David Christopherson

[David Dingwall, May 16th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, it appears as if we have another case of the Conservatives acting just like the Liberals. Yesterday the documents on the David Dingwall affair were finally released. Lo and behold, major parts were blacked out and still remain secret.

I would like to ask the government because in opposition it demanded that this information be released. Now that the Conservatives are in government their tune has changed.

I want to ask the government the very same question it asked, when it comes to David Dingwall what is the government trying to hide?

[Auditor General's Report, May 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, that is interesting because the Auditor General has virtually guaranteed the public accounts committee that it was not her department.

If the minister is not prepared on behalf of the government today to guarantee that it is not a government member or any of their staff, then it is not acceptable for the government to investigate the government.

Therefore, will the minister today call in the RCMP to ensure we get a thorough, honest investigation on what happened and ensure it does not happen again?

[Auditor General's Report, May 12th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the Auditor General yesterday characterized the leak of her report as an affront to Parliament.

Since we know the Auditor General reports are routinely provided to the senior officials of a subject department, will the government today guarantee Canadians and the House that government members and their political staff are not the source of this leak?

[The Budget, May 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, the member should try that answer on families who are desperately waiting for child care spaces because they cannot get on with their lives. They have inadequate care right now. Those programs need investment.

Obviously the member believes it is more important that there be billions of dollars in corporate tax cuts than to provide real child care spaces in a regulated setting. The member offers up the $1,200 a year, which will help. What he cannot do is stand up and take a standing ovation for providing a national child care plan, which is really needed. You brought back a version of the old baby bonus and that is nice, but it is not what is really needed. You missed the opportunity. You took care of your friends and you left the children outside in the cold.

[The Budget, May 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I was remiss earlier not to acknowledge that I will be splitting my time with my colleague from London—Fanshawe.

It is interesting that my friend from Mississauga South would raise the child care issue in relation to the election, given the fact that the Liberals had 13 years to implement a child care plan. Now they want to say that they were close to doing it and we pulled the plug. If the Liberals had been serious about bringing in a child care plan, they had over a dozen years, with a majority government, to bring in the kind of plan that we needed. We did not cost the Liberals the election. Their record cost them the election.

[The Budget, May 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I will respond as best I can. First, rather than playing with percentages and trying to spin things out, he still cannot change the fact that $7 billion is real money. I do not care how many percentages he wants to play with and all the other figures. The fact of the matter is that a tax cut is no different than an expenditure.

If a new program begins and it costs $7 billion, it costs the treasury the same as if there were a $7 billion tax cut. They are both expenditures. At the end of the day, we still have $7 billion going for new corporate tax cuts and a continuation of the $1.5 billion that is already going to the oil and gas companies.

What we need in the country is not more corporate tax cuts. We need a national child care plan that actually provides real spaces. We need money to be transferred to our provinces so we can actually train more nurses. We need to get more tuition relief in the hands of working families so more students can actually go to university. Those are the priorities that matter.

[The Budget, May 10th, 2006]

I hear the government member yelling “more”, because that is what they like to do. They want to take money out of the system. It is a very strong philosophical differential between the governing Conservatives and those of us in the NDP. We believe the priority is working families and their communities rather than corporate friends. That is what the Conservatives have done. They have taken care of their corporate friends.

What exactly have they cut? They cut EnerGuide, a program for low income home owners to retrofit their homes and assist us in meeting our Kyoto targets. Just as important, and that was the beauty of this good program, it would have let us deal with a national priority and at the same time it would have helped an awful lot of seniors in Hamilton to stay in their homes. Their energy costs would not necessarily be driving them out of those homes. The government cut that. It was not as important as a corporate tax cut.

The Conservatives talk a lot about seniors. I have an email from one of my constituents and I would like to put it on the record. The email reads as follows:

As a senior on a pension, I listened with interest to the kind words in the budget about the contribution I've made to the country from my early years of working (32 years as a medical technologist in a hospital working shifts, weekends, holidays).

Then I took my income tax forms from this year—including the page amended by the Liberals that's been scrapped—and calculated how much of a benefit I would see from the amount for the pension income credit rising from $1,000 to $2,000.

Guess what—I'll actually get the supreme privilege of seeing my federal tax GO UP by $637.12. By my calculations, one has to spend $40,000 to realize a $400 GST savings to offset that federal tax increase. Since my income this year will include a one time payment of back pay earned before retirement— that GST savings comes at the expense of food, shelter and other necessities since I'll only earn about $42,000 before tax total this year. And I'm probably one of the lucky pensioners. The Tories should skip the platitudes.

I have never fumed so much over a budget since Mike Harris was Premier of Ontario and that was 90% of it; not just the part that I am personally affected by.

I do not have the permission to release the name, but it is there. I can show it to anyone who wants to see it.

They have done the calculations. We can hear what they are saying. People may not be outraged by this budget, but they are supremely disappointed and they should be. This was a missed opportunity to invest in what really makes Canada the greatest country in the world. All we have done, through the new government, is ensure that its friends in the corporate world get that much more of ordinary taxpayer money while ordinary citizens are left with spin and platitudes.

The budget is not good enough for working families. It is not good enough for my community of Hamilton. It is not good enough for my province of Ontario. I will proudly be voting against the budget.

[The Budget, May 10th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to join the debate. I have certainly heard an awful lot this afternoon about tax cuts and tax credits and how that is going to solve all the problems that all Canadians have, all our communities have and all our provinces have.

The only difficulty is that this is a rerun for some of us in this place. Not only have I heard that same message before, I have heard that same message from the very same finance minister in the province of Ontario, who was making exactly the same claims. If hon. members see me shivering from time to time when the finance minister speaks, it is just a shiver going down my spine from listening to this thing all over again.

Let us take a look at the case in point. Let us take a look at what the hon. finance minister did for the province of Ontario by following this holy grail of tax cuts, tax cuts and tax cuts.

What do we have in the province of Ontario after two majority terms of the Mike Harris Conservative government? We have an education system that is desperately in need of investment. We have a health care system that is desperately in need of investment. We have an environmental agenda that desperately needs money and investment.

Not only that, the Conservatives left the province billions of dollars in debt. After they had already gone to all the trouble of balancing things, they brought in all their tax cuts. That works fine in the good times, but in the bad times the tax cuts do not work.

What is the evidence? Again, I go right back to the Mike Harris Conservatives in Ontario. Their tax cuts came at a time when the North American economy was taking off. Ontario benefited from that, but it is very easy to stand up and say that all these wonderful things are happening because of tax cuts. What they were saying was, “The more we cut taxes, the more revenue the province has, and look how great this is”. They did that for a number of years while they could get away with it.

The problem was that as soon as the American economy started to slow down, and eventually it tanked very briefly there, and the Conservatives in Ontario had another round of corporate tax cuts planned, they had to cancel them, to postpone them. Why? Because they could not afford them, they said. Yet that was the same government, and the same finance minister for part of it, that we now have at the helm of the finances of our country.

Those Conservatives had to postpone their tax cuts, having said that the more they cut taxes, the more revenue they had. They had to postpone their next round of tax cuts because they could not afford it. Yet, if we follow their own logic, as things got tougher and if cutting taxes generates more revenue, then they should have been cutting like mad when things got bad, because that would have increased all their revenue.

But no, reality caught up with them, and the reality is that tax cuts alone, although they have their place, are a fine political mantra, but they are no basis or foundation on which to build the kind of country that Canadians want, demand, expect and to which they are entitled. That is what we are seeing here again. That is why it is like back to the future for some of us.

Seven billion dollars in corporate tax cuts, with $1.5 billion in tax cuts that already exist allowed to continue: those tax cuts, by the way, are for that really tough area of our economy, the gas companies and the oil companies. We know how much they are hurting these days, so it makes good sense to leave that $1.5 billion tax benefit to them in place, does it not?

No, not if you talk to constituents of mine in Hamilton Centre. That is not what they are interested in. They want to know how this government is going to help them make sure that their talented children who are willing to work can afford to go to university.

Bill C-48, the NDP better balanced budget, provided money to go to tuition relief. The Conservatives, using the surplus from the last time, which is how the formula was worked out, put in almost that much money and kept it in that category. The only problem is they moved it away from being a benefit to reduce tuition and put it into post-secondary education infrastructure.

It is not that the infrastructure is not needed, but what should have happened was those tuition reductions should have stayed in place. They should have reduced the $7 billion for their corporate friends and put it into the post-secondary infrastructure deficit. That kind of thinking is putting working families first and recognizing their needs.

They want to talk about cuts so much, it was not just taxes that the Conservatives cut. Programs have been cut, and we have only seen the beginning. If the initial calculations are right, we could be looking at upwards of $2 billion, maybe more--

[Poverty, May 2nd, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, in 1998 the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights examined the causes of poverty in Canada.

Yesterday, Craig Foye of the Hamilton Income Security Working Group presented an update to the UN committee in Geneva, Switzerland. His report was shocking. Thirteen thousand of Hamilton's children are living in poverty today because their parents have too little income to pay for housing and the other necessities of life. It found that provincial and federal government policies are at the root of family poverty.

Thanks to Mr. Foye, a lawyer with McQuesten Legal and Community Services, and his co-authors, Chabriol Colebatch and Deirdre Pike, we now understand better the real impact of government cuts on the lives of many Canadian families.

We will be looking at today's federal budget for some action to end poverty in Hamilton and across Canada.

Where do we begin? Stop allowing the national child benefit supplement to be clawed back. Increase employment insurance eligibility and rates. Invest in affordable housing. These are real solutions to a real crisis.

[National Defence, April 27th, 2006]

Mr. Speaker, I want to say that the intransigence on the issue of lowering the Peace Tower flag obviously will only be broken by a majority vote of the House. I understand there is a vote coming. I look forward to casting my vote in favour of what Canadians want on this issue.

In the interim, if I could offer up a responsible solution, would the minister agree to allow one or both of the ceremonial flags that flank the Centre Block to be lowered on the days of the Canadians' funerals until such time as we can resolve, as a Parliament, the broader issue?