Mr. Speaker, when we are faced with 200 pages of legislation, sometimes it is very difficult for us to put a human face on the implications of the legislation. I am here today to do just that.
My constituents elected me to be a strong voice for them here in Ottawa. Guess what? Today, I am going to do that. I want to give the people in this House a little lesson on what it is like to be in Alberta right now, and what this means for the people in my riding. In 2014, 20% of Canada's GDP was produced by Alberta, which represents only 12% of the Canadian population. We have always punched above our weight. We have always done our part. We have always supported the concept of Canada as a greater whole. We have never complained about it.
Other people in other parts of the country have looked at us, derided us, and derided our industries, but we always contribute to Canada. We have always been there for Canada. We contribute billions of dollars of equalization payments to prop up failed governments, like the Ontario Liberals, which spend billions of dollars on wasteful projects, and still we do not complain.
Alberta and the people in my riding are not just these numbers; they are people. Right now, thousands of them are out of work, thousands of them. In just about a year's period, Alberta and especially Calgary, especially my riding, went from the national rate of unemployment to nearly 10% unemployment. Let us think about that for a second. Let us think about what it means for a region to have such a dramatic, significant decrease in employment in such a short period of time.
It means that everybody is affected. Albertans do not know anybody who does not have somebody out of work. It is their mom, their dad, their spouse, their kid, their neighbour, their babysitter, their teacher; it is everybody. Do we know what that does to a community? It devastates a community. It takes the soul out of a community.
When I go home and talk to people, they are furious because they want to work. We are a proud people. We do not want lip service from the government. We want action. The very soul of our province depends upon it.
There is a 30% vacancy rate in downtown Calgary. That means that swaths, whole floors of buildings, in downtown Calgary are vacant right now. When we visualize that, we can think about all the people who are sitting at home right now who just want to work. They just want to contribute to the Canadian economy, but they cannot.
Every once in a while, I will hold a job or a career services fair in my riding, and usually a few dozen people show up. This is a service fair where we have educational institutions and different employers come in. More than 500 people showed up on a Saturday morning. There was a wait list to get into this event at a church. That is how bad it is.
These are people who cannot pay their child support payments and their vehicles are being repossessed, and we are coming into the Christmas season. Their credit cards are maxed out, their severance has run out, and they are trying to figure out how they are going to make ends meet for their families. They are not even looking at Christmas presents right now. Our food bank usage is going up. In our local newspaper, there was a giant front-page story about how women in Calgary are having to go into prostitution to make ends meet. Do members know what it is like to come home to a spouse who has not worked for a year? Do members know what that is like?
I hope no one in this place has to feel that. That is what is happening in my riding right now, and yet we have this—this, right here. Do members know what this has? It has sweet fudge all for my riding, nothing.
Albertans look at this and they ask, “Where is our government? Why are we not in here?” There is nothing here for them, except this. There is something all right. I am sorry, constituents; there is something. There is a giant increase in their taxes. They are down, they are out, they have paid their dues, but the government wants to take more of their hard-earned money to waste on its ineffective and inefficient government.
Let us talk about that. How is the government going to take more of their money? First of all, it is implementing a carbon tax. There is no space to have a pragmatic debate about climate change, with the government, and there is no space to have a pragmatic debate about the people in my riding who are unemployed in the energy sector right now. They have been called dirty. The government uses terms like “clean jobs” or “dirty jobs”. It is a moral statement on the lives of the people in my riding.
When the government introduces or implements a $50-a-tonne price on carbon, what does that do? Is that actually going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions? No. Can the government produce any data on price elasticity of carbon that shows that demand is actually going to decrease at that price? No, it cannot.
What does that mean? It means that it is essentially implementing a GST, an increase in the GST at a time when our province is in dire straits. That is a big fallacy and it is a big problem, and it is all right here. Here is a gift for Alberta.
The other thing that the government is trying to do right now is cripple small business. The government made a big song and dance around small businesses a year ago. It tried to court them, but it is a time when—and this survey came out today—94% of the small businesses in Alberta have no faith in our provincial government. There is a great indicator to show that we should invest in business in Alberta: 94% of small businesses do not have faith in the provincial government. The present government is doing what?