Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise once again in the House today to speak to budget 2017.
More and more people are telling me about the fine promises made during the election campaign and the string of disappointments and disillusionment once the party that got voted in formed government. This is what I have heard about the Liberals for over a year and a half. The 2017 budget is no different, and there are many areas where the investment is inadequate, if not inexistent.
How can this government justify to the six out of 10 unemployed workers who do not have access to employment insurance that it is not planning to invest anything in improving access? The lack of access to these benefits deprives many workers of the resources they need to survive.
The government keeps telling us that it is creating jobs, but it is unacceptable to leave people unable to support themselves without assistance. Employment insurance is paid for through employee and employer contributions and it needs to help those who need it, when they need it.
The employment insurance system needs to be changed so that those who have been left behind can access these benefits. Many workers are in several precarious jobs, which is why they are unable to access these benefits. This is especially the case for seasonal workers, and I want to remind this government once again that each year 15,000 people are in this situation, close to 40% of them in Quebec. It is also the case for young people, since 40% of the jobs worked by 18- to 34-year-olds are precarious.
How can our small businesses create good jobs when they do not have adequate infrastructure? Internet access is a fundamental issue for rural residents and businesses. However, nowhere in the budget does the government announce new investment to allow rural communities to have access to high-speed Internet.
In the riding of Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, which I represent, we are among those left out of high-speed Internet. It is an impediment to our community, particularly our small businesses. I have pledged to bring fibre optic throughout the riding, and I will continue to fight for that. The government needs to invest in public infrastructure to make new technologies accessible to everyone, everywhere.
On the topic of small businesses, microbreweries and small wine producers are a vital part of our economy. Small businesses create 80% of good-paying jobs. Increasing the excise tax would impose added costs on microbreweries and small wine producers. Breweries pay to the federal government the same excise duties on each litre of beer, regardless of volume, and this is unfair to the microbreweries unable to compete with the major breweries.
The federal government should instead help microbreweries, microdistilleries, and vintners market their products. It needs to eliminate the excise tax hike on microbreweries and small wine producers.
This government has said time and again that it wants to help the hard-working middle class. Again, there is a big disconnect between what the Liberals say and what they actually do. Child care costs have gone up more than 8% over the last two years. This strong middle class that the government wants to build is paying very high child care costs, while the budget does not include one extra penny for new child care spaces this year, and the amounts to be provided later are mostly inadequate for the needs of parents.
During the election campaign, the Liberals criticized the NDP plan saying that it was too slow. Under our plan, there was more more money for the first year than the government plans to invest during the fifth year. Some families pay up to $1,600 a month per child for child care. No matter how hard you work, that is a gaping hole in the household budget.
The Liberals are also cutting the public transit tax credit that helped many people save up to $200 a year. Families expect this government to work for them, but clearly it prefers to gift $725 million annually to Canada's wealthiest CEOs. Is that what the Liberals mean by building a strong middle class?
To the long list of those who have been cheated, we must add dairy farmers. In November, the government promised to invest $350 million to help dairy farmers cope with the repercussions of the comprehensive economic trade agreement signed with the European Union, but there is not a single line item in the budget for such an investment. Like many Liberal promises, this one seems to have vanished. Many dairy farmers in the riding of Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot and in Quebec and Canada in fact, were expecting support from the federal government. It is high time that a government protected our farmers and truly helped them.
People do not seem to be able to count on this government when it comes to health care costs. Despite all of the requests that have been made by the provinces, the Liberals have once again chosen not to make the disability tax credit refundable. Low-income Canadians therefore have to deal with the double sentence of living with functional limitations and being trapped in a precarious situation by a government that ignores them because it would rather give tax credits to the wealthy.
There are inequalities in health when it comes to the price of prescription drugs. Canada has the second highest drug prices in the world, but the government turns a deaf ear to the suffering of those who cannot get the drugs they need. Some people do not take all of their medication and some do not take any at all because they cannot afford it. Others have to choose between health care and eating. Unfortunately, the existing system can kill, and it costs $7 billion a year more than necessary because we do not have a national pharmacare program.
This year, we celebrate Canada's 150th anniversary, and the government is constantly sending out its messages to remind us. However it should keep in mind some other figures. Nine hundred and ninety thousand is the number of children living in poverty in Canada in 2017. These 990,00 children among 4.5 million men and women in Canada living in poverty are the reality we must strive to change. People have less and less money. The household debt amounts to 167% of their revenues on average.
However, when discussing people getting poorer, I am obviously talking about the majority of them. A small minority of people, the richest in our society, keep acquiring more and more wealth. Whereas all hard-working wage earners have to pay income tax, only half of the revenues from selling shares is taxed. Just in case the government is unaware, let me remind them that selling shares is not a major source of income for the middle class and it is even less so for the most vulnerable.
The tax rate for big corporations has been constantly declining for the past 15 years, and that rate is applied only on taxable revenues. In spite of the ever-decreasing rate, big corporations still engage in tax evasion, a scourge that deprives the state of revenues worth 7 billion dollars a year.
That said, it really becomes indecent when the government itself allows the richest to evade income tax. The stock options tax break for big corporation CEOs represents a net loss of 800 million dollars a year for us. The government wants to promote hard-working men and women, but even by pushing themselves to the limit, most people cannot earn as much as a single one of the richest Canadians can earn from his shares. Owning shares that generate millions of dollars cannot be called work.
We can therefore see how negligent the government is. While it forfeits large sums of money in the form of tax credits for the wealthiest and fails to crack down on tax cheats, some people are hurting because they are poor.
Let us not forget that more than 800,000 people use food banks every month. This represents a 28% increase since 2008, and 36% of those people are children. Reforms could solve that problem, and it is high time the government took action.