Debates of Sept. 21st, 2010

Government Spending

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, let me say this. The priorities of this government are jobs, hope, and opportunity. The priority of this government has been our economic action plan. The priority of this government is to create jobs in every corner of the country, some 12,000 infrastructure jobs, putting Canadians back to work. That is why, in the past 15 months, we have seen the creation of some 430,000 net jobs. That is the best in the OECD.

[Michael Ignatieff, Liberal, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, just ask whether the jobs that have come back are worth the jobs we lost. That is number one.

This is a spend and borrow government. It has gotten us into a $54 billion hole. It is about to borrow $6 billion to give breaks to large corporations. The question Canadians are asking is this: how can we trust a spend and borrow government to dig us out of the hole that it dug us into?

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians can trust this government, the Prime Minister, and the Minister of Finance to stand up for a strong Canada, a Canada creating jobs, hope, and opportunity. If Canadians want to know why they can trust this government, it is that this government has maintained the confidence of that party for the past two years.

National Defence

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Speaker, without a competitive bidding process in Canada, the Conservatives chose to borrow $16 billion for stealth fighter aircraft. They chose not to determine if there was a better option, one that would meet Canada's defence needs and better serve taxpayers. By choosing to pay the highest price possible for these stealth aircraft, the Conservatives renounced savings that could have been used for the priorities of Canadians, such as health care and retirement security.

Why have the Conservatives decided to disregard taxpayers and disregard the priorities of Canadian families?

[Peter MacKay, Conservative, Minister of National Defence]

Mr. Speaker, first, I want to welcome the member opposite to his new critic portfolio. I look forward to working with him on important defence matters. I look forward to finding some level of co-operation, as our fathers did before in this place. I would also like to answer his question.

With respect to the priorities of Canadians, yes, health care, yes, the economy, and yes, many other things, but yes, security. Outfitting the men and women of the Canadian Forces with the best possible equipment, to protect them, to allow them to do their jobs, is an important priority for Canadians. These jets will do just that. This is the best possible jet we could give these members of the Canadian Forces and we intend to make it available to them.

[Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal, Beauséjour, NB]

Mr. Speaker, by choosing to spend as much as possible on these stealth aircraft, the Conservatives have let guarantees of benefits for Canada's aerospace industry slide. Alan Williams, former head of the initiative at National Defence, says that the Conservatives' agreement will benefit Canada's industry far less than if there had been a public bidding process.

Why did the government choose to pay more and get less for Canada's aerospace industry?

[Tony Clement, Conservative, Minister of Industry]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is that by signing this memorandum of understanding we have given Canadian companies an entranceway for being part of the global supply chain for up to 5,000 planes worldwide, not just the 65 that are going to be built in Canada.

The Liberals want to throw it all away. They want to cancel the contract or review the contract. The minute they do that, all of those contracts, and there are 60 contracts already extant for this plane for Canadian companies, go on hold, too. That is irresponsible. They are threatening Canadian jobs.

Millennium Summit

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in 2000, at the UN Millennium Summit, Canada agreed to support eight goals including eradicating extreme poverty and hunger. To that end, the government promised to allocate 0.7% of its gross domestic product to international aid. Eleven years later, the Conservative government is committing 0.31%, or less than half.

How can the Prime Minister have the gall to go to the United Nations as the champion of international aid when he has not even made the required contribution toward the main goal of the Millennium Summit, to eradicate poverty?

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, in order to eradicate poverty—the Prime Minister has always been clear on this—developed and developing countries must work together. I would like to remind the House that in 2008-09, Canada kept its word and doubled its international aid for Africa, with respect to 2003-04 levels, to $2.1 billion.

That is action and not just empty promises.

[Gilles Duceppe, Bloc, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Mr. Speaker, another goal of the Millennium Summit was to ensure environmental sustainability. The Conservative government has a poor record in that area as well.

How can this government believe that it will achieve this goal after killing the Kyoto protocol, sabotaging the Copenhagen accord and continuing to challenge the scientific basis of climate change?

[Christian Paradis, Conservative, Minister of Natural Resources]

Mr. Speaker, with regard to eradicating poverty, we must also mention the $1 billion in loans forgiven for struggling countries. Our international aid will reach a new record of $5 billion in 2010-11.

I could go on. However, with regard to Copenhagen, I would say that for the first time we have a prime minister who has shown leadership, created consensus and brought all major emitters to the table. Not one, not two or three, but all major emitters sat around the table to set a common course and talk about sustainable development.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, one of the millennium development goals is to promote gender equality and empower women. However, the Conservative government has cut funding to women's rights groups, and refuses to implement a mechanism to ensure pay equity for women. Canada has the largest gender wage gap of any industrialized country.

How can the Prime Minister claim to support the millennium development goals, when he has nothing but contempt for women's right to equality?

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women]

Mr. Speaker, that is completely false. Our government has raised funding for women to the highest level ever. In fact, we have almost doubled our funding for women's groups across this country. We are funding projects in every province and every territory. I would ask the member opposite to work with us instead of pitting women's groups against each other.

[Johanne Deschamps, Bloc, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

Mr. Speaker, one way to improve the living conditions of women is to ensure better family planning. But because of this government's ideological obsession, it refused to allow access to abortion to be discussed at the G8 and G20 summits. In addition, funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation was suspended.

How can the Prime Minister think that his party's fundamentalists are more important than women's health?

[Rona Ambrose, Conservative, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women]

Mr. Speaker, our government funds a number of projects to support women's health across this country and internationally. If I may repeat, this government has increased the level of funding to women's groups to the highest level ever in Canadian history. In fact, we have almost doubled it since we have become government.

I ask the member opposite to work with us and make sure that all of these women's groups do get the support that they need.

Government Spending

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there has been no increase in the old age security program for seniors in two years, but we have learned today that the government's advertising budget has been increased by 74%. That is shameful.

The Conservatives are throwing crumbs to our seniors while they re-enact the sponsorship scandal. Their priority is clear: self-promotion.

What is the Minister of Finance's plan to help the middle class? Posters?

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I do have to say to my friend, the leader of the NDP, we must be very clear. The government has an important responsibility through our economic action plan to be transparent and to be accountable for the measures contained in the economic action plan.

Many of these measures Canadians had to be involved with proactively, like the home renovation tax credit, an initiative that the Minister of Finance authored. It has been literally resulting in tens of thousands of jobs in various parts of the country.

This one year, as I reported to the House earlier today, we did have to spend some $24 million on the H1N1. Thanks to the hard work of the Minister of Health, that program was a very big success.

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives just do not get it. After two years of zero increases for the senior citizens in this country, who needed the help while inflation was on the go, they can come up with millions for self-promotion, and they give our seniors $1.50. Where are the priorities here?

Why will this government not, instead of wasting time as the finance minister did today attacking the opposition parties, get on board with a program to really help Canadian seniors and give us a full middle class recovery instead?

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, the rampant inflation taking place right across the nation is something that I have missed. Interest rates are at an all-time low, certainly in my lifetime.

We have come forward with a comprehensive plan. One of the centrepieces of that plan is to protect those most vulnerable.

The last time Canada faced hard economic times, the previous government cut spending by literally $25 billion to Canada's important social programs.

Thanks to the leadership of the Minister of Finance, thanks to the leadership of this government, we not only kept our faith with health care and social spending, and transfers to the provinces, we have in fact increased them. That is good leadership to support the most vulnerable.

[Jack Layton, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

He should tell that to the seniors going to the food banks, Mr. Speaker.

The banks are getting richer while the middle class and seniors are getting poorer.

Even worse, today we learned that health clinics are bamboozling members by making them pay a co-op fee in order to see a family physician.

This is another attack on the basic needs of everyday people. It is illegal. It is unacceptable.

How is the minister going to put an end to health co-operatives?

[John Baird, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, let me say this to the NDP. We recognize that the job is not done, that we must remain focused like a laser on the economy, not just to create jobs, not just to see the average incomes of Canadians rise but to address the many who still need help and we are focused very much on that.

Our focus, I say to the leader of the NDP as I did in the first supplementary, is on health care. That is the single biggest priority for spending in this government when it comes to increases. We not only have increased it by 6% a year but when the tough economic times have hit, the transfers to the provinces have gone up instead of down.

A good number of us sat in provincial legislatures when the funding was cut by the previous government. That is something this government will not do.

Government Advertising

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, today we learn that the Conservative government actually spent a record $130 million on TV and radio ads. That is a whopping 215% increase in advertising spending since 2006.

Worse still, the minister claims this was for H1N1 prevention, when we know that $50 million alone was spent on economic action plan ads which provided no useful information for Canadians. Let us just call it for what it is: shameless self-promotional material for the Conservative Party.

With a record deficit, how could these Conservatives have wasted so much borrowed money?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

Mr. Speaker, our estimates for this year are about $130 million. If we go back even eight years to 2002, the Liberal spending on the same account was $110 million. If we take the $25 million that we spent warning Canadians about H1N1, it actually turns out that we spent less than the Liberals did eight years ago. We are not apologizing for warning Canadians about H1N1.

[Judy Foote, Liberal, Random—Burin—St. George's, NL]

Mr. Speaker, worse still, the government's own polling data shows that when it came to informing Canadians, their ad campaign was a total failure. Of the Canadians who recall seeing the workers ad, for example, fully 93% said they were useless. Given that their own evaluation is such a disaster, how can the Conservatives look pensioners in the eye when they are shamelessly blowing their hard-earned money?

[Stockwell Day, Conservative, President of the Treasury Board and Minister for the Asia-Pacific Gateway]

Mr. Speaker, on one significant portion of our campaign talking about what we are doing for economic stimulus, we let taxpayers know about our tax rebate programs, and how to access and file for them. For instance, the homeowners' tax rebate was seen as one of the most successful rebate programs in Canadian history. The hon. member can talk about polls all she wants, but on those and other items that we advertised, I think we hit it at about 100%.