Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak in favour of our motion.
The cuts that helped balance the budget have been harmful to Canadians and will have longstanding negative effects. We have seen the deconstruction of much of our social system in the fight against the deficit. Billions of dollars were withdrawn from the social envelope before and after the introduction of the Canada health and social transfer in 1995.
Equally serious was the loss of the Canada assistance plan. The war on the deficit was won largely on the backs of social programs. As a result, low and even middle income Canadians have borne the brunt of continued cuts to federal transfers.
By offloading part of its responsibility for social expenditures on to the provinces, for example, forcing unemployed Canadians to turn to welfare, the government might have spent less but poverty problems remain the same.
The government by its drastic cuts is ahead of schedule in its quest to balance the budget. It has cut too deep, yet still not deep enough for the Reform Party.
Reform has in its ongoing fanatical statements called New Democrats communists because we believe that government should reinvest in social programs, called New Democrats communists, why? Because we want a caring, just society.
I quote from the Saturday Star : “Canadian church leaders have launched a prebudget letter writing campaign to urge the finance minister to live up to his word and make Canada a caring society. The letters plead with the minister to use the expected tax dividend from a budget surplus to combat poverty. The needy are now being marginalized and even abandoned by callous provincial governments such as Ontario's which are obsessed with pushing through big income tax breaks for high income Canadians”.
The Ottawa Citizen states: “Canadian religious leaders have launched an unprecedented challenge to the finance minister to live up to his own promise and make Canada a caring society. For the first time ever the Canadian Council of Churches, the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and the Reform Council of Judaism are together urging the Liberal government to launch a campaign against poverty in its February budget”.
I wonder if these church leaders know that the Reform Party considers them communists.
Let me quote the Caledon Institute of Social Policy: “Ottawa now has a wonderful opportunity to reinvest and rebuild not the social system of the past but the better and new system of the future, geared to the economy and society facing us in the next century. It is time to reinvest in making Canada a better place to live for all Canadians in a fair chance for all Canadian children, in healthier, safer communities and in reducing the growing inequality that threatens to turn our country into two nations, the invidious two nations of affluent and poor. It is time to reinvest the peace dividend from the war against the deficit and build the social base of our country”.
My colleagues from the NDP and I share this belief that it is time to reinvest in social programs. The coming budget should introduce measures to ensure every Canadian the opportunity to share in a new prosperity through renewed investment in health care, education and other vital programs.
The gap between the super rich and ordinary Canadian families is widening. Since 1989 that gap has grown. Average family incomes have fallen by roughly 5%. The number of poor children grew by 47%. The number of Canadians filing for personal bankruptcy has tripled.
When I was in my early teens I read an article in which Mother Teresa was being interviewed. The journalist asked Mother Teresa what she would do about poverty. Her response was that government should look after poverty and she would look after the poor. Mother Teresa will always be with us through her efforts in spirit and there will be those who continue to look after the poor, but this government appears to have given up on the war on poverty.
Young Canadians do not have much to look forward to. Youth unemployment is high at 16.5% last month. That is a lot of young persons whose first experience in the job market is no job. The reward for young graduates of university or college is not a decent job. It is a debt of $25,000 to $30,000. Affordability should be a national standard for education. Young people deserve the opportunity to learn, to develop skills, to build a future. We cannot afford to risk their future or ours by wasting their talents or by creating more financial barriers to education.
Youth unemployment deeply affects my riding in Manitoba. The average age of the aboriginal population is 10 years younger than the general population.
We welcome the government's statement of reconciliation, but this is only the first step. Young people in my riding and elsewhere in Canada deserve a better future. We are hoping that with the coming budget we will see concrete actions to improve the lives of young Canadians.
It is unacceptable that most aboriginal people are at or below the poverty line. In major western cities four times as many aboriginals as other citizens are below the poverty line. Unemployment does not only affect young people. It affected 8.9% of Canadians last month. But the official unemployment rate is just the tip of the iceberg of Canada's job crisis. Hundreds and thousands of Canadians have simply given up looking for work. When people give up looking, they are no longer included in the workforce. As far as Statistics Canada is concerned, they disappear from the labour market.
It is ironic that with so many unemployed people in Canada, the lucky ones who have jobs are working overtime. Statistics Canada published a document entitled “Hours of Work”. It documents the extent of total overtime work including unpaid overtime.
In any given week in the first three months of 1997, almost one in five, 18.6% of employees, worked overtime defined as time worked in excess of scheduled hours. On average, these workers put in almost nine additional hours, the equivalent of more than an extra day per week. The worst in this is that more overtime was unpaid than was paid. In any given week, 10.7% of employees worked unpaid overtime while 8.4% worked paid overtime and how interesting to find out that the unpaid overtime is particularly prevalent in the public services.
Another sad trend in the job market is multiple job holdings. A lot of Canadians need to work more than one job to afford the necessities of life. Five per cent of our labour force holds more than one job. A labour force survey shows that multiple job holders average more than 46 hours per week, this while the CEOs of some companies are bringing home enormous pay raises while their employees are struggling to make ends meet.
The richer are getting richer and ordinary Canadians are getting poorer. This is the Liberal legacy into the new millennium. There is no question that history should show the reign of the Liberals as the decline of a just and caring society.
