Mr. Speaker, we heard the Prime Minister in the time before the budget. He said it was going to be a transformational and generational budget, but when he tabled the budget, he failed to address the critical issues that Canadians are facing today: the affordability crisis, the cost of living crisis and unemployment. We have seen the highest unemployment in a decade. There is a failure to deal with the climate crisis and the growing inequality in our country.
I am going to speak about, obviously, the things that we do not like in the budget, things that are missing in the budget and things that we have been working on and have brought forward to the government that are possibly good. There are some things that we hope the government will follow through on.
First, I am going to talk about the cuts to the public service. They are cutting 40,000 public servant jobs. I will give an idea of what that looks like. They started this austerity already. They cut 3,000 jobs at the CRA call centres. Ask anybody in the House what it looks like in our offices right now with the backlog of constituents calling our offices because they simply cannot get through to the CRA. However, the CRA has no problem finding people in this country when they owe it money.
I will give an example. Ryan is a volunteer firefighter in Merville on Vancouver Island. He got chased because he got the new volunteer firefighter tax credit, which I helped fight for, which people in the House supported eventually and which the government adopted, but now the government is chasing Ryan around. Ryan spent his summer fighting wildfires. Can members imagine chasing around a volunteer firefighter, when we know it still has not dealt with the Panama papers and the corporate misuse of the tax system with the tax havens that are out there? Instead, the CRA is spending its time chasing around volunteer firefighters like Ryan.
Imagine a further cut at the CRA. Imagine cuts at Veterans Affairs. We saw the Conservatives cut a third of the staff at Veterans Affairs, and the disability application backlog grew to 50,000. This is not a time to cut the public service. This is a time to strengthen it, especially as the economy is struggling.
We saw the government do nothing to deal with the corporate greed and the inflation crisis that is happening right now. Whether it be at the pump, at the grocery till or when people are trying to access the Internet or get their basic cellphones covered, those prices are continuing to skyrocket, and also when they go to pay their rent or pay their mortgage. However, last year RBC made a record $16 billion. Bell made $6.3 billion. What did they do? They laid off 700 employees. Loblaws made over $2 billion, and Imperial Oil made almost $1 billion last quarter and $5 billion last year. What did they do? They also laid off almost 1,000 employees. That is the corporate responsibility and how it is playing out at the top for Canada's big corporations.
In fact, we have the lowest corporate tax rate in the G7, and what else do we have? We have record profits. Even Conservatives in Britain brought in an excess profit tax when the profits were so out of control, and I want people to win. I want small businesses to win. I want medium-sized businesses to win. I want large businesses to win. We all do, but it cannot be on the backs of everyday people when people struggling and suffering. It cannot be at their expense. It cannot be that they are preyed upon by companies that have control over the markets for the basic needs of everyday Canadians.
What is happening right now in our country is that we are normalizing this out-of-control, raging corporate greed, and this is how it is playing out for everyday Canadians: The gap between the richest two-fifths of Canadians and the poorest two-fifths of Canadians has reached the widest level since Stats Canada started doing the work of recording it and collecting data. It is highlighted that the share of disposable income is primarily due to investment gains. That is what is driving it. This needs to be addressed, and in this budget, the government did nothing to address the corporate runaway greed that is taking place in this country.
Also, when it comes to the climate emergency, we have a climate emergency happening. The government did not invest in a clean energy grid across this country like it could have. That was a generational and transformational opportunity that would have met the Prime Minister's needs. The government failed to do that. Instead, it is focusing on building pipelines that have no plan, no money behind them and no proponents. The Liberals are continuing to bring forward these ideas that failed under the previous Conservative government.
The government killed the greener homes program that was employing contractors and labour right across this country. The government just killed a very successful program, one that was certainly helping reduce emissions.
In terms of housing, the government has still not committed to an amount for co-op non-market housing. As a product of co-op housing, I know what it is like to have safe, secure and affordable housing. The government announced $13 billion for housing, but it still has not committed a percentage of that to be non-market or a percentage that will be geared to income, with a set amount for the threshold, which should be 30%.
Where are we when it comes to housing? We are at 3.4%. England and France are at about 16% or 17%. Denmark is at 21%. The Netherlands are at 34%. They do not see the homelessness that we see here. They do not see what it looks like at 3.4%. Every MP can go to a centre in their community and see what 3.4% non-market housing looks like. There is homelessness like we have never seen. It is skyrocketing out-of-control homelessness.
These are things that need to be addressed, and the government has failed to do that. There are many things missing. Pharmacare was mentioned, but there is no commitment, despite the fact that the Pharmacare Act passed in the House. However, the Liberals still tout the pharmacare plan that they were going to deliver.
There is no mention of the toxic drug crisis. Over 52,000 Canadians have died from a poisoned drug supply. We have the third-highest death rate per capita in the world from toxic drugs, despite the fact that we have seen other countries like Portugal take a holistic, integrated, coordinated approach to responding to their toxic drug crisis.
On mental health, a Mental Health Commission report says unaddressed mental health issues are costing the Canadian economy $200 billion a year. This is impacting everybody, everybody in the House, everybody who has a constituent in their riding. Nobody is left untouched by the mental health crisis that is happening. It does not have to be this way. Right now, provincial and territorial governments are spending half what is being spent in the OECD on mental health. It is costing the Canadian economy. This is an economic, nation-building, important investment that needs to happen right across this country. We need parity with mental and physical health, and it needs to be legislated.
There is still no mention of when the government is going to fund the salmon programs that are sunsetting at the end of March. Friendship centre agreements sunset in March. They cannot wait for an economic statement.
There is no investment when it comes to ship recycling or shipbuilding on the west coast, despite the fact that we need capacity. It is absolutely critical. We often hear Conservatives talk about the need for B.C. ferries to be built in this country. The former Conservative finance minister basically said, in 2010, that these ferries should not be built here, and he removed a 25% tariff that was meant to be in place, to be there as a barrier so that ships were built in Canada instead of outside the country. In fact, those ferries were built in Poland. Those ferries should have been built in Canada, and that tariff should never have been removed.
Lastly, I am going to talk about the disability tax credit. Over 250,000 disability tax credit forms were processed in 2022. This amounts to about 250,000 hours of family physicians' time. This was highlighted in the College of Family Physicians of Canada recently. All that has to happen is for the government, instead of investing $10 million in this budget to help people get $150 to go pay a doctor to fill out the forms, to say that if a person gets disability in their province or territory, they automatically qualify for the disability tax credit. That would seem to make sense, especially with a health care system that is way beyond capacity.
We need to be innovative. We need to reduce red tape. We need to support people living on disabilities.