Mr. Speaker, you may have noticed that during every question period for the last eight years Conservative members have risen in the House to rail against the NDP for not supporting their budgets. Well, I would like to let the members opposite know that there will be no change in their speaking notes today. In fact, in question period today it was the same old tired lines from the government.
I will not be supporting Bill C-31. Here are the reasons why. I hope my colleagues across the way listen, because they should be ashamed as they listen to these reasons. Given the government's record on time allocation, of course, the bill contains amendments to more than 60 acts without the time to study those changes. It continues in Bill C-31. Once again, we see the despicable Conservative tradition of forcing legislation through without adequate parliamentary debate or public consultation.
New Democrats believe that healthy debate and consultation lead to better legislation for Canadians, yet we have another omnibus bill designed to ram through hundreds of changes with little study and little oversight. In fact, the Conservatives moved time allocation on the bill after just 25 minutes of debate. Canadians deserve better.
In addition, the bill fails to make life more affordable for Canadian families, who are still recovering from the effects of the recession. We have 300,000 more unemployed Canadians than before the recession, on this government's watch. The effects of this are painfully evident in ridings across the country, including my riding of London—Fanshawe. There is absolutely nothing in the budget, or Bill C-31, that would assist in getting the hard-working constituents of London—Fanshawe back to work, or to help replace the 400,000 Canadian manufacturing jobs lost on this Prime Minister's watch.
There is nothing in the budget or the bill that addresses the reasonable and affordable proposals of the NDP to strengthen the Canada pension plan. There is nothing to provide relief on heating bills, nothing for the millions of Canadians without access to a family doctor, and nothing to address the fact that we still have seniors in our country living in poverty. There are 250,000 of them.
New Democrats are focused on helping our most vulnerable seniors with an affordable increase to the guaranteed income supplement. While the government has made incremental measures in the past, they amount to much less than half of what is needed to pull every Canadian senior out of poverty. It is an amount that is far less than the billions in tax breaks the government has given to banks and big polluters.
Let us look at the history of this government. It is a government that has hiked payroll taxes, while working families struggled with the worst recession in decades. At the same time it was dishing out $21 billion in tax giveaways to Canada's richest companies. It stood by as good jobs with good wages and pensions, like those at Electro-Motive Diesel in London, disappeared as a result of foreign corporate takeovers.
New Democrats would like to see a government that provides explicit and transparent criteria for the testing of net benefit to Canada in the Investment Canada Act, which place emphasis on assessing the impact of foreign investments on communities, jobs, pensions, families, and new capital investments.
New Democrats propose working with the provinces to build a long-term skills training strategy to fill the skilled job shortages and to bring provinces, employers, labour, and educational organizations together to improve existing labour market development agreements. While we are at it, New Democrats would like to see the government sit down with the provinces on issues vital to Canadians, like the Canada pension plan and the Canada health accord, so we can arrive at the creative, affordable, and sustainable solutions we know are possible.
New Democrats would like to see a government that provides the services Canadians rely on. Reverse the devastating decision to cut provincial health care transfers by $36 billion; that would be a good start. The government has put universal health care on death watch. Reverse changes to El that include damaging new rules that would require Canadian workers to accept as much as a 70% pay reduction or risk losing benefits. Set fair and effective contribution rates for employment insurance, and protect the money in the fund.
Unfortunately, the government is not interested in serving Canadians. It has fallen down on the issues that matter most to us. It has refused to repay seniors their missing pension earnings, despite admitting that CPP and OAS pensioners were shortchanged by $1 billion due to an accounting error.
What happened to the promise of a comprehensive patient wait times guarantee? It disappeared after a handful of pilot projects that left most patients out in the cold.
The government cancelled agreements with provinces to fund affordable child care spaces. It was child care that would have given some relief to working families. The Conservatives misled Canadians with the $100 universal child care benefit by subjecting it to unfair clawbacks and taxes, so that families who needed assistance with child care the most got the least.
This is the government that squandered $20 billion on giveaways for oil companies, big banks, cellphone giants, and other corporations, without any requirements that they stop ripping off Canadians—