Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with my colleague from the Western Arctic.
I stand here today committed to equality and opportunity, as I hope everybody would be, for all Canadians, for fairness in the accessibility of programs, services and opportunities no matter where they live in Canada, whether it is in Corner Brook, Newfoundland and Labrador, Espanola, Ontario, or Creston, British Columbia. Accessibility, fairness and equality to the services and supports and programs that people need no matter where they live is the Canadian way. That is not the Canadian federal budget we have seen from the Prime Minister and the Conservative government. The budget does little, if anything, to bring about equality and fairness.
People who live in Surrey North are not on the whole better off. In fact, many are further behind. On average, Surrey North has the lowest family income of any of the Surrey ridings. This budget does little to improve their quality of life overall. People are working longer hours with less to show for it and the prosperity gap continues to grow. Eight billion dollars in corporate tax cuts may put food on the boardroom table, but it will not help put food on the kitchen tables of people who live in Surrey North.
We all know that lack of money for nutritious food means that our health care costs will rise dramatically because people who cannot eat nutritious food become ill much more quickly and use our health care system with more frequency.
People are working harder and their money is not going as far.
The one thing people mention more and more to me is that nowhere in this budget is the cost of drugs. Those people missed the opportunity completely. The cost of out-of-pocket expenses on drugs has risen 9% a year since the year 2000. That is a 63% out-of-pocket expense increase for drugs.
People have to make choices in the riding that I represent between filling a prescription and feeding their family, whether it is Kraft Dinner and fruit or Kraft Dinner and maybe try to fill the prescription. That is not fairness and equality. That us not levelling the playing field where all Canadians are equal.
What about workers? I want to talk for a minute on forestry. There was nothing in this budget for the tragedy we have had in British Columbia around the pine beetle and the destruction of forests. One might ask, why is an urban MP talking about forests? Many forest workers live in my riding. They worked in the mills that used to be open on the Fraser River. Where is the investment for those workers? It is not there.
Then there is the foreign credential referral office. I talk to a lot of people with foreign credentials. Not one of them has ever said to me, “I need to be referred to somewhere. I don't know where to be referred to”. What they do not need is referrals. What they do need is timely assessment of their skills and academics and then they need a way into the education system so they can upgrade when necessary.
Not only are we see a prosperity gap, but we are seeing a huge skill gap.
We have the taxi host program in B.C. for taxi drivers. About 25% of the participants in the program are physicians. They take the taxi host program so they can drive taxis. We see the same thing with nurses. We are going to need 135,000 new nurses in this country in 20 years' time? Where is the joint planning that could have been committed to, a national leadership for the government?
I want to mention aboriginal funding. Urban aboriginal peopled received no extra dollars from the budget. I have a wonderful organization called Kla-how-eya in Surrey North. It provides a huge range of mentoring, education and health services to urban aboriginal people. What was in the budget for it? Absolutely nothing. The organization does an extraordinary job. It keeps young people mentored with elders. Sometimes it manages to keep young people in the school system, out of jail. Surely it is worth supporting the aboriginal people do that.
For many families in Surrey North, child care is an incredibly important issue. All choices we make about how we raise our children are good choices, as long as they are choices. If people want to stay home and raise their children until they are 20, great. If they can do that, and it is a choice and they can afford it, that is a bonus. It is terrific. However, not everyone can makes those choices.
We have a lot of families where both parents must work outside the home for wages or they are lone parent families and they work outside the home for wages. They do not want to only depend on the public system. They want to work. They want to provide that dignity for their families. People in Surrey North are striving very hard to get those work skills and to have child care so they can do that.
I do not know if any of us can imagine what it is like going to work not knowing if our children are in safe child care. I cannot imagine spending a day at work without knowing if my child is safe. It is unimaginable to me. This has happened as a result of what the Conservative government has done by cutting the child care initiative.
There is no housing strategy for about 100 people in Surrey, not all in the constituency of Surrey North, who live on the streets. There is nothing that says we are going to look at a national housing strategy, not just for people who are homeless, but for people who cannot get into their first home. They cannot afford it. Where is the national housing strategy we used to have, which used to work? It is gone. It is not there. What a wonderful opportunity this would have been and what a missed opportunity to provide safe housing for people.
For many people in Surrey North, their whole focus has been for their sons or daughters to get a post-secondary education. It does not matter whether that is college, university, trade school or whatever it is. Their goal is that their sons or daughters will have a higher education than they had with the hope of having a job that will be self-supporting.
While there is more money for post-secondary education, there is nothing to make tuition affordable. There is nothing that addresses the overwhelming loans that students are carrying. Many students will never be able to get a loan. For many people, they will never be able to break out of that cycle.
I think the people in Surrey North, more than any place else in Surrey, have the same kinds of dreams and visions for their children. They may not have had the same opportunities as people in other parts of Surrey, but they have the same wants, desires, dreams and visions for their children. That is for them to have a better future than they have perhaps had, an education that they know will support their sons and daughters. In this day and age that is hard to predict. They are not planning to be politicians I guess. There is no tenure.
The budget has missed a tremendous opportunity to make a difference for the people in the riding that I represent. While people across the country will benefit from the budget, they will be the few. The gap will be larger than it has ever been. The haves will have more. The people who already do not have will have less.
People tell me when I go to their doors that they cannot continue to raise their children, hold down a job and look after their aging parents who are living with them or they run to their home every day because there is no home care for them.
What a wonderful opportunity to take leadership around home care, to take a national perspective. There are so many national leadership opportunities missing, national leadership around the management and planning for health and human resources, as another member spoke to earlier, an opportunity to take leadership around post-secondary education as it relates to the ability of students to access it.
For the people of Surrey North I am saddened and disappointed and for most they will simply be—
