Mr. Speaker, once again it is my privilege to address this budget on behalf of the residents and constituents of Vancouver Kingsway and all British Columbians and Canadians.
In general, this is a budget that can fairly and only be described as one of missed opportunities and misplaced targets. All Canadians know that the Canadian economy has, for months and months, been in need of stimulus that works on behalf of families. The budget could have been much more effective at providing this stimulus and much more helpful for Canadians but, unfortunately, once again the Conservative government has put right-wing ideology ahead of good and sound government.
There are a few good things in the budget and I would applaud the government for these measures. There are also some measures that go some distance and, although insufficient, do go in the right direction. However, the many bad aspects of this bill vastly outweigh those and I will point out some of them here today.
We will start with infrastructure. The government claimed that $12 billion were allocated for infrastructure in this budget, but that is not exactly accurate. This budget ties almost all of that money to matching contributions by other levels of government and, in some cases, to community members themselves, whether those are the provinces, the municipalities or, with the new RInC program, the communities raising funds.
Almost all of the funds targeted for infrastructure are conditional. For instance, I read carefully the language used in the budget and it explicitly says that there could be infrastructure money for the evergreen transit line, the SkyTrain in Vancouver. Although I hope that money will flow, there is nothing in this budget that actually obligates the federal government to do so.
There is a lot of red tape with respect to this infrastructure and a lot of this red tape surrounds the allocation of this money to provinces and municipalities that now must co-operate with the federal government in order to get this money flowing. I suspect, as in previous years, that many of these infrastructure dollars will actually not be delivered, notwithstanding the crowing that has been done by the opposite side that this money will be injected into the economy.
I turn next to science and research cuts. This budget, fairly read, can be said to have disappointed the scientific and research community in this country. Whether it is aerospace, genome research or green technology, such as solar, wind and geothermal to photovoltaic communities, all feel neglected by this budget.
This is disappointing because investing in green infrastructure not only is a positive way to stimulate our economy now and in the days ahead, but it would create the jobs of tomorrow. It is incredibly short-sighted that the government has failed in this opportunity to put moneys into these areas. Instead, it has put its money into what I think are two of the most misguided areas in the environmental movement in this country, and that is in carbon sequestration and in the nuclear energy industry.
From all of the reports and research with which I have come into contact, carbon storage is an unproven technology. And, of course, we all know that the problems with the nuclear industry and the difficulties in dealing adequately with the waste that is produced is no answer, as well as being an incredibly expensive way to generate energy.
The people of this country want a strong and sound environmental policy that focuses on renewable energy such as sun, wind, geothermal and tidal. These are the economic drivers of the future. This is what the Americans are doing in the United States. I deplore the fact that this budget seems to go in a different direction.
On tax cuts, just about every economist in the land has been unanimous that broad-based tax cuts are simply a weak way to stimulate the economy. For instance, 80% of the tax cut that goes to a middle class person will be used to pay down debt, be saved or be used to purchase offshore goods which will help to stimulate a different economy than ours. While some of it does in fact make its way into the Canadian domestic economy, a lot of that is leaked and that is why it is not considered to be an efficient use of tax dollars.
There were some good measures and I would pause to commend the government on its tax policy for small business. The increase in allowable income used for the low small business tax rate is a step in the right direction and will be of some use, particularly to businesses in Vancouver--Kingsway.
Employment insurance has to be commented on. I spent 16 years prior to coming to the House representing workers. I spent many hours and many days with people who had been laid off and who had experienced the hardship of losing a paycheque. Without any ideological basis or approach, I can say that the changes to the EI program simply miss the mark. What workers in this country need and deserve when they make an EI claim is to have EI funds applied from the day they lose their jobs, and not a two-week waiting period.
They deserve to have a rate that they can live on. Unlike many members of the House, I would venture to guess, I know what EI is like. I was on employment insurance 18 years ago. It was then called unemployment insurance. The rate I received was $409 a week 18 years ago. What is it today? It is approaching $450. There has been hardly any increase at all.
To expect people now to live on a maximum amount of $450 a week--and many workers get far less than that--simply enshrines a poverty level that I think is actually designed to make it very uncomfortable to be on EI and to force people back to work by making them live on poverty-level wages. These changes that the government has made to EI really do nothing to address this issue.
I also want to point out something that many other members of the House have pointed out already, which is that a shockingly low number of workers who pay into EI actually qualify for benefits.That is not only a national shame, it is a form of governmental fraud.
If a worker pays into an insurance plan and does not actually qualify for benefits, the worker might rightly ask what he or she is paying for. This is an insurance plan. Workers pay into it with their own money, as do their employers, so that when they are unemployed, they can draw on the money that they put into it. When they put money into a plan that at the end of the day rejects them when they make a claim, it is not in any way whatsoever an insurance plan.
These are the changes that Canadian workers and their families in this current economy need to be made to the Employment Insurance Act, and these are precisely the changes that have not been made by the government. Adding five weeks onto the end of a claim that one does not qualify for at low wages is not going to help hardly anyone.
I found out today that the cost to the government of that one change of adding five weeks to the end of unemployed workers' claims is estimated to be $11 million. A paltry $11 million has been allocated to the unemployed workers of this country. When billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts have been given to the banks and to big oil companies that are making a profit, that is a disgrace.
Another matter is housing. In my riding of Vancouver Kingsway, in Vancouver, and in British Columbia there is a crying need for affordable housing. We need more cooperatives, we need more rental stock. We need more social housing for low-income people, housing for seniors, seniors complexes, and housing for the disabled.
While there is some movement in the budget to provide some housing for low-income seniors and the disabled, the rest of the population that needs housing is shut out. That is a serious deficiency in the budget.
Not only that, a national housing strategy would also help stimulate the B.C. forestry sector. At a time when the B.C. forestry sector is experiencing one of the most difficult times in history, we could be stimulating it, putting mills back into operation, putting workers back to work and building the kind of housing Canadians need.
I want to briefly mention that the budget could be used and should be used to help many of the groups in my riding who are working every day to help people, from Collingwood Neighbourhood House to the Multicultural Helping House to the Cedar Cottage and Mount Pleasant neighbourhood houses to the Little Mountain social housing complex. These community-based developments require infrastructure funds, funds that would actually provide shovel-ready capital as well as drastically needed services to the members of our community. I want to take this opportunity to point out their good work to the House. With help from the federal government, we can actually help stimulate the economy in Vancouver Kingsway, in British Columbia and across the country.
I look forward to questions.