Mr. Speaker, let us talk about employment insurance. According to the government's own figures, every dollar that is invested in EI, $1.70 is sparked in economic activity, so why is so little being done to fix EI?
The government has so far ignored 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 and across Canada still do not qualify for the employment insurance they paid for.
Much worse, the government is hiking EI premiums after this year. This is just a tax on work by another name. This will take $19 billion right out of the pockets of workers and employers alike. It is a job killer and it is a killer of gross domestic product.
I would ask the government to heed what the New Democrats have been asking for, to extend the freeze on EI premium hikes until the $57 billion historical debt, some would call it theft, owed to employers and workers has been paid back. It is Canadians' money paid into EI. They have already paid and paid, and they should not need to suffer huge payroll tax hikes as well.
Let us talk about pensions. With so many Canadians still out of work and seniors worried about their financial security, the pension crisis requires urgent action by the government. Here again it has failed to respond. Yes, there was a seniors day announced, and a re-announcement of plans for public consultations on pensions, which went nowhere, but that is it. There was nothing to help workers at AbitibiBowater, who had their pensions on the line. There was nothing to help workers when their companies went under.
The government could have taken up NDP ideas such as expanding the CPP and increasing the guaranteed income supplement to lift seniors out of poverty, but it has not.
The Canadian Association of Retired Persons said:
In the end all CARP members got from this budget are some nice words and the promise of more consultation.
Let us talk about fair taxation, or maybe we should call it unfair taxation. Federal spending goes up by $22 billion this year, to a record $280 billion. This will be a record deficit of $58 billion. The government is dreaming in Technicolor about its deficit reduction estimates, as the Parliamentary Budget Officer and many economists have indicated.
This is a tax and spend government if there ever was one. The government is engineering a huge tax shift from large corporations onto the middle class, onto low income earners, onto workers, and onto small corporations. Workers and employers will be saddled with $19 billion in payroll tax hikes and the government is still insisting that Ontarians and British Columbians pay for the harmonized sales tax, which was in this budget. It shifts the tax burden right onto the people who can afford it the least.
While it is taxing Canadians, the government is actually bragging about having the lowest corporate tax rate in the western world, and going lower as indicated on page 48 of the budget, chart 3.1.1. It is already roughly half that of the United States. Slightly lower might make a little sense, but why the huge difference? It is a blatant corporate tax grab, something we cannot afford right now, especially given the last 10 years, where the figures show clearly that tax cuts to big corporations have not resulted in investments or jobs, and the money has flowed to the United States or tax shelters in the Caribbean.
The government's own figures show that for every dollar of expenditure on tax cuts to big corporations, the good economic multipliers that provide stimulus are infrastructure, which sparks $1.60 in GDP growth per dollar; housing, which yields $1.50 per dollar; and spending a loonie on the unemployed gives $1.70 back. The bad investments for each buck are EI premiums at 60¢ on the dollar spent and broad corporate tax cuts, which the government's own figures show bring back only 10¢ to 30¢ to domestic growth, and the other money flows out, as per a table on page 281.
More numbers highlight how much of a tax shift the government is planning quite deliberately. Over the next four years, personal tax revenues are expected to increase by $42 billion, plus $8 billion more coming from GST. That is an increase of $50 billion from citizens versus only $10 billion from corporate taxes, five times the tax increase over the next four years from citizens as opposed to large corporations.
Canadians are concerned about the environment and there was little in this budget for the environment, except talk and inactivity. We have no national standards for drinking water quality. Canadians were expecting to see real action by the government. Instead, what they got were distractions and bafflegab. Instead of real vision and leadership, they got tinkering with the words to O Canada.