They definitely do.
I am going to move on to someone's comments from Calgary, another Conservative-held riding. He says, “It's a pleasure to write to [Mr. Julian] to express my appreciation for standing up in the House of Commons for two days and continuing to express the collective outrage of all residents in Canada, whether citizens or otherwise. This budget is a mean-spirited attack on the future of Canada. It's especially mean and devious because the justifications for the large-scale job and budget cuts is clothed in language that is designed to lull people into believing that the Conservative government cares. It uses specialized rhetorical and cheap marketing tricks to convince people that these cuts are intended to balance some arbitrary future budget forecasts. It ignores the suffering, both short- and long-term, that people will incur. It lays the groundwork to permanently and negatively alter future prosperity by asking ordinary people to shoulder the excesses of this government. Many members of this government have engaged in unethical and immoral behaviour that has strained the public purse, yet these members are never held accountable. Instead, ordinary people are asked to place themselves on the chopping block. As an immigrant to this country, I am very concerned about the cuts to Citizenship and Immigration Canada. Too often, this government will increase the backlog in applications and then arbitrarily decide to negate all the applications from the past and introduce radical changes in the name of efficiency. Yet the same government has no hesitation in cutting the budget for Citizenship and Immigration Canada and thereby hugely inconveniencing applicants both now and in the future. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your physically and psychologically arduous endeavour to stand up for hours and days on end to bring our concerns to public attention”.
I would respond that it is not physically or psychologically difficult to stand up for Canadians. That is what NDP MPs do. That is what we do every day. That is what we do in the House.
What is physically and psychologically arduous is seeing what the government is doing to this country, after promising a completely different approach on governance. What we are seeing are all the broken promises and the vandalism that the government is enacting on this country. That is why the 102 members of the official opposition, the NDP caucus, were standing so strongly against the budget. We know the harm it will do.
We have heard the voices of Canadians flooding in even as we speak. We are saying that we will not let those Canadians down. We will fight the budget all the way, despite the fact the government says it can do whatever it wants. By fighting the budget we are sowing the seeds for the day a Canadian sunrise will come. It will come sooner perhaps than we expect, but at the latest it has to come on October 20, 2015 when we can finally put the government out of office.
I have a few more emails coming in that I will read out. This is from a constituent of the great riding of Thunder Bay—Rainy River: “It seems the finance minister has started to show the voters who put his party in office its true agenda, taking care of the banks, corporations and oil companies. Who got all the tax cuts and how do we pay for them? In his own words, it was reported in the news, on the back of average Canadians. The old age pension has been raised to 67 from 65. So here we have a government keeping an aging population working to get more revenue out of them and denying younger Canadians employment because the older folks can't afford to retire. Canadians will be happy to see election day after the Conservatives have dealt them such a generous helping of cuts to programs with no relief for working people. The past just wants to keep repeating itself—”
There he is referring to the former Liberal government as well.
He continues, “—and Canadians will not even know what is happening until it is too late. The old age pension is just the beginning. They are going to mess with health care and we know they will, but we also know that Canadians will be happy to see the next election day”.
We are certainly looking forward to that, as I think all Canadians are.
Now I will move on. This letter is from eastern Ontario: “I just heard about your speaking in the House from my sister. I'm sure she has already told you that she lives with a disability and how budget cuts will affect her. I am writing you because I will be retiring soon, and after almost 50 years of contributing to this country, the Conservative government is about to steal my retirement. They are going to spend the money on fighter jets we don't need and jails we don't need. The money left over they will give to their millionaire supporters. You're the only party that can stop them. Keep up the good work”.
I say to that constituent that we will keep up that work and we will continue to stand up for Canadian families.
Now moving on to the Toronto area, another person says: “I support the NDP 2,000%. You are standing up for families, for working people and our elderly and our retirees. This budget has failed Canadians. Don't let this government get away with this attack on our country's foundation and a sound and balanced economy. Stand strong”.
To that constituent, I say that we will stand strong. We will stand up for Canadians, there is no doubt about that.
If I am accelerating a little bit, Madam Speaker, you can certainly understand that Canadians are galvanized by this debate. They are appalled by this budget. They are appalled by the cuts and reckless disregard the government has for the economy by its throwing away of 60,000 jobs in both the public and the private sectors. That is why there are so many comments coming in and we simply cannot keep up, but we will endeavour to do so. We will have some time tomorrow, though it will be mostly Prime Minister's office talking points that will be mentioned, to raise other concerns. However, we certainly encourage Canadians to keep writing in.
I have another one from a gentleman in Winnipeg, Manitoba, who states, “As a young Canadian worker, I have serious concerns about this budget, perhaps too many to go into great depth about. However, I am mostly deeply concerned about the proposed cuts to old age security. As a young worker whose parents have recently retired, I have begun to think more seriously about my own retirement. As someone who's chosen to work for a small non-profit, I do not have the benefit of the sort of guaranteed pension that the Prime Minister and his cabinet afforded themselves. While I put aside what I can into RRSPs and a non-guaranteed pension plan, I know that when the time comes for my own retirement that I will need OAS. By delaying OAS benefits to 67, I will need to save an additional $30,000 for retirement that I would have if this government was to maintain the current 65 age requirement. This is an incredible burden to put on myself and all members of my generation. My generation is being hit in so many directions. Sky-high tuition is creating record student debt levels, jobs opportunities for youth are disappearing, wages are flat or declining, defined pensions are disappearing and housing costs are out of control. We are the first generation of Canadians to know for a fact that we will be worse off than our parents. So my question for the Prime Minister is simply this: Do you hate my generation or do you simply not care?”
That is the voice of honesty and passion from Winnipeg, Manitoba. We thank that gentleman writing in. We want to tell him and all young Canadians across the country that we believe younger Canadians deserve better and that is why we are voting against the budget.
The following message comes from the riding of Joliette, represented by an excellent member of Parliament. I cannot see whether she is in the House right now, but she is excellent. Let us applaud her.