Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, the member for Dartmouth--Cole Harbour for his intervention. I am certainly not distracted by the comments opposite. It actually gives me more energy when the government says, as it has in this budget, that ordinary families are not important, that seniors are not important, but what is important is its two priorities, building prisons and buying fighter gets. That is why we are speaking out for ordinary families here in the House of Commons.
I want to make another point in reaction to the comments of my Conservative colleague opposite who asked about my other colleagues, the other 103 members in the NDP caucus, which would make it 104 members. However, we are actually 102 at this point but we will be far beyond that after the next election. Any one us, the 102 women and men, who were elected to this Parliament, representing constituencies right across the country, could be making the same points that I am making to day. Any one of them could, and we will hear from them in the coming days.
However, every member of the NDP caucus is united in saying that this budget is a bad thing. We all say that the cuts to services are a repudiation of promises the Prime Minister made during the May 2 election campaign. We all say that the forced retirement age going up is a repudiation of solemn commitments that were made. We also say that the cuts in health care funding over the longer term is a repudiation of promises made. Every member of this 102-strong NDP official opposition caucus would be standing and saying that Canadian families deserve better than what the government has brought forward.
I appreciate my colleagues raising those points of order. That is democratic debate. We believe it is fundamentally important to raise points of order if there is something a member opposite finds objectionable. That is part of the debate and the public discourse, which I do not mind at all. What I do mind is when the government says that it will not follow the facts anymore, that it will eliminate those organizations that stand up independently for Canadians and produces facts that it disagrees with. That is not part of the democratic discourse, which is why we are standing in the House today. We are standing up for Canadian families who are writing in to us.
I will start in British Columbia and read some of the comments that we have been getting from across the country in reaction to the budget.
I received comments from another constituent who lives in Burnaby, British Columbia. I am very proud of Burnaby and New Westminster, the two communities I represent in the House of Commons. My constituent says, “I oppose the severe cuts to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. We need good public media to keep Canada connected. The proposed cut of $110 million represents the majority of the cost of providing CBC Radio and much more than the current budget for all of CBC's digital programming. This dramatic cut will damage our news, our culture and our digital economy”.
The next one is from a person in New Westminster, B.C. I am taking the liberty of choosing a couple of constituents among the many Canadians who have written in. I guess it is my prerogative to put my constituents up first as we go across the country for what is essentially a roundup of opinion from ordinary Canadian families who see how the government, with its fewer jobs, less growth and less prosperity budget has moved forward.
My constituent says, ”keep saying that the burden on taxpayers to fund the OAS will be too great in the future”.
We will come back to that a little later on because, as we know, both the government's own actuarial tables, which I have today and will be very pleased to share with members opposite, and the Parliamentary Budget Officer said that OAS would be viable in the long term.
She goes on to say, “Seniors are still contributing their fair share of taxes, income taxes, consumption taxes, HST, GST, PST, as well as taxes paid for gasoline, etc. There are a lot of elderly women living on very limited, fixed incomes”. This Canadian is mentioning that we already have a lot of poverty among seniors in this country.
What the government is doing now is pitting one generation against another generation. Perhaps cutting out the less stealth fighter jets could be a start in cutbacks. We need to look at corporate tax cuts as well. Those are the things that will make a difference in having the kind of country we want to say. She adds, and this is very kind of her because she is a constituent, “I believe your voice makes a difference. I am proud that you are my MP”. I am proud to have her as a constituent.
Another person in Vancouver, continuing our roundup in the Lower Mainland, writes, “In terms of dollars, protecting the environment is also taking a hit as part of overall spending cuts. Environment Canada will get cut by $20 million in 2012-13, rising to $88 million in 2014-15. Parks Canada gets a $6 million cut this year, rising to $29 million in 2014-15. The National Round Table on the Economy and the Environment has been scrapped, ostensibly because an expanded community of environmental stakeholders has demonstrated the capacity to provide analysis and policy advice to the government”.
He puts that in quotation marks indicating he is skeptical about what the government is actually saying about how there will be analysis and policy advice going to the government. He goes on to say, ““Unless they get funds from foreign radicals”, apparently.
He goes on to say, ”The National Round Table on the Economy and the Environment was one of the few federal voices that have acknowledged the challenge of climate change in a series of reports while calling for action to reduce emissions, studying measures of doing so, such as carbon pricing, and making estimates of anticipated climate related damages to the Canadian economy in future years. Their contributions clearly were not welcome in the do not ask, do not tell Ottawa and will be missed”.
I have more comments from a person in Duncan, British Columbia who says, “I am very upset about the retirement age going to 67. In the 2000s, when the market crashed, all my life savings were taken back to when I first started saving for retirement in the 1980s. How is the generation I belong to supposed to make any headway? I will never vote Conservative again for the rest of my life. I am hoping that if the NDP does form the next government, you will think about business as I believe that working together you can create the jobs that we all depend on. I have lost faith in this government that we have now”.
I will move on to another Conservative riding on North Vancouver Island. What we will endeavour to do throughout this presentation is bring forward the voices of those Canadians who live in Conservative-held ridings for the moment and who want to have their voices heard on the floor of the House of Commons.
A Canadian woman writes, “My concern is the number of public service jobs that will be cut in this budget. Not only will this affect individual families but will also reduce the economic spinoff effects of workers with paycheques who purchase items in the community. This causes economic stagnation. The Prime Minister should understand this and develop policies to counteract or prevent job losses. How about keeping those jobs which provide essential services in our communities?”
That is a very good point. She is absolutely right. The rating agencies warned the government about doing this. The 50,000 or more job cuts in both the public and private sectors as a result of this budget will have a serious negative economic impact. The rating agencies, Fitch and Moody's, both warned the government against doing this.
There is no doubt that this will continue the vicious circle downward. The government acknowledged this in putting in its budget the fact that unemployment will go up as a result of this budget. It boggles my mind how it could do this but perhaps it is because I used to be a teacher and one needs to be precise as a financial administrator, as I was later on. However, when a government knows there will be fewer jobs, that the growth rate is being brought down and that it is ensuring less prosperity, why would it put on the front page of the budget document “Jobs, Growth and Prosperity”? It actually shows inside of the document that there will be fewer jobs, less growth and less prosperity as a result of this budget.
It would have been honest of the government to put that on the front cover. We will probably have to write over it so that it gives an accurate indication of what is in the budget. When the inside of the document contains statistics that show that unemployment will go up and prosperity will go down, why would it not come clean and just say that it will give fewer jobs to Canadians, 50,000 less as a result of this budget, and have less growth?
The reality is that Canada finished 130th in 2011 in economic growth worldwide, which means that 129 countries did better. That is a shocking statistic. That means that 129 governments knew what they were doing more than the Conservative government.
The member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour just asked what countries finished ahead of us. I would love to share that with him but perhaps a little later as I want to continue reading the comments of Canadians from coast to coast to coast because that is democracy and that is what we do. The comments are still streaming in. The fax machine is smoking and starting to break down because so many Canadians are writing in. Fortunately, with emails the computer can handle a higher volume and, as I mentioned, the tweets and postings on Facebook are still coming in.
The point the woman raised was a very important one. The government is provoking an even greater economic slowdown. That is what our concern is, among a number of concerns, about how irresponsible the government was with the budget that it tabled on Thursday.
I will now move on to the Prairies. These are important points that need to be raised. I will not read a ton of emails, as they are still coming in, but I have selected, out of the many we have received, those from Canadians in Conservative-held ridings who are speaking out.
A constituent in Calgary said, “At its worst, this new policy really is a massive insult to seniors. A cynic might even say that the statisticians have crunched the numbers and realized that a few hundred, or even a thousand, people may die between 65 and 67 while waiting for their pension, and they like that idea. Then Canada would not have to pay them pensions at all. It's like saying 'cross my heart and hope you die'. Nobody knows how long they will live, but it is odd to have a government betting on you delaying reaping benefits for all those years of your earnings to the point that maybe you won't be able to reap any benefits at all”.
The actuarial tables show, tragically, the rate of passing on between the ages of 65 and 67 does go up. It is true that as a result of the government's decision for future seniors, seniors who have worked all their lives to retire at 65 will either live in poverty from ages 65 to 67 because they have no other source of funding and cannot get their pension, or they may pass on. That is just the sad reality.
A constituent in Lacombe, Alberta said, “The budget points to the Prime Minister's great fear of anything that looks like work. I can agree with the Prime Minister that Canada may be financially better off than Greece; however, I would temper that joy with the reminder of how far behind we are of countries like Finland, Norway and other involved Nordic countries. We have fallen far behind. Those who voted for the Prime Minister with expectations of the good fiscal management he suggested he possessed must be very disappointed when cutting spending rather than growing the Canadian economy is his answer for the Conservatives to continue to hold power”.
From the Conservative-held riding of Elmwood—Transcona in Manitoba, a constituent said, “I believe all Canadians need to know these statistics”. He is talking about the statistics that I raised on Friday. A number of Canadians have asked us to go over those statistics. A number of people who wrote in wanted to take note of what the 10 principal economic and fiscal failures of the Conservative government have been.
The constituent from Manitoba went on to say, “All Canadians need to know the statistics you mentioned and hope that this information is readily available to the public. My real concerns with the budget are that our democracy is under attack, and cutting funding to Elections Canada is even further proof to me that the Prime Minister doesn't seem to like impartial elections. If an election has to be held, it will be on his terms, driving people away from an interest in politics, driving people away from having an option of voting for their preference, snubbing their nose at election financing rules, threatening to sue anyone who challenges them about their integrity, and the list goes on and on. The ability of Elections Canada to fulfill all of their duties is extremely important and reducing that ability would be the start of the end of democracy in Canada as we have all come to know it, and has been seen by many around the world as an envy until now. When I hear this government's move on OAS, I take it as a signal from the Conservatives that there will be more low-paying, less full-time, less skilled jobs in the future that will be paying less income tax with no benefits, so be prepared for a survival of the fittest”.
Those are some comments from people in the prairie region of Canada. In all three cases, these comments come from Canadians living in Conservative-held ridings. Their points of view are important.
I am going to move on to Ontario. I started in British Columbia for obvious reasons. I am very proud to come from B.C. To start in British Columbia and work my way east seemed to be the logical way to proceed.