Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the member for Nickel Belt.
I am pleased to rise in the House to speak on behalf of the people of Gatineau. I had the pleasure of spending the entire week last week consulting people in my riding in order to determine if the government's budget addressed their concerns.
My remarks will touch on three key points. I will begin with some general observations. I will then talk more specifically about the economic situation in my riding, Gatineau. Then, if I have time—10 minutes is not very long—I will talk about the Department of Justice, since I am the justice critic for the official opposition, the NDP.
I want to make a general observation. When I was a little girl, my mother and father taught us how to budget. However, we did not do things the same way they are done here. My father asked us what was important to us, what we liked and how much money we had saved up. Then, he told us how we could spend that money. It was not a piecemeal approach, as it always seems to be here. I am always shocked to see that.
We start with a real brick, what I call the government's sentimental picture, which allows the Conservatives to go around and give the impression that they are taking care of the things that the real world is concerned about.
The government runs advertising that is sometimes empty but nice to look at. On television, during the Olympics, it looked good and gave the impression that the government was doing something.
First there is the budget. Then there is the budget bill, which people have more difficulty understanding and which I often call the pièce de résistance. It comes from the Conservative government, which as usual introduces an omnibus bill that changes tons of legislation.
There are also the main estimates, which will be tabled at a given time. Technically, they should more or less fit with the budget speech and flesh it out. The Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights will study them next week.
I think the supplementary estimates are like getting to the end of the year and realizing there is not enough money because of poor budgeting. Adjustments are made, which takes more money.
What fascinates me about the parliamentary process in this magnificent Canadian building is how everything is done piecemeal. It is sometimes very difficult to link it all together. That is what I tried to do.
I will now speak briefly about the economic situation in the riding of Gatineau and the greater national capital region.
I was absolutely flabbergasted this morning to read an article by James Bagnall in The Ottawa Citizen that basically confirmed what I was saying. Some said I was a prophet of doom, since the cuts in the region were now done.
I will read a few excerpts from the article I read this morning.
The National Capital Region will trail nearly all of Canada’s largest cities in economic growth this year...according to a forecast published Wednesday [not by the NDP but] by the Conference Board of Canada.
The Ottawa independent think tank said the region continues to suffer from the unexpectedly deep pruning of public servants—a sector that accounts for 30 per cent of its economic activity.
I say this because it is important. People in the region are often almost embarrassed to talk about the economic driver of the national capital region. It goes without saying, because the Parliament of Canada is located in the national capital region. It is our own public service, the service to the public, all the departments that help and serve the public.
The number of jobs in public administration fell nearly nine per cent in 2013
That is huge.
The number of jobs in public administration fell nearly nine per cent in 2013—the “fastest rate on record”—and the Conference Board expects a further, albeit small drop this year.
I have said many times that we must not think that there will be an end to the pain in the greater national capital region this year. Today, I read some Twitter posts, including those of the brilliant President of the Treasury Board, where he threatened the Federal Superannuates National Association by saying that the association should negotiate and resolve any differences or else the government would impose new conditions on the organization by passing legislation. This ties in a bit with the trend of hitting the heart of the greater national capital region's economy.
The government is not content to merely go after our public service and the people who put their hearts and souls into providing services with far fewer staff members than before, particularly since the public service has still not completely recovered from the cuts the Liberals made in the 1990s. The government is going after the people it let go after they provided years of good and faithful services to Canadians and the federal government. It is telling them that the conditions it agreed upon with them no longer apply because it wants to change the rules.
That is like calling someone up to tell them that you are changing the contract you signed with them because you changed your mind. That is not usually done. It is completely indecent. I have a feeling that the Federal Superannuates National Association will have something to say to the minister about this.
These are things that I heard when I was in my riding last week. I met with hundreds of people—I am not just pulling that figure out of the air—and they shared with me their vision for the economy and their opinion of the federal budget that was tabled the previous week. When I listen to my Conservative colleagues speak about the budget in the House, I get the impression that they are living on a different planet from the one inhabited by our hard-working constituents who do not often get a break. The ministers and Conservative backbenchers talk about 165 budget cuts, but no one in my riding told me that they feel richer since the Conservatives took office, and they certainly do not feel richer after having seen this budget.
According to the Conference Board of Canada, if the cuts are not too serious, there may be some economic growth, but this is not a very rosy picture of my region. That is a point I wanted to make since, ironically, the article was published this morning.
I looked carefully at the budget, and some sections interested me much more than others, because they affected Canadians in their everyday lives. For example, the budget talks about investing in families. In my riding, a group called Logement'Occupe is working very hard to ensure affordable housing. This group went through a near-crisis because it did not know whether it was going to be eligible for the HPS program.
Many community organizations provide incredible services that we could not even afford as a society. Without them, the country would be bankrupt big time. We already have a deficit. Imagine If we had to pay for what all those community organizations do for our people. It would be overwhelming.
The Conservatives may be able to live well knowing that children go hungry and people have no roof over their heads, but I think this is a deplorable failure for a society. There are various needs.
Mr. Speaker, I would like to say that I will be sharing my time with the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord.
There is not much in the budget for justice. The government added a few extra judges here and there—way to go—but some existing positions have not been filled yet. I wonder how serious the government is. When it fleshes out the budget plan, the government should think about the basic needs for home care and caregivers. It must address these needs.
I will elaborate on that some other time. Those were some of my thoughts on the 400 or so pages of nothing that I read last week.