Madam Speaker, I thank my colleagues from Laurier—Sainte-Marie and from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour for raising those points and I thank you, Madam Speaker, for your eminently wise counsel in that regard. I also thank Canadians.
Let us move on to another economic index. I know it is a bit depressing for us to go over the Conservative economic record. It is even more depressing for the families that are experiencing the economic lack of action and the incompetence of the government. It is important to get all the facts on the table.
What we have seen is a failure in every major indices around the economy, not just for Canadian families but worldwide. We will come later to the whole issue of research and development. Canada has an appallingly poor track record on research and development, which is not addressed at all in this budget. When we compare it to other industrialized countries, and we look at all of these indices, we see a failure of the government. However, it keeps coming back to an inflated job figure as if that makes everything okay.
The ultimate statistic that shows the failure of the government, even on employment, is Canada's position relative to other industrialized countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development from 2008 to 2011. As I mentioned earlier, in terms of economic growth, we are not first, or fifth or tenth; we are fourteenth. In terms of per capita GDP, we are not first, fifth, tenth or even fifteenth; we are seventeenth.
The final statistical fact that we need to put forward is the change in employment rate for OECD countries for 2008 to 2011. I will turn to my colleagues again and ask if anyone thinks we finished in the top three. People seem fairly skeptical about that. Does anybody think that we were the top 10? Unfortunately, we were not in the top 10. Is anybody for the top 15? No. Canada finished 17th for the change in employment rate, and this again is the kicker.
As I mentioned earlier with real per capita GDP, it has actually been in decline. What we have seen for the change in employment rate is exactly the same thing. Whereas other countries have a positive change in employment rate from 2008 to 2011, Canada, in 17th place, has a negative change in employment rate of 1.2%. Our employment rate actually declined under the government over the last three years.
We have had a chance to talk a bit about what is the appallingly poor economic record of the government.
Let us look for a moment, before we go into specifics of the impacts of the cuts, at where the government seems to want to invest the resources that we hold collectively as Canadians. As Canadians, we live in a democracy and we elect our government, which makes certain commitments, and we expect it to follow up on those commitments. That is the Canadian way. A Canadian way is a handshake. We look people in the eye, make a deal and keep it.
Prior to May 2, the Prime Minister looked in the eyes of the Canadian public and said that his priorities would be to invest in health care and maintain the health care transfers. As well, he said that he would maintain retirement security, that he would not gut OAS or change, wildly, retirement ages.
The Prime Minister said as well that he would maintain services. Those were the commitments he made and Canadians expected him to keep them. Also in December in Victoria, the issue of the health care transfers was thrown up, and I will come back to that a little later.
Instead of the issue around OAS, which the Prime Minister committed to keep but has now gutted in this budget, and instead of maintaining the services that Canadian families depended upon, this is what the Prime Minister and the government seem intent on doing. We have heard this for weeks and have had strong questioning from the NDP opposition around one of the pet projects, which is the F-35s.
We have pressed the government to come clean on that issue, but it has never responded and continues to want to spend the money of Canadians on the F-35s. I want to read into the record exactly what many people think about the F-35's lack of tendering process and the cost overruns, which have gone from about $9 billion to replace the CF-18s to now somewhere up to $40 billion, but no one really knows. We have asked questions persistently, but have never received a response. According to the Parliamentary Budgetary Officer, it was $30 billion, and that was before the latest cost overruns. Is it $40 billion or is it more? Nobody knows. However, it is a question of choices in a budget.
The government says that it has to cut back on old age security, on the programs and services that Canadian families depend, gut health care transfers in the long term and cut back on health care so it will no longer be there when Canadians need it. When government makes those choices, it has to explain why it invests in other things. Despite our questioning, despite the fact that we have raised this issue again and again on the floor of the House of Commons, the Conservative government has never explained how much the F-35s would cost and why it is so intent on purchasing them.
I want to read into the record an issue in The Waterloo Region Record that comes from Geoffrey Stevens. It says, “Ditch jets to sweeten sour budget”.
The author says that the Minister of Finance will unveil a budget that will cause weeping and gnashing of teeth. He certainly foresaw that. He talks about the cuts in services and government offices being closed. The author suggests that to sweeten that sour budget, the government should announce that it has decided not to spend the billions of dollars to purchase the F-35s from Lockheed Martin in the United States and instead has decided to invest that money in pension improvement for Canadian seniors. That seems to be a very thoughtful and sensible suggestion. Why not invest in pensions, re-tender the contract for the CF-18 replacements and ditch the F-35s? That would make a lot of sense.
He talks about what the Conservatives have done: He says:
It did not hold a competition to determine which aircraft on the market best suited Canada's requirement; if it had, it might, with a view to the safety of patrols in the north, have chosen a plane with two engines, rather than the single-engine F-35. It did not stop at the question of whether Canada's role in the world really requires a “sharp end of the stick aircraft” capable of escaping radar detection while taking out enemy air defences.
It did not even call for tenders from aircraft manufacturers to try to make sure it was getting the best price. Nor did it take into account that by ordering an aircraft that is still in the development stage two things are bound to occur: the price will rise and the planes will never roll off the assembly line on schedule. Both of those things are occurring.
Governments never likes to admit mistakes. “I was wrong”, are the toughest three words for any [Conservative] politician to utter. But [the Prime Minister] would not actually have to admit his government had been wrong. He could have noted that things had changed; cost overruns and production delays, plus the F-35s' failure to meet performance expectations...From this distance, the F-35 looks increasingly like the Edsel of the air.
Given those circumstances, [the Prime Minister] could ask Canadians: would it not be more prudent for Ottawa rethink the F-35 and [re-tender the contract?]
It was Geoffrey Stevens who wrote that in The Waterloo Region Record.
People are certainly paying attention. People are very concerned. They see the link between the cuts in pensions that ordinary families are getting and the bloated costs of the F-35, the cost overruns, the performance problems and delays.
I just wanted to reiterate some of the problems that have occurred around the F-35, and that “Lockheed has said that U.S. plans to slow down production will hamper its efforts to lower the cost of the plane.”
The brief rundown on what is happening in some of the other countries is the following:
Britain...said in a 2010 defence review that it would cut its planned order of 138 F-35 fighter jets and decided to pull out of the short-takeoff variant completely. Last week, a U.K. official said the government would not decide until 2015 how many F-35s it will buy.... Turkey has already halved its initial order of four planes and Australia is rethinking when to buy the next 12 of its initial order...given the U.S. delays.... Italy, the only other buyer of the short-takeoff version of the F-35, has hinted at possible “significant” reductions in its overall buy of 131 planes....Norway’s parliament approved the purchase of four F-35 training jets last summer and is slated to decide this year on plans to buy up to 52 more planes.
The purchase of the F-35s is obviously a fiasco. That is the only way to put it.