Madam Speaker, I find it amusing that the question I just asked did not get answered at all and that the 13 years from 1993 until 2006 were ignored.
I rise to speak against this so-called budget implementation bill. The government bundled many things into this bill. While I would have liked to stand to speak to the issues of getting rid of the deficit, jobs—sustainable jobs, not part-time jobs or jobs that will sunset in five years—and the problems facing us fiscally, I am forced to talk about everything else, which is sad. If the government really wanted to address the many things it purports to address in this bill, then it should have separated them. It should have allowed us to discuss them as separate entities in order to deal with some of the changes it is trying to make. However, this is a sneaky way of getting regulatory and public policy changes through on a whole bunch of things that no one can discuss.
I have heard people across the aisle say that a lot of time will be spent discussing this budget bill. This is the first time we have had a budget bill that contains absolutely everything and that needs a lot of time to be discussed. I am going to talk about some key areas that I think are important, since I only have 10 minutes. There are many areas, as I said, that could have been de-bundled. No one across the way is able to tell us why, when the Senate thought this was a good way to do it, that the House does not.
I want to talk about raising the age of qualification for OAS from 65 to 67. To date, in spite of many questions in the House, the government has provided no information or rationale for why this change is even necessary. All of the experts have said that our OAS system is sustainable. This is from a government that promised that it would not change pensions and is now tackling it through the back door.
The government, in this bill, which has nothing to do with anything, is abolishing the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development, a non-partisan organization established by a Conservative government in 1988 to promote democracy abroad. Conservatives have been sabotaging this organization for many years and are now finally getting rid of it. However, this does not surprise me, because the government does not support democracy very well in Canada, so I suppose it does not feel it has to do it abroad.
I would also like to ask a question that I am hoping one of the Conservatives will answer in one of their speeches. Why is the President of the Treasury Board taking charge of the objectives of the School of Public Policy and the way the school is being handled? I did not know that the President of the Treasury Board was an academic, understood education or had degrees in education or public policy of any kind. It is very interesting to see these changes being made that have no rationale to them at all, except for power and control.
Here is another piece that shows us that the government, in terms of getting rid of the democracy international organization, is also trying to kill democracy in Canada. The Minister of Labour is dipping her fingers in labour agreements. There is a right in a democratic society to collective bargaining, but the minister now is going to intervene. She is going to be at the table virtually, if not in reality, making decisions, telling people what they should do and setting the stage so that collective agreements on bargaining rights are going to be completely skewered in this country. In fact, repealing fair wages and hours of labour in this bill would single out a group of workers who, the government tells us, happen to be only 7% of the labour force. Taking away the rights of fair wages and hours of labour from 7% of the population is discriminatory, no matter how small that group is.
Here is another piece of knocking down democracy in this country: the silencing of civil society under the CRA. It is going to look at whether groups, organizations or NGOs that are all under the heading of “special interest groups” as far as the government is concerned are now going to be able advocate only 10% of the time. Just 10% of what they do will be advocacy.
However, many of these groups need to advocate. Why do we have civil society and NGOs if they are not going to be able to say what direction public policy should take within their sphere of influence and understanding and, in fact, criticize governments when they do not do the right thing? Silencing civil society is at the bottom of all of this.
I will now go into what I am most concerned about, which is what is happening with health. As the health critic, I am really concerned about the surreptitious cuts to health, which everyone seems to be denying every time we ask a question, about the surreptitious way of undermining this federation and by removing the cohesion that has gone on for so long and the way the federal government has dealt with the provinces in a mutually respectful manner negotiating transfer of payments.
Under health, the RCMP, interestingly enough, is delisted as an insured person. Why? It is because the government says that it now can get a better quality of care delivered by the province. What does that say about the federal government's ability to deliver health care when it is the fifth largest deliverer of health care in this country? What does that say about how the government will deliver health care to first nations, Inuit and the armed forces?
We see how the government has been delivering care: cuts to suicide prevention and mental health programs for veterans and the armed forces; and cuts to youth, aboriginal and Inuit suicide programs. Those are things that make us wonder why the federal government is letting the RCMP go off and get care from the provinces when it is, as it calls it, a better standard of care.
We see cuts to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency of $56 million and over 100 inspectors. The UN Special Rapporteur for the Right to Food will be on a fact finding mission to Canada. We are the first nation to be investigated by the UN special rapporteur. There was a time when the UN would come to Canada to look at best practices, not to investigate us. How have we changed in terms of the way the world the views us?
The UN wants to come here to look into the missing and murdered aboriginal women. Again Canada has become, not a model to the world but a place where everyone has to come and investigate to see what happened to Canada.
We also want to talk about the cuts to public health. There are cuts to Inuit child and the general health, cuts to the aboriginal health human resources, cuts to the diabetes initiative program for aboriginal people, a 35% cut in the federal tobacco control strategy and an overall $16 million cut from public health.
We learned some lessons or I had hoped the members across the way had learned some lessons because there were quite a few of them who were in the Harris Ontario government at the time when cuts to public health and privatization of inspection created Walkerton. People died. Are we going to wait until people die before the government wakes up and realizes that, if there are areas in which it is going to cut, it cannot cut essential programs and services because it will create severe catastrophes and tragedies?
I do not think any one in this House would stand and say that there should not be cuts. Of course, there need to be cuts but we need to be careful how we cut so that we do not harm Canadians.
I also want to say that we have health transfers being unilaterally decided upon by the federal government. This is the first time in the history of this country that has happened.
Leaving the provinces to fend for themselves and breaking up the federation in a way that it has never been broken before is the first step toward dismantling medicare.
The budget fails to create jobs for struggling middle-class Canadians or to deal with the economic disparities among individuals in this country and among regions. The Minister of Finance says that the budget bill is all about jobs and finances. He could have fooled me.