Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for LaSalle—Émard—Verdun.
I am proud to stand here and speak to the Speech from the Throne. It is short, it is focused, it is clear, and it sets priorities for promises that were made during the election.
What is really important is that the people of Vancouver Centre who re-elected me will be pleased with some of those promises, especially the ones we have heard before the Speech from the Throne such as the fact that we will reinstate the Kitsilano Coast Guard base and the marine communication segments that were cut to British Columbia. This Speech from the Throne talks about promises that were made, and this was one of them.
I want to congratulate all the members in the House who were re-elected and who were newly elected. I really hope that the tone set in the Speech from the Throne will be held dearly by all of them, as they begin to learn how to work together, respecting each other. Part of that respect would have been to allow the leader of the Bloc Québécois to speak today.
The Speech from the Throne recognizes the diversity of Canadians not only demographically but regionally, the fact that we are so very different in all parts of this country in which we live. It recognizes that diversity is what has made this nation great. It vows to bring back that diversity and to ensure that all Canadians, regardless of their ethnicity, religion, or where they live in the country, will have the opportunity to succeed.
I heard the interim Leader of the Opposition speak about big spending promises in the Speech from the Throne. I think we all believe that it is about spending but it is also about investing in Canadians. It is about helping Canadians have the opportunity to succeed regardless of where they live, their socio-economic conditions, or their status as indigenous peoples, immigrants, or refugees. That is reflected in the Speech from the Throne.
We have heard real promises made with regard to treating indigenous peoples on a nation-to-nation basis, to bringing in an inquiry on the missing and murdered aboriginal women, to sitting down and bringing in recommendations from the truth and reconciliation committee. These important pieces have been promised in the Speech from the Throne.
Bringing in 25,000 refugees by February 16, 2016 is a promise that will be kept, and it is not just bringing them in. It is about these refugees having access to something that was denied under the last government, access to health care. This is an important, ensuring that immigrants and refugees who come to our country, like I did at one time, will have the opportunity to succeed, to have a dream, and to know that they and their children can have better lives.
This is part of what good government does. It invests in people. It is something the last government never did understand. It played games with people, and it only invested in things in which it was interested.
One of the most important things is not only investing in Canadians but investing in them in every phase of their lives. We see the child benefit. It is a real child benefit. It is not going to be taxed. I know the former government talked about the child tax benefit, but it was taken away in the form of taxation. We are not doing that. We are giving it to Canadians so middle-class Canadians can afford to bring up their children.
We are looking at how we can help middle-class Canadians get the kinds of tax cuts they need to move forward. We are talking about how we can help seniors retire in dignity. That is one of the things the last government obviously did not understand. So many seniors are living in poverty. Expanding the CPP is one way of helping our seniors.
We are looking at a very bold plan. It is a plan about people. As we have heard our leader say today in his speech, we know it is not possible to create jobs and improve our economy unless we look at environmental sustainability, that one cannot work without the other and that it is possible to do both. This is why we see a strong piece about the environment in the Speech from the Throne and the work that needs to be done in reaching goals, which were very ambitious in Paris.
Our country has agreed to look at how we can achieve those goals. To do so, we will work in a very new tone within our government, which is to work in partnership, not only with aboriginal peoples but the provinces. We saw the Conservative government turn its back on provinces and allowed them to fend for themselves. It treated them quite miserably, especially in health care, where the provinces were beginning to show that they could not deliver the care needed, as promised in the Paul Martin $42.1 billion health accord. When the previous government came into power in 2006, it did not cancel it but it ignored it and the provinces, and it did not sustain medicare, which is really important.
The Speech from the Throne talked about a new accord with the provinces, meaning we must change the system by which we deliver health care. We must move to community-based care, interdisciplinary care, and home care. Indeed, acute care is the old way of delivering care and should be part of the system only when intervention is needed. We have seen some changes that need to be made, again, because of cuts made by the last government in health care, decision-making that was done unilaterally that changed the transfers on a per capita basis that began to hurt the smaller provinces.
There are so many things in the Speech from the Throne that I do not even know how I can cover them all, but I will try.
We have not only talked about children and how the new child benefit will help them, but we have also looked at how low and middle-income Canadians, when they finish school, will get access to post-secondary education. This is part of the creating opportunity. This is part of giving people the tools they may need to succeed.
We know that today many young people cannot afford post-secondary education. I have heard that the official opposition thinks we are spending a lot of money and doing all kinds of silly things. We are investing in people, we are investing in the economy, we are investing in the environment, we are investing in the diversity of our people, and we are investing in those who have had a very difficult time making it. Again, that is what good government does.
We are creating partnerships with provinces, with first nations people, and with Canadians. We are promising to consult, and have already begun to consult, with Canadians. That is part of the democratic process. It is not just about how one votes, but how one respects civil society. There is a real promise of working with civil society. Task forces are going to be set up to talk about how we should move forward and work to ensure that as we move forward it will be implementable and achieve the objectives of what we are discussing.
We have talked about evidence-based decision-making. For a decade, we forgot what evidence-based decision-making was in the House. We have seen ideological decision-making in health care, which hurts people, public safety and the environment. All Canadians and all of us in the House have to work together, in the spirit of good faith, to make the changes and rebuild what was destroyed by the last government. This is a job that we must undertake.
I have heard the leader of the NDP talk about rolling up our sleeves. That is the first thing we have to do. We have to roll up our sleeves and get the job done by using science, evidence, consultation and with the people in the House working together. There is now a new respect for members of Parliament in the House. Every one of us was elected by Canadians. How we treat each other in the House, the way we respect each other, the way we work together without putting up roadblocks when we have common goals is what I and the Speech from the Throne hope will happen.
I ask hon. members to let us move forward in the spirit of hope and optimism, to do the best for Canadians, and create the country we know we can have.