Mr. Speaker, I know why the budget was introduced during the Olympics. It was so that Canadians might not notice that the Conservatives are not making a real effort on their behalf, on behalf of their future and that of their children. This is certainly not an Olympian budget. It does not strive for excellence. No thought, skill, or creativity went into this budget. There is not much to look at here.
One thing is for sure. The minister is no Alex Bilodeau of finance ministers. The budget does not inspire. It does not give hope to our youth, seniors, those looking at retirement on the horizon, or unemployed middle class Canadians. It is not a budget aimed at shoring up Canada's middle class. It is a furtive budget that seeks to slip by unnoticed, lest Canadians see that the emperor has no clothes, that the government has no ideas.
These past few years, members on the other side of the House have engaged in incessant self-promotion, spinning their economic record with a view to gilding the economic reality over which the current Conservative government has presided. We need only look at the performance of some key economic variables since the Conservatives took power to understand that things are not the way the government describes them.
I would first like to bring attention to something known as the natural economic growth rate, which is that portion of the economic growth rate driven by population growth. As weak as the growth of the Canadian economy has been over the past few years, it can be linked in no small measure to an increase in the population of the country that has driven both aggregate demand and employment.
A Statistics Canada report released in the fall of 2012 showed that Canada had the fastest population growth in the G8, owing to immigration. Canada has sustained the highest immigration levels in the world as a percentage of its population. This is important to note. The Conservative government cannot take credit for Canada's population growth.
If we look at key economic variables, we see that the situation is not as rosy as the Conservatives say over and over again. While population growth, and not the Conservative government, has been driving economic growth in Canada, the population has been expanding faster than the rate of job growth. The national unemployment rate in January 2006 was 6.6%. In December 2013, there were 236,200 more unemployed Canadians than in January 2006 and the unemployment rate stood at 7.2%. It is true that there were job gains in January versus December 2013, but these gains included 28,000 people who became self-employed. What is more, these January gains followed job losses in full-time work in December. Moreover, the youth unemployment rate in January 2006 was 12.2%. In December 2013 it was 14%.
All in all, Canada ranked 20th among 34 OECD nations in employment creation for the 2007-2012 period. How the government gets away with saying that it is “first in the OECD” over and over again is beyond me.
Although 7.2% may seem like a hopeful rate in the current context, as the rate was as high as 8.7% in mid-2009, we have to take into account the discouraged job seeker who has given up looking because the labour market is so bleak. This dampens the unemployment rate, which reflects only those actively seeking employment. If one looks at the reduction in the unemployment rate from 2009, the situation looks promising, but that reduction is cold comfort since 80% of it occurred because job prospects were so poor that many Canadians gave up looking for work.
Interestingly, Statistics Canada does quantify the discouraged job seeker effect and publishes a supplementary measure of unemployment that includes discouraged workers and those who are working part time while really wanting full-time work. This unemployment rate, which is referred to as the underutilization rate, sits at over 10%.
Another measure of the labour market situation in Canada is the long-term unemployment rate. Before 2008, 12% of Canadians had been looking for work for six months or more, and 4% for more than a year. Today, about 20% of the unemployed have been without work for more than six months, and 7% for more than one year.
As McGill economics professor Christopher Ragan has said:
A better indication of the economy’s job creation performance is the path of the employment-to-population ratio--and by this measure, our economic recovery is only mediocre.
Just before the crisis, total employment was 63.7% of the population. It fell sharply during the recession...and then struggled to recover even to 62%, where it has flat-lined for more than two years
If our performance in terms of unemployment is not very encouraging, the debt situation facing Canadians individually and collectively is no more so. In 2005, for every dollar of disposable income Canadians earned, they owed $1.30. In 2013, it was $1.64. On a collective basis, the government has added $160 billion to the national debt. One-fifth of the federal debt has been accumulated since 2006, the year the Conservatives became the government.
Still other economic indicators show that over the course of almost a decade the Conservative government failed to lay the groundwork for robust future prosperity. There was a 1.9% drop in productivity in the Canadian economy from 2006 to September 2013. Productivity, of course, is a function of investment in equipment, and also of the rate of innovation. Are we creating and producing the innovative products the world wants?
Another indicator, our chronic merchandise trade deficit, is likely linked at least in part to this poor productivity trend. We have had two years of trade deficits, which have been widening in the past few months, exceeding forecasters' predictions.
Finally, the stock market is often a reflection of generalized optimism or lack thereof about future economic prospects. From 2006 to 2013, the Dow Jones industrial average rose by 55.1%, while the TSX composite index rose by only 16.1%.
What is the government doing to generate growth? In this standstill political budget, it is not much. Moreover, the government's previous strategies and actions have not been enough to produce the growth rates that a country with so many resources, such great human capital, such talent, and such promise should be able to reach.
There are many measures the government could have taken to help middle-class Canadians improve their future standard of living. It could have raised RRSP contribution limits, it could have raised the contribution limits for tax-free savings accounts, and it could have also helped seniors by eliminating the minimum withdrawals required from RRIFs, registered retirement income funds. The markets have not been good, including the TSX composite index I referred to, meaning that the value of these RRIF portfolios has been weak, declining or not rising by very much. Indeed, some seniors have come to me to say that they do not want to withdraw from their RRIFs right now because they want to wait for the value of their RRIF portfolios to rise, but the government is forcing them to withdraw a minimum amount, which is compromising the future value of their assets.
It would have been good if the government had shown some imagination on issues such as this and taken some concrete steps to make the economic situation better for seniors and other Canadians. It did not, however, take the opportunity to do so in the budget, and that is a shame.