Mr. Speaker, I wish to congratulate the hon. member for Shefford for asking that there be a debate on poverty in the House.
The whole issue of poverty is becoming more and more prevalent as we look around this country. Just yesterday on Parliament Hill there were hundreds of homeless people who had come here from the Ottawa area, the Montreal area, the Toronto area and other parts of this country to demonstrate the need for some real help.
I was thinking about this speech this morning and I came across a very interesting statistic. In the last while the gap between the rich and the poor has been widening in this country and in much of the world.
When I was first elected in 1968 I was very proud of the progress being made in our country with the implementation of medicare and social programs toward the narrowing of the gap between the rich and the poor.
I remember you, Mr. Speaker, when you were member for Kingston and the Islands, an ordinary member of the House, making a statement in the House that we had virtually eliminated poverty among senior citizens in this country because of the Canada pension plan, the old age pension and the supplement.
Then somewhere around 10 years ago we started going in the other direction and the gap between the rich and the poor began to widen. If we look around the world, we are now in the midst of creating through this technological revolution and the Bill Gates and so on, a class of the super wealthy and also a class of people who are getting poorer and poorer all the time.
I came across an interesting statistic this morning which said that the 358 wealthiest people in the world—and I suppose that includes none of us in this chamber—have more wealth than the income of the 45% poorest people in the world, or 2.3 billion people put together. This is a startling statistic. Two billion, three hundred million people have less income than the wealth of the 358 wealthiest people in the world. I am sure you are not one of those people, Mr. Speaker, but they are people like Bill Gates and probably people like Conrad Black.
I can see the hon. member of the Reform Party shaking his head over there. I know a while back they called for a tax break for Conrad Black and some of these wealthy people and it strikes me as very puzzling that they would do that.
That gap is widening in this country.
I also remember when Ed Broadbent was retiring as the leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. In December 1989 he moved a motion in the House of Commons that was supported unanimously by all members of the House and all political parties including the then Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. The motion said that we are going to set as a goal the elimination of child poverty in this country by the year 2000, that in 11 years we are going to eliminate child poverty in this country.
What has happened? Child poverty has not been eliminated. In fact, there is more child poverty now than there was 11 years ago. More kids are going hungry. There are about three times as many food banks now as there were 11 years ago. There are more kids out there with fewer opportunities. There are more homeless people with fewer opportunities. There is more sadness and dispossession out there now than there was 11 years ago. We have to ask why. There are three or four reasons.
First, we have poor kids because we have poor parents. We have poor parents because for all too long this country has had a very high unemployment rate. It has gone down recently, but it is still very high at 7.8%. For many years and many, many months we had an unemployment rate of over 10%, month after month after month. Because of that we have driven more and more people into poverty.
Second, even with the creation of more jobs, the average income in real terms for most Canadians now is lower than it was in 1989 when that laudable objective of eliminating child poverty was set by the House of Commons. It is lower because there are more and more part time jobs, more and more low wage jobs and more and more jobs with fewer and fewer benefits for Canadians. Because of the belt tightening in this country, for all but the very rich, incomes have actually gone backward instead of ahead.
That is why there is more poverty now than 11 years ago.
It is an issue we are going to have to tackle.
Yesterday I talked with a former prime minister. I do not want to use his name, but he told me that he was surprised at the anger that he saw among people demonstrating yesterday compared to five or ten years ago. That is true. More and more people are getting the short end of the stick in terms of economic fairness and justice in this country. It is because of years of high unemployment. It is because even though there are more jobs now, they are low wage jobs, part time jobs, fewer benefits and fewer opportunities. Those are two reasons.
Another reason, and I think members of the Liberal Party have to hang their heads in shame on this one, is the cutback of some $6 billion in transfers to the provinces, primarily for health care but also for education and social programs. Turn on the newscasts. What is happening in every province? What is happening in Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Regina, Halifax, wherever we go? There are waiting lists in emergency rooms and hospitals are being closed. People are waiting in every province primarily because the federal government has cut back by $6 billion in the funding of social programs in Canada.
We can go back to the sixties and people of that day like Lester Pearson, Tommy Douglas, Stanley Knowles, Bob Stanfield, when this country had the foundation of national medical care. At that time the federal government funded 50% of medical care. What is it today in some provinces? It is 12% or 13%. Put up a dollar and only 12 or 13 cents is paid by the federal government. It used to be 50%. We have gone backward.
The reason for poverty is that the federal Minister of Finance in February 1995 cut back by $6 billion and it is no wonder members in the Liberal Party hang their heads in shame over this massive cutback, a bigger cutback than any Conservative government ever made in terms of social programs. Yet some Liberals like to think that they are really progressing.
I know that you agree with me, Mr. Speaker, because you are a very progressive Liberal from the Kingston and the Islands constituency. I do not know why I always commend you so much but you are a very progressive man. Perhaps that is why you occupy the chair.
Finally we have the issue of taxes. The Reform Party might think it has a monopoly on talking about taxes in this country. The important thing when it comes to taxes is that we need tax fairness and a cut in taxes for the poorest people of this country. They need the money, they will spend the money and they will stimulate the economy in doing so.
In 1986 this parliament passed a bill to end the indexation of income taxes. That has put more and more people in the tax brackets. It has meant that the poorer people are paying more and more taxes all the time. We have also had the partial deindexation of the child tax credit and the GST tax credit for poorer people.
If it wants to do something about poverty, in the budget next Tuesday the government should end bracket creep for low income people and it should index the taxation system for low income people. There should be a fully indexed taxation system for the GST tax credit and for the child tax credit. I agree with my friend from Nova Scotia that we should have a 1% cut in the GST right across the board.
Those are some of the things we could do. I would like to see Liberal members opposite stand in the House of Commons and speak out on the issue of poverty. There is a minister of the crown about to take his place in the front row, the minister of fisheries. I am sure that he too was scandalized by the Minister of Finance in February 1995 when he cut social programs by $6 billion, throwing more and more people in this country into poverty.
The time has come for Liberal backbenchers to speak their piece and say how they feel about restoring funding to social programs. We should have a fair taxation system in this country. We should make sure that we fight for full time, meaningful and well paying jobs. That is the way to end poverty. We have gone backwards. The gap between the rich and the poor is widening, which is why this debate today is extremely important.
Once again, I thank the Conservative member for Shefford for her motion.
