, with the onset of the economic crisis, the point has been driven home more clearly than ever that Americans need these programs, like Canadians do.
I was watching 60 Minutes last weekend and there was a very heart-wrenching story about a one-industry town in Ohio called Wilmington. I am sure other members saw it. It is a town that houses one of the hubs of the DHL express courier company. The town had been thriving but with the recession the courier company's network is shrinking and it is conducting waves of massive layoffs, one week after another. Sometimes both spouses had been employed there and now find themselves with nothing, barely enough money to purchase groceries and sometimes not able to do that. They face mounting health care bills. They were in tears while being interviewed by 60 Minutes.
In one case a woman said what broke her heart more than not being able to put food on the table regularly was that she and her husband had to pull their son out of college before he graduated. It was a very sad tale. When I saw it, I felt terrible for them and I also felt grateful that I live in Canada where we have programs like employment insurance, publicly-funded post-secondary education, and a national health care system that is not perfect but is a safety net.
What I found disappointing in the budget was that the government had an opportunity to take a leadership role in this new era of hope and Obama-style vision. It had the opportunity to reinforce these programs through concrete spending measures at a time when Canadians need to have these reinforced, but it let the opportunity go by to some extent.
For example, we have to improve the employment insurance program at this time when unemployment is rising but we can also use it as a counter-cyclical economic instrument to help us get out of the recession. What better way to pump up the economy. What quicker, more efficient way to pump up the economy than to put money in the hands of the unemployed, who will spend it right away. Unemployed individuals do not have to wait until they file their tax returns; it would show up on a cheque right away.
The Globe and Mail called for this kind of reform to employment insurance. Forget the fact that we have to make the program better for compassionate reasons, but in terms of hard economic reasons that program could have been reformed and made into a counter-cyclical economic program. The government did not bite. It did not take the opportunity to do that.
The government also did not take the opportunity to further support the health care system. We know that in times of recession people suffer. They suffer stress and stress leads to disease and more hospitalization. We have done the research. The science shows it. The government may not believe in science, but what we have learned through science over the years is that these are facts, facts that are not debatable any more. Recessions lead to family problems, to stress, to disease and to hospitalization.
We had the foresight in our Liberal election platform to say that if we were elected, we would put $1 billion aside to hire more doctors and nurses. Why did the government not take inspiration from that? We would have given it credit for doing the right thing. The government left another national program weaker when it could have made it stronger.
The government could have invested more in post-secondary education and research, but it did not. It seems to be cutting research.
What is really galling about the Conservative government is its systematic lack of foresight.
There will always be ups and downs in the capitalist economy, and we know this now. There will always be speculative bubbles. If it is not the dot-com bubble, it is a real estate bubble or it is a credit crunch like we are living through today.
I was reading an interesting article the other day that explained why we never seemed to learn that we would have some kind of speculative run and that it would come to an end. One of the reasons we do not learn is because the people involved in the markets at a particular time do not remember the last crash. When we say it has crashed before, they tell us it is different this time because governments have surpluses or inflation is low. They are blind to the possibility that it will happen again.
I am so proud to say that we had a finance minister who built in a $3 billion cushion because he was wise enough to know that bad times would return.