Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to the speak to the motion. The NDP will be supporting the motion of the member for Parkdale—High Park.
I will be splitting my time today with the member for Trinity—Spadina. Her expertise as a city councillor for many years has given her a great understanding of municipal financing and the difficulty in bringing forward projects that can really benefit a municipality in a very short period of time.
As a former mayor for many years in a smaller community, I have the same understanding of this issue. I was involved in the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' green fund for five years. This role gave me the understanding of how long it took to put forward projects that could turn the direction of a community toward more greener and environmental purposes.
The reason we will support the motion because in the finance committee our party has called for similar action from the Conservative government. We put forward amendments in committee. Unfortunately the Liberals sided with the government and those amendments were not brought forward. They were very similar to what we are dealing with today.
Why do the Liberals think it is important today to take up an opposition day when they would not consider the time in committee, when proper amendments could have been brought forward that would have changed the nature of the budget bill?
The real reason is the Liberals need some cover on this issue. Therefore, today is spent to provide that cover for the Liberals to show they really do care about these issues. Their support of the Conservatives' attack on women, on collective bargaining and on the environment is really not their heartfelt desire. Rather they have moved forward with a motion today to show that they do have some differences from the Conservatives.
We cannot have it both ways. Either we support the Conservatives, like the Liberals, or we work, like the New Democratic Party, in opposition and speak up about the things that are not appropriate in the budget bill. The municipal infrastructure program, as a stimulus package, is simply not appropriate.
There is little difference right now between the new leader of the Liberal Party and the Prime Minister and his cohorts in the way that they think about issues. The coalition that has been established between the new Liberal leader and the Prime Minister is one based on similar thought.
In a 2007 study commissioned by the FCM, the municipal infrastructure deficit was found to be $123 billion. Under the Conservative plan, this deficit will grow because municipalities will be unable to access the funding because they will be unable to come up with the kind of matching funds required under the building Canada plan.
In the last election we committed to increasing the gas tax fund and to creating new funding for municipalities. Fixing the infrastructure deficit must be a priority. However, I do not think it will solve all our economic woes.
The world's economy is in need of change. The current economic situation was created by governments' deregulation that was driven by one thing, and that was greed. Deregulation was carried out mostly by the Liberals and cheered on by the Conservatives. Look at the mess we have today.
The great recession of the 21st century is growing worse day by day. We cannot afford to sleepwalk any more and think that because somehow our banks have done okay, the rest of the country is okay. It is not.
We have had massive job losses in Canada and around the world. Businesses are failing and banks are going under all over the world. For example, just today one of the biggest banks in Britain, the Royal Bank of Scotland, reported the biggest loss in British history. Because of this, Britain has announced a bank bailout plan of over $700 billion.
What we need right now is a vision of the long term to restructure our economy. The President of the United States is correct when he says that our current economic situation should be seen as a chance to rebuild and restructure, a chance to build a better economy, one that is sustainable. This is our vision for the economy.
What would this new economy look like? It would be greener, that is for sure. We should create a green collar jobs fund of approximately $750 million a year to train new workers and retrain displaced workers. Moving people in the direction of the new economy is so important. It is not simply good enough to house them on EI or on make work programs. We need to see their skills move in the direction that will lead to energy efficient renewable energy technology.
We will fall behind the United States if we do not move in this direction. President Obama has committed $150 billion over three years for renewable energy and energy efficiency programs. That is so much more than what we are putting in. We need to take hold of the new economy developing in the United States. The North American continent has an integrated economy. We need to invest in our country in the same types of projects and the same types of direction.
We also need to invest in Canadian production of low emission cars to ensure our auto industry remains viable. Aggressive incentives for manufacturers that develop and manufacture in Canada cars with low or zero greenhouse gas emissions should be a priority of the government. That is what is going to bring our car industry forward in a good and acceptable fashion.
All over the world industries, governments and workers are collaborating to build new opportunities for jobs in innovation. Canada has taken the opposite approach. Experts agree we need a proactive plan to keep our country, our industries and our workplace in leading global position. That should be our job here. This should be the direction that is provided by the budget, rather than the scatter gun approach to investing a little here and a little there, maintaining the status quote with some increased expenditures.
We need pan-Canadian sector based strategies. These sector based strategies will come through a systematic review of sector specific tax measures. We need to eliminate those that are economically or environmentally counterproductive. We need to add new measures to stimulate investment in the broader public interest. We need to commit to a better building retrofit and energy efficiency strategy, perhaps modelled on the city of Toronto. We need to undertake an immediate top to bottom review of how banks, insurance companies and other financial service providers are regulated in our country.
On a more local basis, in my own constituency in the Northwest Territories the federal Minister of the Environment has been pushing the Mackenzie Valley Pipeline as though that is all the Northwest Territories and Canada needs. This is an example of muddy thinking.
Yes, we need the pipeline. However, it needs to be thought out as a larger plan for the creation of a gas industry that will stretch up and down the Mackenzie Valley, a plan that should include the construction of a highway along the Mackenzie Valley as an equal or greater priority for the government than a pipeline. The highway will set the stage for proper development of a pipeline.
We need forward thinking, not cynical political damage control as we have with the motion today, which really will not accomplish much and will not move us forward in the direction in which we need to go. We do not need the blind attachment to the past that we see from the Conservative Party, exhibited with its approach to energy where most of the expenditures it will make are simply not appropriate.
We have discussed those at great length in the House of Commons, but we have not brought that discussion out to the country yet. We need to have a discussion in the country about how our energy systems will develop and what direction we will take, and not enclosed in a special interest group around the Prime Minister and his Minister of the Environment, which will not solve the problem.
I look forward to questions and comments.