Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to following up on my colleague's comments and I am pleased to speak to this opposition day motion.
With a record $56 billion deficit on the books, the Conservative government has indeed begun to preach restraint. We heard on February 17 the President of the Treasury Board set the stage for cuts, stating, “Just as Canadians have made significant sacrifices to maintain their own finances they expect their government to do the same”.
On March 4 the Conservatives released their budget in which they announced that starting in 2011 the operating budgets of all departments would be frozen, except for National Defence, where spending growth will be slowed down. No indication was given as to how the freeze would affect programs and services that Canadians rely on. I want to note that there was no exemption made in this case for INAC, which has always been done in previous instances, and as we know, the demographics of the aboriginal population is increasing by leaps and bounds. We need to see a plan on how cuts would be made.
As my colleague has said, there are several areas of government spending that have increased dramatically under this government that would be more appropriate for cuts than the civil service and the valuable programs it delivers. We have heard that under the Conservatives, spending on transportation and communication increased by $820 million, or 32% over the 2005-06 levels. Spending on management consultants is up by $355 million over the same period, an astounding 165% increase.
Although the government has announced a freeze on departmental spending, the Prime Minister's own department, the Privy Council Office, is getting a $13 million boost for spending on “support and advise to the PMO”, a 22% increase in advance of the freeze; public opinion research, up by $5 million; and spending on the economic action plan advertising has skyrocketed to over $100 million, money that might well have been spent on the stimulus funding, and I would say, it would have been better served in this country, benefiting women who have not been benefited by the stimulus plan. The expansion of the communication support services in the Prime Minister's Office has cost $1.7 million and, as we have heard earlier, excessive spending on ten percenters is well over $10 million. This is where I, too, want to focus my comments.
To my mind there are two issues around the use of ten percenters, one of principle and one of cost. Let me speak first to the matter itself. The use of ten percenters is one of those classic cases of what was once a good idea at one time gone totally awry. Intended originally for the members of Parliament to communicate with their constituents, the process has been corrupted and, I would say, it must be ended.
Members opposite frequently use them to provide information that does not affect the workings of government, but they are a deliberate effort to discredit opposition members holding the seat or discredit the leadership. They are also cynically used to collect data from that member's riding to thereby target further information through other means.
The Liberal Party called for a restraint on ten percenters last fall, requesting that they be limited to a member's own riding. The practice of ten percenter regroupings should be abolished, the name of the leader of the sending member's party should be included in any ten percenter, and the leader should explicitly endorse the content of the mailout.
I have chosen to focus my comments on the ten percenters because their use has been the object of contention in my riding. Most weeks when I arrive home at the end of a week here in Parliament, there are often two of these government ten percenters waiting for me in my mail, and often four. Many of the government's mailings contain vicious and misleading attacks on their opponents. Among other things they have suggested that the Bloc supports pedophiles, Liberals are anti-Semitic or unpatriotic.
In 2008 and 2009 the Conservatives were responsible for about 62% of the printing costs incurred by MPs, even though their members represented only about 45% of Canadian households.
I have been a target of the Conservative smear machine. As a Jewish MP who represents a large Jewish population, the Conservative Party outrageously attempted to label me as anti-Semitic. I am portrayed as soft on crime, supportive of pedophiles, and not speaking up for the various issues valued by members opposite. Pictures that they have put into my riding have been digitally distorted. There is no apology forthcoming.
Government members operate under the mantra of the Prime Minister's former campaign director, Tom Flanagan, who said, “It doesn't have to be true. It just has to be plausible”.
I would say that this kind of Karl Rove, Republican-style politics is not a Canadian value. Canadians want truth. They do not want spin. They do not want distortions. They want facts and they literally do not want trash in their mail to fill up the recycling bin.
There is smear after smear in these mailings, whether they misrepresent my views and values or that of my leader. Constituents continually call my constituency office, deeply concerned about the flagrant abuse of taxpayers' money precipitated by the Conservative mailings.
Many constituents have replied to members opposite, both by phone and by mail, to protest these mailings, and an outcome of these protests is to subsequently receive a franked letter from the chair of the Conservative caucus, reinforcing the negative message in the ten percenter and justifying it as necessary. As to the costs, why should the taxpayers be called upon, through printing or postage costs for parties, to take their partisan messages to constituencies that they do not represent?
I am told that some of the worst practices come from my home province of Manitoba. The member for Provencher, a former Treasury Board member, spent $85,940 in printing costs in the last fiscal year, and the other cabinet minister from Manitoba, the member for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia, spent $72,934 in printing costs in the last fiscal year. Many of these mailings, I should say, come into my own riding, and this does not even touch the postage costs.
I know that the minister from Charleswood has received many calls from residents in my riding asking, ironically, if he is suddenly representing the riding. In Manitoba, the Conservative members spend on printing, and not postage, over $450,000, approaching half a million dollars, to get this message out in Manitoba and across the country.
The Conservatives have cut programs such as ecoEnergy for renewable power, funding for the Canadian Council on Learning, overseas development assistance and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. Surely, creating clean energy jobs, supporting high quality education, showing leadership around the world and supporting shelters for aboriginal women have a higher spending priority than ten percenters, partisan advertisements and management consultants.
The Liberal Party will protect the vital public services that Canadians depend upon. We do not believe that the Conservative record-setting deficit should be reduced on the backs of public servants or those more vulnerable Canadians. The government should lead by example, cut its own partisan, wasteful spending before it takes aim at important services for Canadians and the people who provide them.
