Mr. Speaker, I would like to say a few words this morning on this matter. It is a subject of great importance to the people of Canada.
There is a slowdown in the economy and it started before September 11. September 11 accelerated the slowdown in many ways across the entire world, not just in Canada. Figures released yesterday show that in the last three or four months the economy has slowed down by 0.4% in the United States. That is having a profound impact on Canada as well.
Yesterday the Canadian dollar closed at its lowest level in history. It was down to less than 63¢. A number of years ago the Canadian dollar was worth about $1.04 American. It went down to the range of 73¢ to 74 cents about 20 years ago. Then in 1990-91 it went back up to the range of 83¢ to 84¢. Now it is down to about 63¢.
We are facing a looming economic crisis. There is a decrease in government revenues and we are facing a recession. The recession will probably be a long one and not a short one. We have to figure out what we will do to navigate through these stormy economic times.
During the last five weeks, as a member of the finance committee I have spent a lot of time in prebudget hearings. We have heard from many Canadians from coast to coast. We travelled for two weeks. We were sitting here in Ottawa this morning. We sat here two, three and four weeks ago. We will be sitting next week. We are hearing from all kinds of Canadians and associations.
It is interesting that we hardly hear anything at all now about more tax cuts or paying down the national debt. Most Canadians are saying that the government's number one priority should be security because of what happened on September 11. In addition to security and extra money for security in the RCMP and customs and so on, the other priority should be building a stronger economy and creating jobs for each and every Canadian.
The budget that the Minister of Finance will bring down in a few weeks should concentrate on, in addition to security, how we build a stronger country, how we create more wealth and eventually create more equality in this great country of ours. That has to be the priority of the Minister of Finance when he brings down the budget.
We have to once again make this our country, make this our Canada. We must build a stronger Canada where we have security and prosperity for each and every Canadian.
Since the summer there have been tens of thousands of layoffs. The most recent layoffs were yesterday when 2,000 people received notice at the CIBC that they would be laid off.
What do we have to do? We have to do seven or eight different things. We have to put a lot more money into research and development, training, education and early childhood education for the Canadian people. We must have that long term vision of building a stronger country despite the fact that we are going into a recession or an economic slowdown. We have to have the vision of trying to make our country stronger. One way of doing it is by putting more money into research and development, scientific research and the training and education of our people right across the country.
In the years ahead it is knowledge and education that will become power. Knowledge and education will determine whether or not Canada will be a strong country that has a lot of jobs, as opposed to other places in the world.
Our country has been gradually sinking in the last few years. For a number of years according to the United Nations human resource index, Canada was the number one country in the world in which to live. Now we are number three. If we include our aboriginal people, the number is 63 using the same index.
We have a long way to go in terms of improving the human condition. The place to start is with education, training, skills and innovation. Compared to other countries in the OECD, we are not leading the pack. At the very best we are in the middle of the pack in terms of most of these indices. That is where we start. We should also be investing in infrastructure.
A few weeks ago I had a chance to speak in Peterborough, Ontario. I flew to Pearson airport and I rented a car and drove the 150 kilometres to Peterborough. The 401 is a big highway. I thought it would take about three hours on the road. I pulled into Peterborough four hours later because of the congestion on the 401. The member for Markham knows exactly what I mean. All the trucks and cars sitting on the 401 are spewing pollutants into the atmosphere. We wonder why our country has let its infrastructure deteriorate in terms of rail transport and rapid transit.
Europe and the United States have invested a lot more in rapid transit. A lot more freight is moving by rail than in Canada. We heard in our prebudget hearings across Canada that we should be putting a lot more money into rapid transit to move both passengers and freight across the country. It is good for the environment. It is good for the economy. It is good for the country. It has to be a priority. It has to be an investment.
If that is included in the upcoming budget, we will be creating more jobs, strengthening our country, building our infrastructure and saving our environment. There has to be a vision in terms of how we make our country stronger by investing in rail transport.
The same is true on the prairies. I see the parliamentary secretary across the way. If he were to go to my province he would see the consequences of a decision of the federal government many years ago to allow the railways to abandon rail lines, which forced grain companies to build inland terminals and close down elevators in small towns across the prairies.
The Saskatchewan and Manitoba provincial governments have spent millions of dollars building thin membrane highways to carry cars, small trucks and light vehicles. When the rail lines disappeared and were abandoned, big trucks were moving grain on highways which in some cases are like roads that have been bombed in terms of the potholes, ruts and breakage of the thin membrane.
Now millions of dollars have to be spent building thick membrane highways, but we do not have a national highways policy. We are one of the few countries in the world without a national transportation policy.
The hon. member for Churchill knows what I am talking about. In terms of the country's infrastructure, building highways and roads across the prairies, we need some assistance from the federal government. Because of the mistake made by the federal government many years ago by abandoning rail lines, elevator companies were forced to abandon elevators, which forced farmers to truck grain in big trucks on highways and destroy the roads.
It does not make any sense in terms of what has been done to our environment and to the economic viability of rural Saskatchewan.
A lot more money should be spent on cleaning up our drinking water. Walkerton was an example of that last year. North Battleford, St. John's, Newfoundland, and many aboriginal and other communities across Canada have real problems with drinking water. Money should be put into those areas to build a stronger Canada and have a viable country in the years ahead. Money should be put into infrastructure and research and development, two very important places to start.
Third is the whole area of housing. The federal government pretty well withdrew a long time ago from the whole market of affordable housing, social housing and co-op housing. We have heard brief after brief from people across the country talking about a housing crisis; the price of housing in Vancouver and Toronto, big metropolitan areas; and the lack of affordable housing in many communities.
If we want to kick start the economy, if we want to create jobs, if we want to build a stronger Canada to invigorate the economy, one way of doing it quickly is by putting money into housing. For every average house built an average of 2.8 person years of jobs are created.
If we want to kick start the economy, get people back to work, have people paying taxes and keep people off the unemployment insurance rolls, one way of doing that is by building houses. Let us have a national project to build houses across Canada. That is something that should be done.
In addition, the houses are needed. Many people are living in substandard housing. There is a housing crisis. People cannot afford housing. More and more people are facing homelessness in large cities.
When we walk in downtown Ottawa in the morning to the House of Commons, we run across homeless people. We see this in every major city in Canada today. The situation is getting worse instead of better.
It is training and education. It is infrastructure. It is housing. I will mention a fourth area in which the federal government should invest money: the agriculture crisis facing our farmers today not only on the prairies but across the country.
Farmers on the rural prairies are being forced to leave the land. Social problems are being caused by the economic crisis. Small towns are deteriorating. People are moving into the cities. People are going on to the welfare rolls because of the farm crisis.
I will give one example of the prairie farmer and what the prairie farmer is facing. The prairie farmer now gets about nine cents on the dollar from the federal government for support prices. The prairie farmer in the United States who farms in Montana and North Dakota, just across the border from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, gets about 35¢ or 36¢ on the dollar from the federal government of the United States in Washington.
The farmer in France gets about 56¢ on the dollar from Brussels. With 56¢ on the dollar for the European farmer, 35¢ or so for the American farmer and 9¢ for the Manitoba or Saskatchewan farmer, is it any wonder our farmers are going under?
I call on the federal government to implement a decent safety net program or farm support program for our farmers. It is needed and needed now if we want to protect our rural infrastructure, the production of food and the export of grain.
There is no reason at all we could not be spending an extra couple billion dollars a year without violating WTO rules. This is what experts told us before the committee. That is what the federal government should be doing if it wants to protect the family farm and ordinary farmers.
I will go from agriculture to other resources. I think of the crisis in forestry today. I think of the woodworkers that are being laid off across our country. I think of British Columbia that produces half of our softwood lumber. Softwood lumber and timber exports are our single largest exports, even larger than automobiles.
We saw the tariff levied by the United States. We saw yesterday the increase in the duties and charges on dumping Canadian lumber into the United States. Our government has to take a very strong stand to make sure these duties are rolled back so that we have a level playing field for Canadian workers in the forestry and lumber industries. That is how to create jobs.
On one hand the Americans applaud us for being great friends in their campaigns, but on the other hand their policies are laying off thousands of Canadian men and women across the country, particularly in the province of British Columbia. Our government must take a strong stand in doing what it can to make sure that this unfair practice by the United States is stopped right away.
These are some of the things that we have to do. If we are to get the country back on its feet, if we are to have a stronger Canadian dollar in terms of its purchasing power for the things we import, we have to build a stronger economy and a stronger country.
I am concerned about the erosion of our country, the sellout of our economy by more and more things going to the United States. Just last June, for example, the federal government decided to privatize the administration of Canada savings bonds to a company based in Texas.
I ask the parliamentary secretary why the government would do this. Some 60, 70 or 100 people who were doing this before in the public sector were laid off. These jobs are now in the private sector with call centres in Mississauga and Ottawa. Why privatize what was done by the Bank of Canada to Electronic Data Systems headquartered in Texas?
Canada savings bonds are a great symbol of our nationalism. I do not think the Americans would ever do this. Yet we are doing it as a country.
This is just one of many examples of what we are doing wrong: how we are selling out our country, how we are selling out the soul of our country instead of creating a country where we do more things for ourselves; where we do more upgrading of our natural resources; where we do more manufacturing, more research, more development, more education and produce more of our own commodities. Those are some of the things that are extremely important.
Then there is health care. We heard this morning from the Canadian Medical Association and the national nurses union at the finance committee in the railway committee room about the problems in health care and how the federal government cutbacks in 1995 have hurt our health care system and put it in jeopardy.
I am reminded that the medicare idea was brought to Canada by such pioneers at Tommy Douglas, Stanley Knowles and people in the CCF and the NDP who back in the 1960s forced the minority Liberal government led by Lester Pearson to implement national health care.
We were told at that time that health care was funded on a 50:50 basis by the federal government and by the provinces so that the federal government could have a publicly administered system, a single payer system with some clout in terms of uniformity across the country in the delivery of services of health care.
