Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that the NDP MPs continue to be so energetic and dynamic after over five hours of budget debate. When I see the energy they bring to representing their constituencies, I can say that it gives me energy.
They do a good job as members of Parliament. I have seen many groups, but the NDP class of 2011 is the best ever elected to the House of Commons. It is true. It is an extraordinary group.
I want to read some of the faxes and emails that are coming in now. We have some particularly relevant comments from constituents from NDP ridings and from the ridings of other parties. I am trying to bring forward the points of view that are expressed from Conservative-held ridings because we are getting more and more. As I mentioned earlier, the fax machine in the lobby must be smoking from all the faxes that are coming in. These are from Conservative-held ridings. When Canadians are living in ridings which at least for the moment are held by Conservatives, it is very important to bring those views forward.
The first is from Kelowna—Lake Country which is a Conservative-held riding in the interior of British Columbia. This individual said, “The finance minister is using half-truths to justify his changes to OAS. For example, with regard to demographics, it is true that there will be fewer workers per retiree in 2030. However, the ratio of workers to seniors alone does not determine the burden on workers, but is only one-half of the equation. The dependency ratio, or DR, is a measure of burden on the labour force defined by Statistics Canada as the population age 15 to 64 of supporting services for children and youth”. Those are individuals age 0 to 14 and seniors age 65 and over. She continued, “The dependency ratio will be 64% in 2031. It was 70% in 1961”. That dependency ratio in 1961 was higher than the dependency ratio will be in 2031. She said, “It did not break the bank then. It will not break the bank in 2031”.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the wonderful pages of the House of Commons. They are the ones giving me water and Kleenexes and anything else that I need. They deserve our appreciation. Normally we do not get the opportunity to thank the pages for their terrific work, but I think I can take a moment of my time to do that today. We are all aware of the important work the pages do and they do it so discreetly. They are giving me Kleenexes, water and everything else. They do a fantastic job.
The pages are a symbol of the younger generation that we need to be looking out for. We need to make sure programs are in place for younger Canadians. We need to make sure we are addressing issues of chronic unemployment with younger Canadians. We need to ensure that their quality of life is similar to what previous generations enjoyed. On behalf of the official opposition NDP caucus, 102 members strong, that is a commitment we make. It is a commitment we will keep on October 20, 2015 when we form the government of this country.
I will get back to what the constituent from Kelowna--Lake Country, currently a Conservative-held riding, said. She said, “The dependency ratio in Canada is the lowest in the G7. The minister claimed that France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the U.S.A. are all moving to increase their eligibility age for retirement. That is true. However, among the G7 countries, France, Germany, Japan and Italy are bringing their age of eligibility up to 65.” Not 67, but 65. “The U.S.A. made the decision in 1983, started implementation in 2003 and will complete the process by 2025”. That is 20 years later.
She then continues, “Among the 30 OECD countries, eight will have a retirement age under 65 and 15 will have a retirement age of 65.” This is very important, and I thank her for bringing this forward—“.
Let us review those numbers: there are eight under 65 and 15 at 65. Only seven, including Canada, will have an age above 65.
She says, “I believe there is a need to challenge the government on substantial grounds.” This individual is from Kelowna, British Columbia.
This is fascinating. The government's pretext around raising the retirement age is that all countries are doing it. We heard the Minister of Finance raise that idea in the budget speech as if this is something that everybody is doing. It is true that the retirement age was raised, but it was to 65, not above 65.
We are talking about virtually every single one of the OECD countries, Canada being one of a handful of exceptions. In almost every one of the OECD countries, the retirement age is 65 or under. We believe that is what the retirement age in Canada should be. Canadians deserve to have standards at least as good as those in the other countries in the OECD. That is what we had at 65; we do not have that at 67, and I thank the constituent for bringing that issue to our attention.
I would like to move on to another Conservative riding. This is from Vancouver Island. This letter says, “This budget is a reflection of the government's agenda towards the total elimination of CPP, the old age pension and the guaranteed income supplement. We pensioners need an honest answer from this government, because for sure our budgets are going to be affected again. We are asking for an answer from this government.”
This is a constituent in a Conservative-held riding who is raising concerns about the way the government has implemented it and how the government is attacking seniors.
We look at what the government promised prior to May 2. Prior to May 2, had the Prime Minister or the Conservative Party candidates said, “Elect us and we will make serious cuts in the longer term in health care transfers so that our health care system a decade from now will be worse off than it is now”, what would have been the result?
Had the Conservatives come forward and said, “We will actually gut retirement security, cut back on OAS and go the opposite of the way that most industrialized countries are going” and had they said they would force everybody to work until they are 67, regardless of their circumstances, and that people would either live in poverty, as they would have no source of income, or keep working, even if they were a manual labourer or a carpenter, what would have been the result?
It is a particularly mean-spirited attempt by the Conservatives to say to people who are manual labourers, as I was and as so many Canadians are, that it does not matter if their bodies give out; they have to keep working because the Conservatives say so. They want to buy their fancy F-35 fighter jets no matter what the cost, and they want to build those fancy prisons despite the fact that the crime rate has fallen. If they had come forward and said that prior to May 2, I wonder what the results would have been.
What if the Conservatives had come forward prior to May 2 and said that they were going to gut services, cut back on all those services that Canadian families depend on, gut food safety, transportation safety, slash environmental assessments, make sure there is no funding for social housing, and, as one Canadian wrote and as I mentioned earlier today, deal with the $125 billion infrastructure deficit by providing $150 million towards it? Is that not ridiculous? That is like saying I want to buy a new car, but I only have $30. I just cannot do it if I offer only a one-thousandth of what is needed, but that is what the Conservatives did in this budget. Rather than say we have a substantial infrastructure deficit with deteriorating infrastructure across the country and address that, they offer a few pennies, a token, to deal with a massive $125 billion deficit. What would have happened if they had come forward on May 2 making that pledge as well?
I ask those questions because we all know the results. If the government had come clean on its agenda prior to May 2, the NDP would have been over there governing this country and the Conservatives would be in opposition. Canadians would not have stood for that agenda. Canadian families deserve better.
There is absolutely no doubt that the Conservatives could not come clean before May 2 and therefore did not talk about this agenda at all. They covered it up because they knew they would not have been elected had they come clean with what they were intending to do: impose their ideology on the whole country, cut back on facts and making them as little available as possible, imposing instead, to my mind, a wrong-headed ideology.