Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to stand to speak to this issue.
I would also like to take a moment to say that I will be splitting my time with the member for Parkdale—High Park.
The formulating of a budget is a matter of making choices. We choose to invest and to divest in certain areas. These choices need to be based on what communities need and what will serve our communities. This is why it is imperative that when formulating the budget in 2015, we choose with the aim of creating and developing sustainable, full-time jobs.
One of the most important areas is support for small and medium-sized businesses and support for entrepreneurship to enable these entrepreneurs to become well-paying, long-term employers.
I would like to take a moment to underline that small and medium-sized businesses are responsible for as much as 80% of employment in the private sector. This number was taken between 2002 and 2012. As well, small and medium-sized businesses are largely responsible for local employment in their communities. Generally, when Jane and Jack look for a job in their community, they go knocking on the doors of the small businesses, the mom and pop stores and restaurants in their communities. They are the ones that hire those individuals.
Small businesses employ nearly eight million Canadians, and 98% of all businesses in Canada are small businesses. A small business is one that employs fewer than 100 employees.
This is an area of the economy that needs to be supported and strengthened. This is an area where the policies the NDP is advocating and setting forth, and that our leader very strongly supports, will help turn the economy around in this country and will see the economy working for Canadians.
There are currently 1.3 million unemployed Canadians. This is something we need to recognize. We hear members on the other side talking about net new jobs. Their numbers are put in such a way that these jobs are full-time jobs. However, we all know that more than 80% of these jobs are part-time jobs and short-term jobs. What we are looking for is long-term employment, permanent employment, and full-time employment.
Another aspect of a strong Canadian economy is diversification. We have seen the Conservative government put a whole lot of energy into the resource extraction sector, to the detriment of the manufacturing sector.
Saint-Henri and Griffintown are two neighbourhoods in my riding of Jeanne-Le Ber with a history in manufacturing. One of the biggest heros of the time, Charles McKiernan, also known as Joe Beef, fought alongside workers in the southwest borough for wage equality and the rights of female workers.
Again, this is something we need to address in the 2015 budget: income inequality.
Manufacturing has accounted for 11% of Canada's GDP. It employs over 1.7 million Canadians. However, it has been hard hit. We have seen over 400,000 jobs lost in the manufacturing area, and this has led to an even greater disparity in income. We have seen income inequality spiralling out of control. The top 1% now see their incomes increasing, while 99%, which are middle-class families, have seen their incomes decrease over the last 35 years.
We need to act on concrete measures that will help the economy turn around. The NDP has some of those concrete measures: cutting small-business tax rates from 11% to 9%; supporting innovation; and making sure that small businesses and medium-sized businesses have the means to continue to employ, grow, and contribute to their communities. We need to create a tax credit to make sure that it is affordable for small and medium-sized businesses to upgrade equipment so that they become more competitive and more able to keep up with what is going on in their industries. We need to make sure that Canada takes its place as an innovator and as a creator of new jobs in small business and in entrepreneurship.