Mr. Speaker, it is a little hard at times to sit here quietly and respectfully when members get up and say some of things like the previous speaker said.
He spoke about choice and grandparents, aunts and uncles raising and helping to raise children. At the same time, his government has prevented thousands of parents of new Canadians to come into our country and participate in that process of raising children and imparting the cultures from back home into the next generation. The government is taking choices away from families by not allowing them to be reunited in Canada for that better life.
He spoke about how the provincial government in Ontario was facing some financial struggles. At the same time, it is because the federal government has cut health care for refugees and the provincial government has had to pick up the slack. As the court said, that was cruel and unusual. That is what we get from the government. Time and time again, every budget, we find things that are cruel and unusual in it.
Now we have these new schemes coming from the government. It is hell-bent on ensuring that the cupboard is bare by the time the election happens, because another government of another sort might want to take a different approach.
He talked about being opposed to universality. We brought universality to health care and it transformed the country. From that point, no family had to decide between putting food on the table, or bringing a loved one to a hospital or to a doctor to get medical care.
That is what we want to do for child care. We want to ensure that families do not have to decide whether to work, whether to put their child into care, whether to feed their family, whether to put a roof over their heads. The government has actually taken choices away.
He mentioned that this would put money into the pockets of parents, that it would help fund child care. Child care in the Province of Ontario, depending on where one goes, costs on average between $1,000 and $2,000 a month. The government's plan, if it does everything it says it does, which it does not, would help to pay for child care for one to two months out of the year. What are parents supposed to do the rest of the time?
The government wants to expand the child fitness tax credit. That is great if one has the money. Single parents living in poverty already do not have money to put their kids into sports programs or arts programs. They want to but they are unable to. By putting all the money there, the government takes the choice away from those parents. They are forced to not put their kids into sports or arts programs. The government is in fact taking choices away.
I have sat here for the last three years, and time and time again I have heard the government boast that there are a million less people on the tax rolls. If they are for good reasons, I applaud it for that. However, a million less people are on the tax rolls because they are in fact too poor to pay taxes. Instead of focusing on a jobs plan to help get some of these people back to work, or to give them a living wage, like the NDP proposed with a $15 minimum wage, the government ignores them. It just takes them off the tax rolls and leaves them to fend for themselves.
That is un-Canadian. We look out for our neighbours, the less fortunate and those in need. A society is judged by how it treats and takes care of the least fortunate and the most vulnerable. The government, like some Conservative governments, particularly the Mike Harris government in Ontario, has really shown great disdain for people living in poverty by cutting their supports and services, and treating them like criminals. It has no place. We need to move on from that kind of behaviour.
Bill C-43 has shown to be yet another anti-democratic omnibus bill that subverts our traditional way of government and completely dismisses the role of the House in providing considered oversight and debate. The bill, as has been said, over 450 pages long, has more than 400 clauses, amends dozens of acts and contains a variety of measures never mentioned in the budget.
The Conservatives' anti-democratic haste has meant that the previous budget bills have been forced through the House and committees without adequate study, and we lament the fact that this will likely recur again. How are parliamentarians, Canadians and the people in my riding supposed to give considered thought and feedback to such Trojan horse bills that get rammed through the House by the government?
Now many of the measures contained within the bill are fixing the problems created by the Conservatives ramming through the previous bill, the one before that and the one before that. If the government would actually stop to take the time to do things properly, it would not have to spend so much time fixing problems it has created. It seems the Conservatives enjoy creating new problems, much to the contrary of what the parliamentary secretary said a few minutes ago.
We are not able to properly study these bills and the finance committee, which does very good work for the House, is then overburdened by the fact that the budget bill comes with so many clauses, amendments and things that have nothing to do with the budget. That makes the job of the committee chair for finance even more challenging, and I have to admit he does a very good job at committee. However, then he has to spend time, like committee members, dealing with amendments and clauses that have nothing to do with the budget, things that should be going to the environment committee, the industry committee, the transportation committee or to the agriculture committee. There are many things in the budget that have nothing to do with the budget itself.
It means we end up wasting a lot of time because of it. Then the government has to come back and fix it again next time. I am very curious when we get to the spring and there is a new budget and an implementation act, how many things in that implementation act will be put in to fix the problems created with this one.
The Conservatives used to lament omnibus bills, but when they came to power, instead of changing Ottawa as they said they would, Ottawa seems to have changed them. They have become exactly like the governments that came before them with respect to omnibus bills, and they have taken it, frankly, to a whole new level.
The Prime Minister used to stand when he was leader of the opposition and get very angry at the fact that there were Liberal bills that were 80 pages long. Eighty pages sounds like the good old days. Now we are dealing with omnibus bills that are 400 or more pages long, that are 370 more pages than that bill was. However, the Prime Minister has no problem with those now.
We do have a well spelled out and reasoned amendment that has been brought forward by my colleague, the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, in which he states that:
—this House should decline to give second reading to Bill C-43,...because it: a) amends dozens of unrelated Acts without adequate parliamentary debate and oversight; b) fails to address persistent unemployment and sluggish economic growth; c) aims to strip refugee claimants of access to social assistance to meet their basic needs; d) imposes a poorly designed job credit that will create few, if any, jobs while depleting Employment Insurance Funds...
On that point, the parliamentary secretary talked about how the government wanted to keep money in the pockets of people. The government was complicit with the Liberal government before it in raiding the employment insurance fund, the fund and money owned and contributed by workers and employers, a mere $60 billion. That could have gone back to workers, that could have gone into skills development and training. They could have made sure that more than half of the people in Toronto, who are unemployed, could actually qualify for EI.
The Conservatives talk about employment and growing jobs. Unemployment in my riding is over 12%. It is a far cry from where it was when the Conservative government came to power.