Mr. Speaker, it is amazing that after a full 25 minutes of debate on a 350-page bill that the government has stuffed full of all sorts of, “gems” is not the right word—there is another word for it that I do not think I am allowed to use here in Parliament—the government has decided that it needs to shut down that debate because it has obviously gone on too long. They think that a full 25 minutes and a few more after that should be enough to study a bill that affects 40 Canadian laws and has over 500 clauses in it, almost none of them designed to help the Canadian economy.
As this is my first speech as finance critic for the official opposition, I want to make mention of and thank the member for Parkdale—High Park, who did such an incredible job on this portfolio for a number of years. She developed strong relationships. She was absolutely dignified, and she brought New Democrats to a strong place when talking about financial measures. She had relationships with, not only the banking community, but the small business and entrepreneurial communities in this country. I owe a great debt for the amount of work that the member for Parkdale—High Park has done.
From the perspective of which I come, representing a rural and remote part of the country in northwestern British Columbia, and being a former small business owner myself, I have great familiarity with the struggles, challenges, and opportunities for those who operate small and medium-sized businesses in this country. Those businesses exist in resource-based economies in the rural parts of this country, and 80% of the Toronto Stock Exchange exists on those resource and extractive economies.
What these businesses are looking for primarily is a government that understands them, that listens to Bay Street a little less, and that more often consults and meets with people on Main Street. They are looking for a government that understands what small and medium-size businesses have to go through to put food on the table. Primarily, they need a strong economy and one that provides them with customers, a viable way to grow and expand their businesses. What we have seen from the government too often, on the Conservative side and previously, has led us to the position our economy is in right now.
There have been 400,000 missing manufacturing jobs since the Conservatives took over. The Conservatives call that excellent. There are 300,000 jobs that have not been replaced since the beginning of the recession. The youth unemployment rate is twice the national average, and Canadians now owe more money, at a personal debt ratio that is greater than any other country in the OECD. We are one of the most indebted nations in the world, and the government says all is fine and rosy.
Its policies are based on a simple principle of rip and ship: take the resources and the wealth that are the endowment of this country and send them out in their most raw form. Do not add value. Do not seek to enhance any of the qualities of those resources. The results are stark. Our trade deficit is at a staggering level. We are operating in a trade deficit position and have done so for a number of years. It is $45 billion, and it does not seem to preoccupy the Conservatives at all.
We have seen finance minister after finance minister, now two of them, misunderstand the telling signs in the economy. The previous finance minister missed the global recession entirely. He thought it was a blip, a bump in the road, and nothing to be concerned with. In the midst of the first months of that recession, the government brought in an austerity budget, countering every other G20 country in the world, saying that Conservatives know best on the economy. The fact is that they do not, and the mounting evidence on economic mismanagement of the Conservatives is piling up.
Now we have the budget implementation act, a bill that is crammed with all sorts of things that, again, I cannot mention with their proper terms. These are things like the temporary foreign worker program. Suddenly the Conservatives are going to get tough on the very program that they have allowed companies to abuse. Two years ago, they said they were going to go after those bad companies and put them on a blacklist.
Do members know how many companies are sitting on that blacklist today? There is zero, not a one. That would lead me to believe that maybe there are no companies abusing the temporary foreign worker program. However, wait, one province alone, the province of Alberta, has found 100 cases of companies abusing the massive loopholes in the temporary foreign worker program that the government created. HD Mining and certain banks have started to export jobs that we did not think could be exported: mining jobs, financial sector jobs. These are jobs that have been the heart of this economy for many years.
With the clock being what it is, I will be finishing my comments tomorrow, but allow me to establish that both on form and on substance, the current Conservative government has failed Canadians once again.
The Conservatives have a missed opportunity with this monster omnibus bill, which is fundamentally anti-democratic, not according to just me but according to the Prime Minister when he used to occupy this place.
New Democrats will oppose Bill C-31 every step of the way.