Mr. Speaker, I would like to address the budget, challenges and opportunities for Canada in the 21st century.
It is important to have some historical context on how we got to this budget.
In 2006, the Conservative government inherited the best fiscal situation of any incoming government in Canadian history, a $13 billion surplus. Over a period of three years, through increased spending by 20% and misguided tax reform, it put Canada into a deficit even before the economic downturn. In short, it spent the cupboard bare in the good times, gutting the government's capacity to invest and help people get through the tough times.
Then, in November 2008, in the middle of the global financial crisis, when governments and leaders around the world were uniting their citizens and their political parties to address the crisis and to protect jobs, here in Canada we had a Prime Minister who said, “We have a global financial crisis. What a great time to put the boots to the opposition”. He took a financial crisis, turned it into a parliamentary crisis and turned it into a quasi-constitutional and national unity crisis. That was the response and the leadership we got from the Prime Minister during that crisis.
Two months ago, the Prime Minister shut down Parliament saying that he needed more time to recalibrate and to develop some ideas for the budget. There were no new ideas in this budget. We know why he shut down Parliament. He shut down Parliament because he wanted to escape the scrutiny of Parliament on the Afghan detainee issue.
This is not a normal recession, but rather a global economic restructuring.
In a global economic restructuring, it is not good enough to recover to where we were before the restructuring began if other more innovative governments and economies have moved ahead, and that is exactly what is happening now to Canada.
Other countries are using this crisis to restructure and make their economies more competitive. It is a shame to waste a good crisis. In fact, for the Chinese, the word crisis and opportunity are actually related. During this crisis, the Chinese have used the opportunity to reposition and restructure their economy, focusing on the opportunities of the green economy.
Wise, visionary leaders, governments and businesses use major crises to create opportunities. During this crisis, other countries—our competitors—have used their stimulus packages to make their economies more energy-efficient, greener and more competitive.
The overall consensus is that the focus should no longer be on environmental responsibility, but increasingly on economic competitiveness. Tomorrow's jobs depend on it.
The Conservatives are boasting of a recovery and they call this a stay the course budget. The problem is that the course is not working because too many Canadians are not working. Almost one in five young Canadians are out of work. This is a jobless recovery and a human recession. In fact, on page 34 of the government's own budget, its own figures project that unemployment will continue to rise this year. It is an unambitious budget with no vision, no ideas, and no hope for Canadians.
Around the world other countries used this crisis and their stimulus packages to create the jobs of tomorrow, particularly in the green economy. I will give some examples. South Korea invested 79% of its stimulus directly into the promotion of green technologies, which is forecasted to create 1.8 million jobs in the green sector. The U.K. invested 11%, or $3.7 billion of stimulus on green initiatives. France invested $6.1 billion of stimulus on green investments. The EU invested 64% of stimulus on green investments. Germany invested 13%, or $13.8 billion. Japan earmarked $36 billion, promising to create 1 million new jobs in the tech sector. The U.S. earmarked $66 billion for clean energy, or six times more, on a per capita basis, than the Canadian investment. In fact, Canada only committed around $1 billion to investments in clean energy. Once again, on a per capita basis, the Obama administration has put six times more into green and clean energy investments than Canada.
The U.S. is also putting $2 billion of stimulus into battery research, $8 billion for research and development in the department of energy, including $3 billion for carbon capture and storage, which is being matched by $7 billion of private sector investment in the U.S. The United States Secretary of Energy Steven Chu recently noted that because of this funding, 20% of all batteries for electric cars in the world will be made in the U.S. by 2012. That is up from 2% today.
Australia invested $4 billion in clean energy and environmental technology as part of its stimulus. China dedicated $218 billion, or 34% of its stimulus package toward clean technology. This is producing results. Two years ago China became the largest manufacturer of solar panels in the world. Last year China jumped past Denmark and became the largest manufacturer of wind turbines in the world. In fact, last November a deal was announced for Chinese wind turbines to be sold to a massive wind farm in Texas. China is focusing on the export markets.
Canada has one of the lowest proportions of green spending in its stimulus package. Once again, the Obama administration is putting in six times what Canada is putting in to green investments.
It is the same for innovation, and research and development. Australia and Sweden are spending five times as much as Canada, as a percentage of GDP, on innovation focused stimulus. Germany and the U.S. have doubled what Canada is spending on innovation focused stimulus. This bodes well for those countries because the jobs of the future are going to be linked to education, research and development, and commercialization. As they pull ahead, Canada's prospect is to be a country that is falling behind.
The Conservative government has no vision of the jobs of tomorrow. In fact, when it comes to the green economy, I was in the room at the Davos forum this year in January when the Prime Minister said that any measures to address climate change “will hurt the economy with real impacts on jobs and economic growth”. All the other leaders were talking about the opportunities to reposition their economies to be competitive in the global carbon constrained economy, to invest in the green jobs of the future, to render their manufacturing plants greener, to cut their energy consumption as governments and as manufacturers, and to help their citizens do the same thing.
The only leader in the world at Davos this year who was saying that environmental responsibility comes at an economic cost was the Prime Minister of Canada.
For the others, they have moved beyond addressing the topic of climate change from the perspective of environmental responsibility. They are now speaking of climate change and measures to address it in terms of creating economic opportunity. That is where the debate has gone.
The Liberal Party has proposed a three-prong strategy to create the jobs of tomorrow and to protect the jobs of today: support for manufacturers; investments in jobs for young Canadians; and encouraging investment in start-up research companies and high tech companies.
We have also proposed that the government develop a better approach, a more forward-thinking approach, to the three Es: energy, economy and the environment. This is Canada's sweet spot if we look at the future of our economy and the real opportunities we have.
We are a leader in energy. We could be a leader in clean energy if we only had leadership from the national government. We must invest in clean energy technologies. We must help our citizens, our companies and governments invest in technology to green our energy production and to cut our energy consumption.
In terms of our current leadership role in energy, we cannot claim credit for putting the oil or the gas under the ground or under the water. The fact is we have benefited tremendously as a generation of Canadians and created massive wealth as a result of our good luck. But we are frittering that luck away and squandering the opportunities to be leaders in the new kinds of energy, and I am talking about clean conventional energy, which means a lot in places like Saskatchewan.
Forty per cent of all CO2 sequestered anywhere in the world is sequestered in Weyburn, Saskatchewan. That investment by the former Martin Liberal government, working with the private sector, led the way. Today we see the U.S. investing $3 billion of government money, $7 billion of private sector money, with the capacity to effectively take that leadership position from Canada. Recently, the Obama administration signed a deal with China on the research and development of CO2 sequestration.
What I am saying is that we have an advantage now, but if we do not move quickly we are going to lose that advantage because other countries like the U.S. and China see the opportunities for a green economy in the future, and we cannot let that happen.