Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to express the anger and frustration that I and many people in Rivière-des-Mille-Îles feel with the tabling of this budget implementation bill.
Bill C-38, the bill to implement the budget, is a profoundly illegitimate bill. The Prime Minister promised to govern on behalf of all Canadians after the last election. In fact, however, with this budget, we see that the Prime Minister is governing for oil companies and mining companies, not for taxpayers. He is not governing for working people, for families, for seniors, for veterans, for people who are unemployed, for farmers or for people who work in manufacturing industries.
I have also met with Aveos workers in my riding who are worried, because they have been laid off and have no way of supporting their families. They are outraged at the Conservative government’s track record since the last election, which amounts to a lot of back-to-work legislation but no support for working people and their families.
When it comes to providing unreasonable subsidies for big business, the government shows no hesitation, but when Canadian workers lose well-paid jobs, there is total silence from this government. We saw the same thing in the case of the Electro-Motive Diesel employees in London, Ontario.
There are other reasons why this budget concerns me, however. It is obvious that the Prime Minister's agenda was not laid out for Canadians. In the last election, the Conservatives were very careful not to tell voters that they would be taking their axe to the Environmental Assessment Act, that they would be going back on Canadians’ word on the Kyoto protocol, that they would be cutting employment insurance benefits and services to veterans, and especially that they would be pushing Canadians’ retirement age back two years.
How can the government claim to have the consent of the public when it concealed such fundamental aspects of its political agenda from them?
This brings me to another point: the government is adding insult to injury by including a series of provisions in the budget implementation bill that have nothing to do with the budget—provisions relating to the Kyoto protocol, environmental assessment, food safety, the powers of the Auditor General, assisted reproduction, oversight of the intelligence service and protection of fish habitat, to name just a few.
This bill can be described as containing everything but the kitchen sink. It is wholly improper for the government to include these provisions in a catch-all bill in the hope that it can slip them past parliamentarians unnoticed. This approach prevents parliamentarians from exercising the oversight that it is their job to exercise.
A modicum of decency would require that we split the bill to allow the Standing Committee on Finance to study the budget measures and other committees to study the measures contained in Bill C-38. The government refused this reasonable suggestion made by the official opposition. What does it have to hide?
Finally, in addition to short-circuiting Parliament by introducing an omnibus budget bill, the Conservatives have decided to steamroll Bill C-38 through. The government has used its majority to limit debate in the House to seven days.
Imagine. Just seven days to study a 431-page bill with 750 clauses that amend 70 laws. That is unprecedented.
Journalist Manon Cornellier called bill C-38 a mammoth budget. I do not know if she was referring to the size of the bill or the prehistoric nature of the measures it contains, but she is concerned, and with good reason, about how it will affect our democracy. I would like to quote her:
At this rate...the Conservatives will succeed in transforming Parliament into a theatre for political posturing. It will be a shadow of the democratic institution it is meant to be, a place where elected members are supposed to be the voice of the people. What a sorry spectacle.
I commissioned a poll of 100,000 constituents in the riding of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles and I can tell you that the main elements of the Conservative budget do not pass muster.
Some 73% of the population of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles opposes raising the retirement age from 65 to 67, and 60% believes that the spike in the costs of the old age security system will be offset by increased government revenues.
The people of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles are not fools. Like the Parliamentary Budget Officer and many economists, they know that the public pension system is viable and capable of dealing with the retirement of all the baby boomers.
In contrast to the provisions of this budget, which will reduce the benefits of thousands of unemployed workers, 50% of the residents of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles are calling for improvements to the employment insurance system. Finally, 75% of the people of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles condemn the withdrawal from the Kyoto protocol, as the government is proposing in Bill C-38.
This all clearly demonstrates that this budget and the budget implementation bill are completely out of touch with the priorities of the people of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles and that the Prime Minister can in no way claim to be governing on behalf of the people of Rivière-des-Mille-Îles.
What is most shocking about Bill C-38 is that this budget bill does not include any measures for job creation. Indeed, the only employment strategy included is the Conservatives' attempt to placate businesses by eliminating environmental protections. So what if we are jeopardizing our future by destroying the environment?
Bill C-38 is an unprecedented attack on the environment. It gets rid of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, an organization responsible for advising the government on sustainable development. It also repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, which required the federal government to comply with international greenhouse gas reduction targets and to report its progress.
If Bill C-38 is passed, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act will be gutted. The public consultation process will be reduced to a rubber-stamping operation to satisfy gas, oil and mining companies. Cabinet will give itself the power to green-light projects even if the agency responsible for environmental assessment recommends that they not go ahead.
This bill gives the government the power to suppress charities, including environmental groups, that are too critical of the government. Bill C-38 is intended to silence the environmental movement.
On May 22, I was proud to be one of 400,000 Quebeckers who marched through the streets of Montreal to protest the backward environmental policies of this Prime Minister and his government. Clause 699, which repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act with no reason or explanation, is buried on page 401 of the bill now before us. That is insulting.
I would also like to take a few minutes to talk about automatic registration for the guaranteed income supplement. We know that 135,000 Canadians and 45,000 Quebeckers are entitled to the guaranteed income supplement, but they do not receive it because the government is not doing everything it can to reach them.
To remedy this problem that has been going on for years, I introduced a bill on March 15 to force the government to contact those who are entitled to this supplement. During the budget speech, we learned that the government was considering implementing a proactive enrolment system for old age security benefits and the guaranteed income supplement.
Clause 454 of Bill C-38 states that, from now on:
(3.1) The Minister may, in respect of a person, waive the requirement...for an application for payment of a supplement...if...the Minister is satisfied, based on information available to him or her under this Act, that the person is qualified under this section for the payment of a supplement.
I must say that I am disappointed by the very restrictive wording used. At first glance, it seems very limiting since it implies that Service Canada has to have a file on the people who may be eligible. That does not solve the problem for people whom Service Canada is unaware of but who are known by other departments, such as Revenue Canada or Citizenship and Immigration Canada.
In my opinion, the government's measures do not solve the problem of red tape needlessly imposed on those entitled to benefits. It may mean, for example, that the government will continue to require proof of marital status, when Revenue Canada already has that information.
I would like to summarize my ideas. I believe that the government, out of respect for Canadians and democratic institutions, should at least submit Bill C-38 to public debate and let the opposition do its job.
Bill C-38must be split to allow the appropriate committees to study it. For this reason, and others mentioned in my speech, I strongly oppose Bill C-38.