Jack Layton

[The Budget, March 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I remember there was a proposal to form a coalition. The leader the second party at the time, the now Prime Minister, invited me to a meeting in his office after the election in 2004. He said that he wanted to introduce me to the member from Laurier—Sainte-Marie, the leader of the Bloc Québécois. He said that they had a plan because they did not think Mr. Martin necessarily had the right to take control of Parliament, even though he had the most seats.

I am hearing the hollering and the bellowing of the very member who asked me a question. He claims to want to hear the answer. Perhaps he can speak that loudly at the same time as he listens. That is multi-tasking Conservative heckler style.

I was the one who said that there was no way I would help make Stephen Harper prime minister. In fact, I said that I would work to ensure he did not—

[The Budget, March 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for the Yukon for his comments about what is missing from the budget.

There is no question that when it comes to housing and shelter, for example, that we are a country that should be able to provide affordable housing and a roof over everybody's head, typified by the legislation brought forward by my colleague, the member for Vancouver East, calling for a national housing program. We saw no steps forward in the budget to deal with the housing crisis.

When it comes to the situation facing aboriginal people, when we look at how young children in aboriginal communities, by the thousands, cannot even get access to drinking water or water to clean themselves without burning themselves with the chlorine, if they are lucky enough to even have a plant that will generate clean water with chlorine, it is outrageous. What do we see but a scandalous effort to try to scam these communities and abscond with the funds that rightly belong to them to give them that basic necessity of life? The AFN was right to condemn the budget as inadequate.

The comments on child care, the environment and many other issues are all very valid points.

[The Budget, March 24th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Outremont.

This week the Prime Minister had a choice to make. He knew very clearly where the New Democrats stood.

Canadians know that it is not particularly natural for us to work with the Conservatives. It is hard to work with a government that consistently puts the interests of Bay Street, the banks and the multinational oil companies ahead of middle-class Canadians but, putting that aside, we were willing to try to make it work because a budget is an opportunity to get results right now for Canadians.

The Prime Minister could have introduced practical and affordable measures to help families make ends meet each month. He could have responded to the serious shortage of family doctors and nurses.

He could have strengthened retirement security for hard-working Canadians from coast to coast to coast. Instead, under a cloud of scandal, the Prime Minister showed that he is, unfortunately, incapable of working with others on behalf of Canadians. He has proven himself incapable of putting the needs of our families today ahead of well-connected Conservative insiders.

During the recession, Canadians were looking for leadership from Parliament. They wanted practical solutions to help overcome the challenges they were facing. They were looking for the kind of solutions that were put forward by the NDP. However, what they got was proof that Ottawa no longer works.

Instead, Canadians got was more proof that Ottawa is broken and more evidence that the Prime Minister, sadly, cannot be trusted.

I proposed a road map for strengthening the Canada pension plan and the Quebec pension plan so that Canadians could retire securely and with dignity. These are the people who built our country and they have every right to live in security and with dignity.

I presented a practical proposal to use this budget as an opportunity to lift every senior in Canada out of poverty. One-quarter of a million senior Canadians now struggle just to get by. It is unacceptable and seniors are looking to Ottawa for help.

There are seniors like Cliff Stafford from Oshawa, who, after 50 years of hard work as a mechanic, has to rely on food banks to feed himself. That is wrong. He lost his wife nine years ago. He still has a mortgage to pay and he is grappling with an illness. He watches every penny he spends but the CPP cheque just does not stretch far enough. This budget will not help him at all.

I asked the government to train more doctors and nurses in order to help the millions of Canadians who do not have a family doctor. These millions of Canadians have no one to turn to when they get sick. Parents and seniors need to make a difficult decision—drive for hours to find a doctor or sit in an overcrowded waiting room. This budget does not help them.

We put forward a practical measure to deal with the affordability crisis that people face today, to ease the burden of already stretched family budgets. It was an opportunity to help families by removing the federal tax off home heating. Canada is a cold place. We have to heat our homes.

It would have been an opportunity to take that tax off that necessity of family life, a practical way that Parliament could have helped make life a little more affordable in these difficult times. For families struggling to pay for skyrocketing heating costs, the budget is not going to help them either.

The Prime Minister has had five years to fix what is wrong in Ottawa. He has had five years to deliver on a promise to make life more affordable. He has had five years to clean up the scandals in Ottawa, once and for all. He has five years to do something about health care, about which he has done nothing. Instead he has made things worse.

New Democrats know we can do better.

We can do better. Canadians deserve better. They deserve a trustworthy prime minister who will stand up for families.

I believe Canadians deserve a prime minister they can trust, a prime minister who will focus on the priorities of today's families, each and every day while we work in this place, a prime minister ready to roll up both sleeves and put partisanship aside and work with others to get the job done. That is Canadian leadership and that is what we need.

[The Budget, March 23rd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the minister just proved my point, that the government has not replaced the full-time work that was lost in the recession, and the middle class is suffering as a result. Maybe he had better read his own document.

Now the government is preventing Canadians from investing in the best retirement savings plan: the Canada pension plan. The government wants to come up with its own scheme, so that Bay Street can get a slice. That is the government's plan.

I want to build a Canada where Canadians can retire in dignity. We proposed it. Canadians want it. Why would the government not deliver it?

[The Budget, March 23rd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows he is not telling the truth because one of his own ministers was in the breakout room when we were studying the budget. He knows full well he is not telling the truth on whether we read the budget.

The Prime Minister knows very well that part-time employment is at a record level. There are 150,000 fewer full-time jobs than before the recession. He has abandoned the unemployed, yet banks and oil companies continue to get huge gifts.

Why does the Prime Minister prefer to have an election instead of helping middle-class Canadian families?

[The Budget, March 23rd, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the government and every Canadian knew where we stood. We wanted to ensure that this budget would be addressing the needs of middle-class families and giving them a break.

The facts: too many people are out of work. Yesterday, the Conservatives presented a job-killing budget that sucks far more out of the economy than it puts back in. They missed their own job targets by more than 240,000 jobs, according to their own figures.

Why is the government putting the needs of Bay Street ahead of the needs of people who are out of work?

[Libya, March 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, when a country becomes involved in military operations, it knows the start date but, unfortunately, it rarely knows the end date. Therefore, it is important to have objectives that are clear and understood by everyone.

Not only must there be an urgent debate by Parliament of the Libyan situation, but it is essential that we apply the lessons learned from the Afghanistan war and give Parliament a supervisory and oversight role.

Will the Prime Minister make that commitment?

[Libya, March 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the Libyan people are also facing grave danger, this time from their very own leader.

We support the United Nations' efforts to protect civilians.

As the Canadian military is currently involved in the operations in Libya, could the Prime Minister tell us what are the goals and objectives of the mission? Is humanitarian aid included in our goals and objectives? How is success to be defined when it comes to this particular mission? What are the rules of engagement that have been given to the Canadian pilots?

[Japan, March 21st, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, it has been a difficult week on the international stage.

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Japan as they struggle with the terrible situation that has befallen them. We would like the government to update the House on this situation. In particular, we have heard that there have been some problems at the embassy in terms of a lack of resources. Have those resources been increased?

What is the government doing to make sure that all of the consular services necessary for Canadians in Japan and the people caught in the danger zones in particular are being provided?

[Government Accountability, March 10th, 2011]

Mr. Speaker, the problem is that Canadians are having an increasingly difficult time in being able to trust the Prime Minister, who routinely hides the truth. We increasingly are finding out about that here. We have seen a disregard for transparency. We even have the celebration of ministers who have doctored documents to hide the truth. This is bothering a lot of Canadians.

Canadians are having trouble trusting a government and a Prime Minister that would let his campaign team fake invoices and break election laws.

When is the Prime Minister going to step up, fess up and clean up his cabinet?