Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to speak to the Speech from the Throne today, a speech that received a resounding chorus of indifference across the country because it contained no substantive new announcements in it.
I am splitting my time with the member for Cape Breton—Canso and it is a great honour to do so.
Members need not just take it from me that there was nothing in the speech. I will quote the National Post, which usually supports the government. On March 4, Don Martin, who is obviously very supportive of Conservatives, stated:
Prime ministerial speech writers injected an entire thesaurus into 23 pages hyping the same direction they were taking when [the Prime Minister] unplugged Parliament last December. They filled the text with weasel words like "continuing" and "reintroducing" programs while "building upon" and "extending" various initiatives already in place.
Canadians were shocked when the Prime Minister shut down Parliament and said that he had to re-calibrate and come up with something exciting and new. However, there really was nothing. There was no difference. As the headline in the Montreal Gazette said, “[The Prime Minister] needed time off to produce this?” There was nothing substantial.
I will now use the time for my remarks to talk about some things that should have been in the Speech from the Throne. During the prorogation, we had 32 forums where we had excellent speakers and we did a lot of work developing excellent policy ideas for Canada. I made one on the northern forum. An entire afternoon on Parliament Hill was dedicated to northerners, at which there were excellent speakers.
A lot of themes were raised but four of the main themes were poverty, homelessness, climate change, which of course is affecting the north more than anywhere else, and aboriginal land claims implementation and the many problems happening there. All of these things are major problems in the north and need support but there were no new major initiatives in the throne speech to deal with any of those.
As was just mentioned in the debate, the closing of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation has caused an outcry across the country. There are 133 projects and organizations that have been established over the years to help people heal from the tremendous tragic impacts on their lives. People are dreaming in Technicolor if they think the healing is finished. I have four projects in my riding and one project alone sees thousands of people. If we multiply that by 133 projects and organizations, one can imagine how many people still need healing.
As I mentioned briefly in my question, the Nunavut government passed a motion last week that asks for Canada to fully reinstate funding to the programs and services provided under the Aboriginal Healing Foundation which support Nunavummiut. The government's answer was that it had provided $60 million to Health Canada so that it could run healing programs. It was actually $33 million a year, so it is a bit more than that, but it is actually a decrease because last week in committee Health Canada officials said that the expenditure last year was $39 million. Not only is it closing all the healing organizations across Canada, but it is reducing the government's own services to provide healing, which is totally unacceptable.
What else is missing in the throne speech? It talks about “recognizing the realities of rural life”. The government certainly did not do that in relation to rural volunteer firefighters. The volunteer firefighters and fire chiefs of Yukon asked for a tax break. I passed that on to the Minister of Finance but nothing in that regard showed up in the budget or the throne speech.
I want to discuss food mail, which was just talked about. Northerners are getting very worried that their food supplies will be cut and the throne speech and budget were not much help. In fact, the minister said in committee that the program had been increased. I think the Minister of Health said that $45 million were added, which would bring it up to $60 million a year, but last year's expenditures were $69 million. When the population in the north is increasing and the price of food is increasing, we cannot decrease the food going to northerners. We will be following that up very carefully because nothing is more important to people's lives than basic food supplies.
The throne speech, fortunately or unfortunately, has a very small section on the north. The good point about that is, unlike the number of promises in the other throne speeches that were not kept, at least with so little the government cannot break as many promises. There was repetition of a few previous promises that have not been brought to fruition.
I do want to reference the quote where it says that the government will work with northern countries to settle boundary disputes. For a long time I have been pushing the government to work on the Beaufort Sea dispute but it has ignored that for years. When I brought it forward on a question on the order paper, it said that there was no dispute, that there was just a well-managed issue there. In fact, I am glad the government has dispensed with that imaginary situation, has acknowledged the dispute and is actually willing to work on it.
As I said before, the U.S.A. was putting oil leases on what we consider Canada. It was putting fish moratorium on our waters, which could affect the Inuvialuit land claim. It looks like the government will come to the table and I commend it for finally listening after all this time.
One of the themes recently in B.C. has been the great work of Liberal MPs in getting the convention centre and helping to get the Canada Line and, in fact, the Olympics. I commend the Liberal MPs for their work there. It changed the face of B.C. in recent years.
The throne speech talks a lot about the Olympics, et cetera, and the excellent government investment of millions of dollars for 200 and some athletes, but then the government almost ignores the over 1,000 Canadian athletes in the Arctic Winter Games. While small towns put more than half a million dollars in, there are millions of dollars required for this. The Government of Canada only put in $400,000 and denied repeated requests. The answers received from several departments were: “declined, do not meet the criteria”, or there was no response. In fact, Canada Customs, instead of helping the situation, added a bill of approximately $20,000 to the situation.
I encourage the government to walk the walk, talk the talk and provide more money for the Arctic Winter Games.
In regard to the public service, the original threats before the throne speech and budget, fortunately, did not materialize. I congratulate the government for saying that the public service is a critical national institution. However, I am worried about the freezes in operations and departments. It will have more of an effect on the north than anywhere else where there is more federal jurisdiction. We will be looking very closely at what types of cuts may be made. The last time the government did an expenditure review, it cut things like literacy, museum funding and women's groups. We cannot afford those types of cuts to the vulnerable this time round.
Something else that will affect the north is increasing seats in other parts of Canada. We only have three seats for the northern 40% of Canada, and the proportion of those will go down.
More foreign investments in telecommunication industries were referred to in the throne speech. I received nine letters opposed to that. Increasing foreign investment in uranium will have an effect on my riding, too, as we have a number of uranium claims.
The government could have made the homelessness partnering initiative permanent. Various government departments have a copy of the very important report on youth shelters, “Raising the Roof”, and yet there is no substantial action to deal with that.
With regard to volunteerism, the Prime Minister's award for volunteerism is good. At this time I would like to applaud Madeleine Gould, who passed away and whose service was this past weekend in Dawson City, for being volunteer of the year. However, I decry the government's cuts over the years in the millions of dollars to the volunteerism programs.
The throne speech says that hope is borne on the wings of prosperity. Why then is there no help for single mothers wanting child care? Why are there no new funds for pensioners? Why is there no hope for the depressing conditions on reserves or those on hospital waiting lists?
If indeed hope is borne on the wings of prosperity, this throne speech does not have hope.