Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join the debate on the stimulus package, parts of it arising from the government budget, the implementation of a package that is really a mirage. The fact that the government of the day stands with a lot of audacity and pretends with fervour that it is doing something for ordinary Canadians does not make it any more substantial.
I am a bit surprised by the position my Bloc Québécois colleague took, which indicated he was somewhat satisfied with the approach and methods used by the governing party.
It is funny to see some of the opposition parties satisfied with the crumbs of the appearance coming from the government of the day, a government that would rather spend money on advertising than help unemployed people actually have substantive access to jobs at a time when they could sustain their dignity and their ability to work in the marketplace. It is a government that seems completely given over to the politics of pretending that it has taken on a role for government.
Let us just rehearse from where the present bill comes. It comes from a commitment by the government in budget 2009 to take “immediate” action. On behalf of the government, the finance minister said that it had to be measures that took place within 120 days. Did one member opposite stand behind that warranty? Did one of them apologize to his or her riding and other ridings across the country when in fact not one substantial measure of employment was ready by May 26, by the 120 days. The only thing that had started by then was an advertising blitz.
We have seen the depths of cynicism plumbed when a government first flip-flops on what it says is its philosophical position. It did that for what some people would credit pragmatic purposes. Whether political or genuine revisionist concern for the economy, it was acceptable if the government would actually take the action. However, it is frankly reprehensible when a government, in a calculated fashion, fails to create the jobs it said it would.
Look to the credibility on which the bill is built. The report of the Prime Minister was not made in the House, suborning the privileges of every member of Parliament. It was not made in the House because the Prime Minister could not warrant it as being factual. In fact, it does not say that jobs have been created. If we shake it upside down, if we look for the actual facts and figures, we see only a promise for jobs next year, and there is a reason for that. The jobs do not exist.
The bill is about committing further dollars. Only 12% of the dollars committed so far are even creating any jobs. That does not mean 12% of the potential jobs. We contacted directly over a thousand projects and posted on a website. The is the most comprehensive status available to Canadians because of step two of the government's mirage of an economic program, this economic inaction program, this excuse not to make government act when it should, when Canadians and communities out there need it. Step two is to be able to cover up, to actually change people's perception by trying to bend the reality, hoping that people will not be looking under the covers, will not be looking more closely. That is fundamentally what people have started to discover. The government has failed to divulge any of the information that it has collected. It has collected information. It knows its jobs creation program is a failure. It knows that in community after community it is making this recession worse.
The government has worked on a well orchestrated chorus of how this is a synchronized international recession. What it does not say is how it is a synchronized effort to camouflage its failure to put even a modicum of competence or effort behind being able to assist people. At 12%, that means fewer than 4,800 jobs at a time when the country has lost jobs at a rate of 5,000 per week. For 10 months, the government has held the reins of power, was given the benefit of the doubt by Canadians and by members in the House and failed utterly.
The other stuff in which it failed is this. It is one thing not to do well and it is one thing to say that this is the factors and the reasons for it. Then there might be a modicum of faith that the government might repair itself, might fix its problems, might actually bring things out, but no. Instead it has devoted a tremendous amount of effort in ducking even the smallest amount of accountability for billions of dollars, something in the order of $11 billion new dollars over two years. That is the context in which we have to see the bill today. Dollars are being requisitioned for suspect purposes.
In fact, a breach of trust with Canadians is what each member opposite wants us to go along with, a breach of trust with the unemployed, their very misery and their loss of jobs, which has deepened in the months since the budget. Notwithstanding some lightening in recent months, it is still tremendously worse off out there for those communities and families that have been hit hardest by the recession.
The government promised Canadians it would target communities and individuals most in need. This was the express commitment the Prime Minister and the finance minister said that they would uphold for Canadians, with the billions of dollars they borrowed on behalf of Canadians from the next generation. They said that they would deliver those results to people. We cannot match the grants. There are so few of them that have actually put shovels in the ground. There are so few that the government quakes in fear of releasing the data.
I challenge any member opposite to stand and enumerate, to release a list, to show anywhere where there is substantial job creation activity, paid for with federal dollars.
It was not until yesterday, 11 months after the budget was introduced, that the Government of Quebec announced the start of infrastructure projects in municipalities in Quebec. That is unbelievable. For most Canadians, that is unacceptable. But there is a problem: Canadians do not know the actual conditions.
The government thinks it is going to get away with a conceit, a camouflage, a misuse and abuse of government authority to conceal the failure of its job creation program. Instead of targeting communities and individuals most in need the way it said it would, it has taken out ads in the millions of dollars to conceal the fact that the only correlation between the dollars is with ridings it has chosen, not all the ridings that are Conservative but ones of certain cabinet ministers and of certain seats that have been recently acquired.
It is a political strategy that runs the gamut from 300% as much money in British Columbia to 40% more money in Ontario for the recreation funds, and huge piles of money for ministers like the Minister of Industry to have in his own riding for a variety of purposes which are not linked to the public interest. The members opposite in the government ranks stand united in favour of that kind of behaviour with public funds. They celebrate it in an unseemly fashion.
I would challenge each and every member opposite who held up cheques with their signatures on it to let the communities they handed it to cash that cheque. That is right. It is legal tender. If members' signatures are on them, they should stand behind them. It is not their money. Do they not realize it is not their dollars? It comes from taxpayers, hard-working Canadians, and it is an abuse to pretend it comes from their personal largesse or that of the Conservative Party of Canada. It is nothing less than an abuse.
The members opposite, who once upon a time advertised themselves as people who held forth a critique of government, now meekly go along with the public relations machine, meekly sell off their principles to hide from their voters this job creation failure because it is massive. Billions of dollars were spent and there is no yield. Nothing is happening for average Canadians. Average Canadians are being thwarted in their ambitions.
The Conservative government is full of itself at the moment because it thinks somehow it has gotten away with this. It thinks somehow that Canadians are not, in their instincts, starting to appreciate what is happening, that the Conservative Party is not looking after them, that some time ago the switch was flipped, and it has decided to look after itself, to maintain itself in power, to do whatever it takes.
There is no line on the principles that the Conservative Party used to talk about. The fact is that it has abused the apparatus of government, spent scarce dollars, all of it borrowed from grandchildren of members in the House and, more importantly, from people right across the country. That is when it is going to be paid back, with all this reckless advertising the government is doing.
Some of the members opposite spent $80,000 in five months last year bombarding their constituents with print ads, but that is just the beginning. Huge amounts are off that budget and have been used by the government in a propaganda play. It is not ethical. It is not moral, it is not acceptable when it is at the suffering and expense of families who are going without.
The government could have decided to distribute dollars in an arm's length fashion through the gas tax, for example. The Canadian Construction Association implored the party to do it and said, “If you want jobs and good infrastructure, do it that way”. The government, instead, took five months to set up a scheme, a system that it could control and identify the projects. A government that used to believe in communities reached right into those communities and chose the projects that it wanted, chose the communities it wanted to have them in, instead of actually helping the people and communities it said it would.
This is not ambiguous. The facts are clear and not only by the research put forward by the Liberal Party but by the Halifax Chronicle Herald, by the Ottawa Citizen, by The Canadian Press, and by the Globe and Mail. Every single time they added up the dollars, there are two things absolutely clear: the jobs have not been created and the dollars have gone astray.
It may be that the people opposite somehow think they are immune, that it is not going to catch up to them, that their sanctioning of this behaviour is just how politics should be done and has always been done. I say to them that they sit here only at the pleasure of Canadians who are looking for something else from the House. They are looking for bipartisanship. They are looking for people to actually roll up their sleeves and get the job done.
Time after time in committee the minister in charge of infrastructure, this $11 billion trust fund, was asked on behalf of Canadians to expose what was happening, to prepare Canadians for problems, to let Canadians know about opportunities to improve. Instead, he covered up and hid the facts on behalf of all members opposite.
Some members opposite might think they are doing what they are supposed to be doing. They are bringing home the bacon. They are getting money for people in their ridings so therefore they are doing a good job. Members opposite know the difference. They know what is coming at the expense of the majority of Canadians who live in other ridings. They know there are hard-working Canadians who are being short-changed. Projects that could benefit Canadians, that could put them to work, that could help their neighbourhoods, are not being funded simply because the representative is from the wrong hue of political party. Those are tactics of the 1890s and maybe the 1990s. Canadians are not prepared to put up with those tactics today.
In 1991 and 1992 there was a government on its way out the door that the Conservative government would rather forget. The Conservatives really do not remember that a government that once rode high went low very quickly. The seeds of the same kind of arrogance that reduced the former Conservative Party to nothing are here now. To say it is a question of their just desserts in self-justification is for them to be doing the one fatal thing that brings down governments time after time and that is discounting the Canadian public.
This is a different age. The Conservatives cannot get away from the facts even if they wished to. The facts are there in black and white. Incredibly, the Conservative government thinks it can get away with spending money on advertising. It might help them win one or two byelections where that kind of firepower makes a difference, but when all Canadians are focused, when all Canadians are sitting in judgment, they will ask: At a time of difficulty, did the Conservatives look after me or did they look after themselves? Unfortunately, the government has passed the point of no return.
In province after province, in program after program, the Conservatives have tried to look after themselves even if the programs they pick take longer to happen, even if they could be coming for those who still have a shred of interest in the real economics of this, at the wrong time in the economic cycle.
What Mr. Flaherty said was actually based on a reasonably sound approach, that investments should be made--
