Madam Speaker, I rise today to participate in the debate on the economic statement.
It is fitting that I rise today on “waste Wednesday” when we are debating an economic statement that the government boasts about. The government is either oblivious or ignoring the truth.
We do not have to look much further than today's PBO report or today's unemployment numbers for a dose of reality. This morning's report on business tells us that 300,000 of the 1.5 million Canadians who are unemployed have been so for over 27 weeks and this number has doubled since pre-recession times. Canadians are remaining jobless for longer stretches and those most affected are over 55 years old.
This past summer, for the first time, the Conservative myth of competent manager was exposed for all to see. Misstep after miscalculation, the Prime Minister was exposed as an imprudent fiscal manager, as an emperor with no clothes.
Just a few short weeks ago, Canada suffered a humiliating defeat at the UN, a once proud role in peacekeeping and international reputation sullied by the government's foreign policies; an embarrassing withdrawal of landing rights in the United Arab Emirates at Camp Mirage; the senseless abolishment of the long form census; a wasteful $9 billion to build prisons based on unreported crimes; and a sole-sourced, untendered $16 billion contract for F-35 fighter jets and now a Chinook helicopter deal that was neither transparent nor accountable.
Since 2008 when I was elected, we watched the Prime Minister prorogue Parliament not once but twice when he would have otherwise lost a motion of confidence. He reduced the fiscal capacity at a time of economic contraction and recommended a stock purchase when the market bottomed out and the unemployment rate soared. He spent through the $14 billion surplus that the Liberals left behind for a rainy day, when he should have prepared for the looming and imminent economic downturn.
This list does not even include the lengthy list of broken promises such as income trusts from previous budgets, causing unnecessary and undue hardships for many seniors.
As a result of the 2010 budget, Canadians were left with a $54 billion deficit and a fire sale on gems such as AECL and Mississauga-based proprietary nuclear technology about to be auctioned off at a barnburner price tag.
Yes, Liberals demanded infrastructure stimulus to jump-start the economy and get Canadians back to work, but we cried foul when we realized that cheques were not in the mail after all. Fifty billion dollars was to be spent on roads, bridges, sewers and much needed municipal infrastructure spending, but with hard to meet exploding deadlines, communities scrambled to complete projects and saddled themselves with overtime costs and overrun budgets, all for naught. A once in a lifetime opportunity to invest $50 billion in projects would be spent with no leadership, no vision and no lasting legacy. Worse, it was discovered that ISF money would arrive in Conservative-friendly ridings or those being targeted in a hostile takeover.
The Conservative Party continued to demonstrate both arrogance and incompetence with a string of announcements highlighting its wasteful ways of economic mismanagement, beginning with a fake lake as part of $1.3 billion price tag for the G8 and G20 conferences, all this when the security costs of the winter Olympics were only $200 million.
We have since learned that South Korea will be spending 2% of what Canada spent on security, only $25 million.
We also saw outrageous, lavish and unjustifiable spending in a time of austerity and restraint, on items such as $200 million on hotel bills, car rentals, bug spray, lunch boxes, cell phones and parking; $300,000 on bug spray, hand sanitizer and sunscreen; 22,000 bottles of sunscreen, 33,000 bottles of bug spray and 111 bottles of hand sanitizers, all for one day in Deerhurst.
The government also spent $85,000 on snacks in a swanky downtown Toronto hotel, on 42,000 bags of chips, 71,000 chocolate bars and 57,000 bottles of Coke. That is more waste and mismanagement.
Next up was the $9 billion price tag to build prisons despite a declining crime rate, on a pretext that unreported crimes were on the rise. If that was not bad enough, the Prime Minister claimed we needed 65 new F-35 fighter jets to protect us from the Russian threat, an excuse to hand out $16 billion in an untendered contract announced late on a Friday evening in the hopes that Canadians were not paying attention.
Canadians have begun to realize that the cost of the emperor's new clothes is unsustainable and reckless in its disregard for public accountability. After all, one needs to have an ability to count to be accountable.
More recently, the Auditor General confirmed that there was no transparency, no fairness and no accountability by National Defence in managing the $11 billion Chinook helicopter purchase, which ballooned to twice the original estimated cost. It did not take the procurement to tender, it did not account for full life-cycle costs and it will not sign the maintenance contracts until after the purchase, thus losing all bargaining power. This kind of waste and mismanagement has become a pattern.
Canadians have also been innocent bystanders in the Conservatives' breathless contempt for democracy and democratic institutions. The Prime Minister does not tolerate disobedience or dissent. Canadians have been left panting, gasping and wheezing at the democratic deficit.
The Conservatives silence Canadians who speak the truth, Canadians including: chief superintendent, Marty Cheliak, director general of the Canada firearms program, who disagreed with the government on the long gun registry and was sent away for French lessons; Colonel Pat Stogran, veterans ombudsman, who was told that his contract would not be renewed; Linda Keen, chair of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, who was fired because she stated the truth about the government's mishandling of the isotope crisis at AECL; Peter Tinsley, chair of the Military Police Complaints Commission, who was fired for acknowledging that prisoners were being tortured; Paul Kennedy, chair of the RCMP Police Complaints Commission; Mr. Munir Sheikh, head of Statistics Canada, who tried to put the sense back into the long form census; Steve Sullivan, ombudsman for the victims of crime, who was replaced for questioning the government's claim of unreported crimes; and Kevin Page, the Parliamentary Budget Officer, whose office is chronically challenged and underfunded.
There was also Canadian diplomat, Richard Colvin, who had his good reputation smeared for speaking the truth about tortured prisoners; and Rémy Beauregard, chair of Rights & Democracy, who found himself under siege by Conservative ideological appointments. God rest his soul.
There was also the government's failure to present unredacted Afghan documents despite a parliamentary motion requiring it to do so, or its unwillingness to allow witnesses to appear before certain committees.
I have provided the House with an exhaustive but still incomplete list of individuals and agencies created to uphold democratic conditions and keep our government accountable but which have been shut down or shut out.
Further proof of the democratic deficit and lack of respect for the supremacy of Parliament is evidenced in the government's unfounded and unilateral decision to cancel the long form census. The consensus on the census is that cancelling it was senseless, or cancelling the long gun registry and twice proroguing Parliament. We recently heard that the Prime Minister was willing to go as high as the Queen to obtain his prorogation had the Governor General turned down his request.
What about the economic costs? Results since January 2008 speak louder than words. Canada has lost 200,000 high-paying, full-time jobs which were replaced by part-time and temporary full-time jobs. Canada's unemployment rate at more than 8% is 2% higher than it was during the last election. That is 370,000 more unemployed Canadians since 2008, except in the PMO of course where staff costs have increased by $10 million, or 30%.
The Conservative government put Canada into deficit even before the recession. The first three pre-recession budgets increased program spending from $175 billion to $206 billion, an 18% increase. Our deficit currently sits at $54 billion and is estimated to be $100 billion over the next two years, higher than it has ever been in the history of our country. The Conservative government is the highest spending, largest debt, largest deficit government in our history.
Household debt is also at record levels. Canada's trade deficit for the summer months was at a record low.
The Conservatives imminent $13 billion unemployment insurance tax hike will cost another 200,000 jobs and hard-working Canadian families hundreds of dollars.
The $156 billion of new debt that the Conservatives plan to borrow between 2009 and 2014 will cost taxpayers $10 billion in interest payments each and every year for decades to come.
The government has a disregard for democracy, a distaste for openness, fairness and accountability, a disrespect for fiscal prudence, and a disdain for competent economic management. It is a spiral that cannot continue.
As Thomas Hobbes' Leviathan predicted, the Conservatives reign will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”.
