Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise to speak to budget 2016. I would like to start by acknowledging the people of Vancouver East for their long-standing commitment to economic, social, and environmental justice.
In Vancouver East, we have a strong history of activism. We yearn for a society where everyone can live with dignity, including those who live in the margins of life. We want a society where everyone has a chance to succeed. Therefore, after 10 long years of a Conservative government, I, like so many of my constituents, had high hopes for change.
Like the Liberal government, this is my inaugural federal budget. I wanted so much to see a budget that would demonstrate the government's determination to make real changes through budgetary commitments that matched the slogans and election promises made to Canadians. After all, this is not just child's play. Real lives, real people are impacted by these very real decisions.
Over the last 30 years, workers have helped grow our economy by over 50%. However, those same workers have seen their wages stagnant and retirement security vanish. At the same time, they have watched shareholders and executives walk away with enormous bonuses and payouts. The gap between the rich and everyone else is growing wider and faster here than in most of the developed countries.
It was estimated that by 12:18 p.m. on the first official working day of the year, the average top 100 executives in Canada had already earned what the average full-time employee in Canada would earn this entire year. Those same CEOs often have access to stock option loopholes, loopholes that were set up since 1984 and have been in place ever since. To my astonishment, budget 2016 shows that the Liberals backed off on a previous pledge to close that loophole.
We know that most stock options go to executives of large corporations. The result is that over 90% of the benefit goes to the top 1% of income earners. Tax loopholes cost Canada at least $10 billion every year.
I had braced myself for the last decade, knowing that this was what I should expect from the previous Conservative and even Liberal governments. What I did not expect was that the current Liberal government's real change in 2016 meant no change for stock option loopholes. Today, the top 100 richest Canadians now hold as much wealth as the bottom 10 million combined. How is that for real change?
An independent analysis has shown that families that will reap the largest benefits from the Liberal government's tax cut are those earning over $160,000. Who would have known that the definition of poverty, in the Liberal world, would have meant those earning over $160,000. In my world, and in the world of East Vancouver, those on income assistance and those who make minimum wages are folks living in poverty. B.C., by the way, has the distinction of having the lowest minimum wage in the country, no less.
Under budget 2016, those families on income assistance and those making minimum wage would not benefit from the child tax benefit. In fact, anyone making $21 an hour or less would not qualify for this tax cut. What this means is that all those who are living in real poverty, wanting real change, would not benefit from the child tax benefit at all.
Without significant action from the government, income inequality will continue as precarious part-time, temporary, and contract work continues to become the norm. These positions are disproportionately held by visible minorities, new Canadians, and women.
Also, if one should be so unfortunate as to lose one's job, access to EI is at historic lows, with fewer than four in ten unemployed Canadians able to access benefits when they need it. Eliminating the new entrant and re-entrant rule would only give an additional 50,000 people access to benefits, but there are currently nearly 850,000 unemployed Canadians not receiving EI benefits. Eight hundred thousand Canadians are still waiting.
Budget 2016 could have created a universal qualifying threshold of 360 hours for EI, but it did not. Budget 2016 could have repealed the Conservatives' harmful reforms to EI, but it did not. Instead, budget 2016 once again uses EI as a slush fund and takes $6.9 billion of contributions from workers and businesses over three years.
For families who are struggling with sky-high costs for child care, I am afraid that budget 2016 will only serve to disappoint, for there is no funding for child care this year. An iconic international leader, former UN ambassador Stephen Lewis said, “feminism is a vacant construct without a [national] child care program...”.
The Liberals promised a poverty reduction strategy in budget 2016, yet they did not even allocate any money toward developing one. Central to the issue of poverty reduction is the need for a national affordable housing program. In Vancouver East, we have many families in dire need of safe, secure, affordable housing. Since 1993, previous Liberal governments have cancelled Canada's national affordable housing program. As a result, more than half a million units of affordable housing or co-op housing that would otherwise have been built with federal money have been lost. Across the country, almost 119,000 families are living on the street or are on the verge of becoming homeless.
Real change in budget 2016 would have realized what anti-poverty advocates and housing providers have called for, which is a $3.2 billion investment to renovate old units and to build 100,000 new units of affordable housing and co-op housing nationwide to reverse the years of decline in federal spending on affordable housing. Instead, budget 2016 falls way short of this. A long-term operating agreement for federal housing is not even fully restored. That is something, by the way, that many Liberal candidates promised during the election. There are 34 housing co-ops in East Vancouver with a total of 1,669 units. If the government does not fully renew operating agreements and ensure support is in place for rent subsidies for low-income families classified as what we call “poor need”, those families or individuals, I fear, will become homeless. They will lose their homes. This cannot happen and must not happen, not in 2016.
The disappointments of budget 2016 do not stop there. It is shocking to see that the Liberals are failing to invest in a public health care system, an iconic system that makes us proud here in Canada and, I would say, the envy of the world. Even worse, the Liberals are doing nothing concrete to reverse the unilateral cuts of the Conservatives to transfers to provinces and territories. No new money has been set aside for a new health accord. The Liberals have also abandoned their promise to invest $3 billion over four years for home care deeply needed with Canada's increasingly aging population. There is nothing in the budget for mental health, for palliative care, or for long-term care for seniors. The real change promise was an investment of $3 billion over the next four years in home care. I have seen seniors whose home care has been reduced to one hour a week. All they can get is a bath a week. This is not real change. This is not how we should treat our seniors. Budget 2016 promised more and it failed to deliver.
There is so much to talk about in this budget. There is so much expectation, so much hope for the government to deliver. That is what the Liberals said they would do. They promised Canadians that they would do better, but I am afraid budget 2016 serves to disappoint.
I hope the government will do better. I hope the Liberals will honour their commitments and make real what they said to Canadians in this last election.