Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to give my first speech in the House of Commons. I have been up on my feet a number of times, but this is my first official speech.
I would like to start by thanking the voters of Elmwood—Transcona for giving me the opportunity to come to this place and speak on their behalf.
I would like to thank my wife, Janelle, and my son, Robert, who in their own way are working just as hard as I am on the project of providing good representation to people in our hometown.
I want to say a special thanks to my father as well, who served for a long time in this House. He was a great political role model, both on how to conduct oneself in this place, and also on the substantive issues that face the country. He was a great voice for the working people for many years in this place. I hope to continue that tradition here today. I want to thank my mother also, because I know that she was as much a part of that project as he was, the project of providing good representation to the people in Elmwood—Transcona. It is something one always knows, even as part of a family growing up in that, but I think as all members get here it really does impress upon us just how much it is a family effort to be able to do this job and do it well. Therefore, I thank everyone in my family again.
I want to thank all of the volunteers and supporters who helped put me here as well. I intend to honour them by speaking up on the issues that they have sent me here to talk about.
Elmwood—Transcona is a great riding. It is full of people who are down to earth, who work hard for a living, and who have always understood that we face a lot of common challenges. We know we are better off facing those challenges together and addressing them collectively than leaving our neighbours to fend for themselves, because we know that the kinds of problems they are facing the next day may be the very same problems we will find ourselves facing. We know we ought to work together to build a world where we allow for bad times and prepare ourselves so that we have systems and programs in place to help our neighbours and ourselves when that time of need arises. That is why Elmwood—Transcona has always tended to return social democrats to the House of Commons, because that way of thinking is at the core of our program. It is at the core of our vision for the country. It is not just window dressing that we put on at election time. Rather, it is something that informs the policies and positions we present in the House.
Therefore, when I saw today's motion, I wondered if this was the kind of thing that people had sent me here to debate, discuss, and to take a strong position on. A simple snapshot of the fiscal picture at a certain time of year does not represent the entire year of a budget. That is clear. At the end of the day, I think hon. members on all sides of the House know that. I do not think that posturing for cheap political points in the House on that issue is what I was sent here to do. I was sent here to talk about social justice. That is why I am proud to be part of a caucus that, on its opposition day, decided to bring forward a motion on pay equity and to have the House spend its time debating and voting on that. That made me very proud yesterday. There is a lot of good work to do. There is work left to do when we talk about the situation that aboriginal people are facing in this country, or the funding gaps that exist that perpetuate social injustice on and off reserve for aboriginal people, and there are many other people whose causes we have to champion in this House and do something about.
This motion does not speak to any form of economic justice, which social democrats also take to heart. Members have heard us talk here about income inequality.
We are also concerned about income security because we know that individuals' dignity is tied to their freedom to be able to take hold of their own destiny to make decisions about their life and what they want to do. However, there has to be enough money in the bank to be able to make those kinds of decisions, because I think we can all agree that, when we do not have those resources, we do not have a lot of choices. That is why the NDP has always fought to make sure workers get their fair share of what they work every day to produce. Yes, workers have employers who help organize their work. However, as someone who has worked on a number of job sites, I can say that it is the workers who are bringing that value to the work they do every day.
They are the ones doing the building. They are the ones doing the producing. They are the ones filing the paperwork. It is fair that they get a good return on that investment and on that work.
Looking at the numbers, over decades now, we see that it is the same group of people who are producing that value who are getting less of a return on that value. We see that as the corporate income tax rate drops from 28% to 15% in almost as many years. Meanwhile, workers who are getting laid off because of a downturn in the economy cannot access EI, and seniors who worked and paid into a pension plan their entire life are not seeing an adequate return on that. They are not seeing enough to be able to pay their rent and buy their food.
These are issues that really matter to us in this party, not trading points about what time in the fiscal cycle there happened to be more money in accounts receivable instead of accounts payable, when we all know that at the end of the day there really was a deficit, as my hon. colleague has done a good job of pointing out. A one-time sale of GM shares does not address a systemic deficit.
We are here also to talk about environmental justice and to talk about people having the dignity and freedom to make their own decisions. We can only have a good life if we have a planet to live it on. It is reasonable for people to raise concerns about the way we are extracting certain kinds of natural resources. It is reasonable for people to be concerned about what that is doing to the planet. It is reasonable for people to demand a process for approval of these projects that takes those considerations seriously.
It is also reasonable to be concerned about the overall effect of those projects over time on climate change. We are having an unseasonably warm winter. These things do happen from time to time, but they are starting to happen with a frequency that we have not seen before. That is well documented.
These are all reasonable concerns if we look at the evidence. They are not just reasonable concerns; it is a benchmark for sanity that we do take these things seriously in the 21st century.
I am proud to be part of a team that is here to raise that. It was the minority view in the late seventies and early eighties that we were headed down a road that would have serious consequences. We were the first to raise this and we are raising it again here today. I hope we are going to be part of the solution soon, rather than just shouting across the aisle at governments that are listening with deaf ears. That is part of what we were working on at election time.
The other component to social democracy, which the motion does not address, is the democratic component, in keeping with the idea that it is important for people to be able to take charge of their own destiny. It is also important that they have the economic freedom to do that, which means getting a fair share of the value they produce at work. It means having income security. We know people are worried about getting laid off because they do not have access to employment insurance. Some people cannot retire and leave the workforce when they want because they do not have an adequate pension. Workers do not have economic freedom when they are fighting for a better deal but know the government is willing to legislate them back to work as soon as they start to talk about a strike. Those workers are not in charge of their destiny. Certain economists would call that promoting labour discipline, but we see it for what it is, and that is taking advantage of people. It is robbing them of the dignity to take charge of their own destiny.
As much as that is important on the economic side of things, it is important on the political side as well. People need to have political freedom. They need to elect their representatives to this place, and they need to do it in a way that reflects their desire for the country. That is why the NDP has long been an advocate for electoral reform. We have not had a system for a long time, if ever, that has done a good job of that. We are keen to hold the government to account on its promises for meaningful electoral reform.
That comes as a total package. The social democratic vision of the NDP is to give people the power to determine their own destiny by giving them the economic freedom they need to do that. We can do that by addressing problems with respect to social justice. We can do that by giving them a planet to do it on. We can do that by giving them the political freedom to implement it if they so choose, and not to if they do not.
That is why we have been gracious in defeat from time to time and we have worked hard whenever we win, whether it is right now in Alberta with an NDP government or in Manitoba with an NDP government. We are hard-working in victory and gracious in defeat.
