Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for British Columbia Southern Interior.
I am pleased to speak today on the January 27 budget. As hon. members are aware, the NDP has decided to vote against the budget. Comments have been made that the NDP has not read the budget, but I feel we did not need to read it. We heard about it a week ahead of time on television and radio, and in the press. I do not know why we would be accused of not reading it, when we got it fed directly to our ears.
There is a reason, however. When you lose confidence in someone, you lose confidence, and clearly Parliament no longer had confidence in the Conservative government. The Liberals had also said they had lost confidence, but it would appear they have recovered it now. It is the voters who need to decide what comes next. That said, it is comical to hear the Liberal leader saying that the Newfoundland members can vote against the budget, once. So it is okay to vote against the budget, once, provided there are only four or five of you.
Those members are going to vote against the budget because of the transfer payments and the infrastructure funds. Are the members for New Brunswick in favour of the equalization transfers to the provinces, and are they pleased that we in New Brunswick will also be losing transfer payments to the province? It seems that they will be voting in favour of the budget and not following their colleagues from Newfoundland.
Yes, there are some things in this budget. We are not saying there is nothing in it. Yes, it does contain some things. But we need to focus on what is not in it. In my opinion, it was a sad day indeed when the Liberals indicated their readiness to support the Conservative party. The coalition was at last going to bring in some changes to employment insurance, changes that workers have been waiting for for years.
Another thing that bothers me about this budget is the freeze on public service salaries. As far as pay equity is concerned, the government is depriving women of their fundamental right to justice. Every Canadian, male or female, should be entitled to access to justice. But no, after all these years, their rights will have to go the route of negotiation rather than through the justice system where the courts would decide.
This budget contains nothing for fisheries, either. There is indeed an economic crisis in Canada, what is now being called a major economic crisis. The crisis in the fishing industry has gone on for years, and, despite that, the government presents a budget that will cost fishers their shirt. Although things are not going well at all in the fisheries sector, the budget offers nothing to help out fishers whether they be in the Gaspé, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland or Prince Edward Island. Furthermore, there is nothing in the budget to resolve the fisheries crisis in the Atlantic provinces.
Something different could have been done for transfers to the provinces and infrastructure. I talked to people. Clearly, the Conservatives did not talk to the same folks. We must not forget that only 20% of the money for infrastructure in the 2008 budget was used. For the major cities and towns with money, giving a third and a third and a third is no problem, but towns and municipalities do not have that money.
I must speak to one aspect of this budget. That is employment insurance. The government says it has changed the employment insurance program by adding five weeks of benefits. My Conservative colleague says it is true, that the Conservatives did add five weeks. Fine, five weeks of benefits were added, but at the end.
Last week the minister commented on the radio. She said the reason she did not want to eliminate the two-week waiting period or pay the first two weeks of employment insurance benefits was that these two weeks revealed those who were abusing the system.
For starters, the minister said that workers in Canada are a bunch of cheaters. Then, this week or on the weekend, she said it again. She does not want to make changes to employment insurance, because doing so would encourage people to stay at home rather than go and work. This is an insult to the workers of this country.
Why would she not do the same thing for the big companies that mismanaged their affairs? Why would she not tell the big corporations and the banks that the government would not help them because they did not manage things properly and are a bunch of exploiters? In this case, the government changed its mind and said it would give them money. The largest amount will go to the major corporations in the form of a tax reduction.
The workers get $1.5 billion, but the big corporations get nearly $60 billion in tax reductions. That is a ratio of 1.5 to 60. That is what the government decided to do.
The minister says that workers are a bunch of abusers who want to stay home. In case she does not know, it takes the government more than just the two-week waiting period to check a person's claim. Under government rules, it takes 28 days. Some people even wait not two weeks, but up to 40 or 50 days before they qualify for employment insurance. It is said that workers are dependent on employment insurance, but it is really the government that depends on employment insurance. In fact, it has stolen $57 billion from the employment insurance fund—$57 billion. It is shameful.
It is sad to see what the Liberals have done. They had said they had no confidence in this government, but today they are going to vote in favour of the Conservative budget. They could have given workers a glimmer of hope, but the Liberals are telling the Conservative government that they have confidence in it and that they are going to let the Conservatives govern. They are going to support a public service wage freeze, an RCMP wage freeze, the refusal to let women go to court, all of that. The Liberals' position is quite regrettable.
Let us look at how employment insurance could have been changed for the better. During an economic crisis, people lose their jobs. And as if that were not enough, they do not even get any money during the first two weeks to help their families. Then they get 55% of their wages. This crisis would have been a good time to tell workers that this program belongs to them, that the government had stolen enough from them and that it was going to give it all back and make changes.
Of all the people who will lose their jobs—for example, in the auto industry—some have worked for 25 years, and some of those people have never received employment insurance. The minister said last week that the reason the government did not want to pay people for the first two weeks was so that it could check whether they were a bunch of cheaters. She does not even know the system. The waiting period has nothing to do with that. When the employment insurance system was set up 50 or 60 years ago, the two-week waiting period was created because there was no employment insurance. The government decided to wait two weeks to give people time to look for another job. If, after that time, they had not found other work, the government paid them employment insurance. The waiting period was not for checking whether people were cheating. It had nothing to do with that.
Instead of changing its mind and helping women and men who are losing their jobs in Canada, instead of requiring 360 hours to qualify for employment insurance, instead of eliminating the two-week waiting period, instead of considering the best 12 weeks to help these workers and families invest in the economy and find a job, the government did nothing. When it comes right down to it, in the end, it is granting an extra five weeks. So the government crosses its fingers and hopes that these people find work before these five weeks, so that it does not have to pay them, despite the profits it made with the employment insurance fund.
The most important reason for voting against this Conservative budget is because we have lost confidence in them. This same government proposed a law for fixed election dates and then violated its own law. We do not have confidence in the Conservatives.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for giving me the chance to talk about this subject. I hope that the Conservatives will have a more open mind when it comes to workers and that they will show these workers some respect.