Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues for that encouraging response. I will be sharing my time with the member for Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel.
I rise today on behalf of the members of my riding of Davenport in Toronto to speak to the bill, the so-called economic action plan.
We have been arguing since I got here in 2011 for some kind of action from the government for cities, some kind of action around, for example, gridlock in Toronto and the fact that the Board of Trade has pegged the cost of gridlock at about $6 billion a year in the GTA alone. That is a huge drag on the economy of the biggest city in the country.
While I know many members opposite love to hate the city of Toronto, I must say that if the health of the economy in Toronto is going well, we can bet the economy of the region improves, and I dare say that of the country.
There is really no focused attention on the GTA in this budget. In fact the government has cut almost $4.7 billion in infrastructure from the budget. When we have a gridlock to the tune of $6 billion in Toronto, we would think there would be something in the budget on that.
Just recently, McMaster University and the United Way tabled a report that showed that almost 50% of workers in the GTA, in Toronto, could not find stable, full-time employment. That is 50% of the workers in the biggest city in the country who cannot find a full-time job.
Some of the members opposite like to pretend we are still living in Pleasantville, 1950, not that it was so pleasant, I do not think, in 1950. However, they like to think that people can still get a job for life when they leave school, and then they can retire with a pension and live their senior years in dignity.
That story, if it ever was true, certainly ended. Today, young people are entering the job market to serial contract jobs. Those jobs have no benefits, and they certainly have no pension and no job security. This is the kind of economy into which the government is welcoming young people, if they can get into it in the first place.
We already know that the official unemployment rate for young people in this country is about 15%, but we know that the unofficial rate is much higher. That 15% is extremely high. It is higher than any of the members across the way ever experienced when they were young, but this is what we are welcoming young people into in the job market.
It is hard to stomach sometimes listening to the government members crow about how great the economy is. They should come to Toronto and talk to the many young people who are working these serial part-time jobs.
The Conservatives have nothing to say. They wax poetic in the way they can, which is marginal to say the least, about the unemployment rate in Saskatchewan. That is fantastic. Their jobs plan is to have everybody who does not live in Saskatchewan and Alberta move there to find the jobs.
Here on this side of the House we are proud of the fact that in those regions things are going well, but I came here to represent the people of Davenport, people in Toronto, and the government has absolutely ignored this city in this budget, certainly, but not just in this budget.
It is an outrage that we have engineers and physicists working as cab drivers in the city while the government is allowing temporary foreign workers to come and essentially work in jobs that people, many of them Canadian citizens, cannot access.
It is an outrage to most fair-minded people in our country. It is certainly an outrage when we try to imagine the economy of Toronto the way it is today and the needs we have in the city. For example, we have over 100,000 families on the affordable housing waiting list in the city of Toronto. There are millions of people across the country on an affordable housing waiting list. There is nothing in the budget to deal with the issue.
We know the economic multiplier of building affordable housing, and the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has mapped it out. We know that this is a key economic engine, yet the government has continually wasted opportunities to deal with the issue. It can only be described as one of the most serious issues we have in the country. In fact, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities has said that affordable housing is the key issue for big cities, small towns and rural municipalities.
Certainly the members from Alberta and Saskatchewan know this quite well, yet they sit there day in and day out, just like the Conservative members from Toronto sit day in and day out and vote against the interests of cities. We can only see that writ large in this budget.
I want to address another issue that urban workers deal with on a daily basis, and there is nothing in the budget that speaks to it. We are trying to develop a 21st century economy and part of that, necessarily, involves what analysts peg as either a $60-billion or $80-billion industry. That is the arts and culture sector.
We hear day in and day out from the government that it loves Canadian history and it is a big supporter of this and that battle. For example, it is willing to spend tons of money on the War of 1812. However, many of the arts and culture institutions in our country, I believe 10 of them, are being deeply affected in the budget. These institutions nurture the sector and teach the next generation of technicians, artists, directors and curators, these professionals we rely on not just to preserve our culture but to gather it together and share it with others. The government has thrown away all pretensions of these agencies being third-party, arm's-length to the government with the changes it is proposing in the budget. It is outrageous.
I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that tomorrow is World Press Freedom Day. I thought it would be worth it to share a small quote, and then I will conclude.
I quote, “...the fostering of an independent, pluralistic and free press is essential to the development and maintenance of democracy in a nation, and for economic development.”
Note “economic development”.
“By an independent press, we mean a press independent from governmental, political or economic control or from control of materials and infrastructure essential for the production and dissemination of newspapers, magazines and periodicals.”
The quote comes from the Declaration of Windhoek on May 3, 1993 at the UN General Assembly. The declaration calls for free, independent, pluralistic media worldwide, characterizing the free press as essential to democracy and as a fundamental human right. Measures in this budget wreak havoc on this essential element of a democratic society.