My colleague is right. The answer is no. Twenty million people are expected to attend the exposition. The theme, which is in line with Canada's reality, is “Feeding the Planet, Energy for Life”.
Can Canada play an important role internationally in these two sectors? Yes. Are we going to be there? No, and that is a real shame.
As it happens, next week is Tourism Week in Canada. What is the government doing to promote tourism internationally? Nothing. I sometimes wonder whether the government is afraid of competition in the tourism industry. Does it want to compete in the tourism industry?
Even though we agree that private businesses should take care of various kinds of tourism in each of our ridings, we know that governments compete to attract tourists to their country. That is how it works.
Has the Minister of State for Tourism, the member for Beauce, done anything about this recently? I do not think so, and it shows.
The Tourism Industry Association of Canada is currently lobbying MPs in an effort to attract more Americans. Imagine that. The tourism industry is pretty big, after all. It is an $84-billion industry that accounts for 610,000 jobs. We can do better.
For a long time now, international tourism has been tapering off. Ten years ago, domestic tourism accounted for 65% of revenues, but now it is 80%.
According to the OECD, Canada's ability to attract international tourists has waned. We dropped from 7th to 16th globally, and we are still losing steam. Those numbers are from two years ago. That is unacceptable.
Across the way, they say we need to balance the budget. There are two ways to do that. They can cut and cut, and the Conservatives sure know how to do that, but they can also boost revenue. We have reason to believe that tourism can help with that. However, it does not look like the government is very interested in boosting revenue.
There are other issues to talk about too.
For example, is anyone talking about clean energy? Is there a vision for the future? What about transportation, housing and energy? How do we see ourselves in 10, 20 or 30 years? What type of society will our children live in? Maybe it will be a society with electric cars, and wind or solar energy. European countries such as Germany and Spain, among others, and even Asian countries such as China and the Philippines, are investing heavily in solar energy. We must diversify our energy sources and come up with a clean energy strategy. It is important.
It is not good enough to say, as the Minister of the Environment has been saying for the past few days, that given that Canada is responsible for only 2% of greenhouse gases, we really do not have to do much. Things have already been pushed to the limit and that 2% is much greater than the proverbial straw that broke the camel's back.
As a wealthy, leading-edge, and technologically advanced society, we have to make the most of our knowledge and capacities to show leadership on the world stage and provide technologies that produce cleaner energy. Are we working on that? Not at all.
According to economists, this budget will slow down growth in a fragile context. There is some recovery, but it is weak. Everyone says so. This is not new. Is there anything in this budget to help those who are looking for a job? Today, there are 300,000 more people looking for work than there were in 2008. There are currently six unemployed people for every available job. We can do better than that.
Is there anything in this budget to improve everyday life for average Canadians? Are we helping our constituents? We have to wonder. Are retirees well served by this budget? Not really, and they might even lose their postal services shortly. I know that Canada Post is a crown corporation, but I would like to point out that the government does get dividends from it. Perhaps we could do something to ensure that seniors get their mail delivered at home. It would be easy to do.
Will we still have quality service at the CBC in a few years? Is there something for that? No. The promise in this budget is that an essential tool for the identity of this country is being taken apart piece by piece. Let me remind you that the funding we provide to the CBC per year and per capita is one-third of the average of the funding that so-called developed countries provide to their national broadcasting corporations. Are we going in the right direction with this budget? I do not think so.
Finally, what are we doing to prepare our collective future? I am thinking of our young people here. I am thinking of research and education. In this budget, do we see any capacity or willingness to invest in basic research? The answer is no. Why is basic research important? Because it is the first step in developing innovations that make our industries, our companies and our small and medium-sized businesses competitive. We need basic research and we need to train our students.
Speaking of training students, have we actually seen an increase in funding for post-secondary education anywhere in the budget? I have not seen one. If we want the future to be better for our children, we must invest in basic research and in post-secondary education so that we can get the wheels turning and start on our way to innovation.