Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure today to reply to the Speech from the Throne. This year's address comes at a critical time for all Canadians. Canadians will continue to face tough economic and social challenges. We are experiencing a crisis in pensions. We have families struggling under record levels of debt. We have high youth unemployment. We have major environmental problems and stagnant economic productivity, and more than ever, leadership is needed to face these challenges.
Recently I held town hall meetings across my riding of Thunder Bay—Superior North, in Greenstone, in Terrace Bay, in Marathon. People are looking to the government to show leadership on job creation. They want a fairer employment insurance system. Our forest industry needs support. They are worried about their pensions. They want fair taxation and good fiscal management. They want to see proper environmental stewardship so future generations have clean air, clean water and a healthy planet. Regrettably, the government's agenda only provides lip service to most of these things and omits others completely.
I am disappointed to see that it contains so little of what the communities of northwestern Ontario want. It gives scant support to the 1.6 million Canadians out of work, half of whom are now running out of employment insurance. The throne speech reveals a government that is devoid of new ideas. It is hard to believe that the Conservatives really needed to prorogue Parliament to reset their agenda when there is virtually nothing new in it.
One of the principal duties of any throne speech and any budget is to ensure the prosperity of Canadians. There is one sure fire way to do this when unemployment is high, and that is focus first and foremost on job creation so all Canadians can benefit from any economic recovery.
There has been a lot of talk about a jobless recovery lately. What use is an economic recovery if it is jobless and Canadians are left out of work? Unfortunately, while the throne speech and budget talked a lot about job creation, there was precious little of real substance for it. There is no doubt some of the jobs lost in the last few years, good jobs, are gone for good, but that does not mean we cannot do more to retain those that remain and invest in the green jobs of tomorrow. One key way to do that is to is targeted incentives and investments rather than unnecessary and excessive tax cuts for big businesses.
The forestry sector is a prime example of an industry crying out for targeted stimulus. Years of neglect from the federal government has laid the whole sector low. The government has only paid lip service to this as well, with a paltry $25 million a year over four years to help it with power generation. It is not what they need. This is far short of what is needed and what the industry has called for. At minimum, the government should be aggressively negotiating an end to the U.S. black liquor subsidy, or matching it so our producers can compete in those markets. Better still would be a long-term growth strategy for the forestry sector with the funding to back it up.
Employment insurance is another area that would pay off in spades for Canadians and the economy if action were taken to fix the system. According to the government's own figures, for every dollar that is invested in EI, $1.70 is sparked in economic activity. Why is so little being done to fix EI? This is so far ignoring the main provisions of the NDP motion passed last year in this very House to make EI eligibility fairer and end the two week waiting period. As a result, most of the unemployed in northern Ontario still do not qualify for the EI that they paid for. Much worse, the government is hiking EI premiums after this year up to the maximum allowed under the law until 2015. This is just another tax on work by another name, right when we need it least. This will take $19 billion right out of the pockets of workers and—