Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak in the House today in response to the economic and fiscal update that we heard yesterday. I am very proud to be here as a re-elected member for the constituents of Vancouver East. My community is largely a low-income community and I know people were listening to the economic and fiscal update yesterday. They were very eager to hear whether the government was getting it, whether it had heard the message from ordinary people across the country about how they were hurting, the jobs being lost and how families were struggling week by week and month by month.
Sitting in the House yesterday and listening to the Minister of Finance, I must say that I had a sense of anger. The emails and calls I have received from my community tell me that people were not only disappointed but angry that the Conservative government failed to respond in a moment of urgent need to the needs of average people.
What we saw yesterday instead was an attack on the rights of working people and on our political democracy. When we go through the statement and look at it line by line, we see immediately that what is glaringly absent is a program for the strong economic stimulus that is required in this country. One only has to look at the global situation and what has happened in the last few months to feel the anxiety that people have about what is unfolding.
This is a time when people expect their government to show leadership. When we look at the international community and see what other countries are doing, it is very evident that they are understanding that a serious and substantive investment as an economic stimulus is the centrepiece of any economic program that needs to be put forward. However, here in the House yesterday we saw none of that. What we saw instead was an attack on people's rights and an undermining of the programs we have had in this country.
I particularly wanted to hear any message or indication that the housing crisis in Vancouver would be addressed. In the city of Vancouver, there is, in effect, a zero vacancy rate. People are paying 60%, 70% and even 80% of their income for housing, if they can find it. We have seen housing that is being demolished or converted. We have seen thousands of low-income units lost in the Downtown eastside. We have seen renters in the west end, on the eastside, all over the city who are scrambling to survive, to find their most basic need, which is the right to shelter, security and housing. What better example could there be for an economic stimulus and investment in our economy and yet the government was silent on this matter.
I want to remind the government that back in 2007, the inner-city inclusivity table for VANOC, the Olympics, came up with a report that was a collaboration between businesses, the city, the province, the local community and civil society. They determined that the city of Vancouver needed 3,200 units by 2010 to deal with the crisis that was already there in 2007. Not one step has been taken to deal with that urgent recommendation made in 2007.
We know from the most recent homelessness count done in metro Vancouver that homelessness has increased by 22%. We know that the aboriginal population is most at risk for homelessness. In fact, aboriginal homelessness has increased by 30% over 2005. Although aboriginals only comprise 2% of the population, they comprise 32% of the region’s homeless population. These are staggering statistics. They speak to a society that has become deeply divided due to public policy and policies of the Conservatives and prior governments that have eroded basic programs, affecting the ability to get EI, the opportunity to have safe and secure housing and to have a decent job.
Those factors were already place. It is now being accelerated and deepened and turned into an even greater crisis because of what has happened with the world-wide financial credit crisis.
What we heard yesterday was a slap in the face to Canadians. It was an insult to see the minister come forward with a program to eliminate strikes in the public sector and the roll-back of collective agreements. This is just sheer folly. Ideology is leading the government rather than programs, supports and measures to help workers and average families wherever they might be.
Surely the government must be aware that in 2007 the Supreme Court of Canada struck down British Columbia's Bill 29, which Gordon Campbell tried to do exactly the same thing. He rolled back collective agreements and wages in the health care sector. Those collective agreements were torn up. Thankfully those unions brought forward a challenge to the courts and it went all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada. The ruling from the Supreme Court said in essence that workers had the right to bargain collectively as part of their freedom to associate and that the right to free collective bargaining was protected by freedom of association in Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This is clearly being said by PSAC, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, as it now lives in fear of losing its very environment and rights, which have been established over many decades.
As my colleague for Hamilton Mountain said earlier, not only is there an attack on the rights of workers by undermining the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike, but there is a double jeopardy, and that is an attack on women's equality.
What right does the government have to abandon all the work that has been done on pay equity? Every union member has the right to file a grievance. The union has a right to file a complaint about pay equity issues and it has the right to deal with it through the collective bargaining process. For the government to take that on and to use this economic crisis as an opportunity to attack those worker rights as though somehow we would not notice or somehow it would slip it through, is incredibly appalling. It is unconscionable and it is a real revelation and indication of the government's agenda.
Yesterday, we had an economic and fiscal update that did not give any concrete significant economic stimulus to help those families in need.
Another thing we listened for was whether there would be any reform for the EI system. What kind of insurance scheme do we have when workers and employers have paid into it, but two-thirds of people do not even qualify any more? What happens to those workers when they are thrown out of their jobs or they are laid off because of the worsening economic situation? One would think they would be able to rely, at least as a basic source of security and income, on an employment insurance system that should be there when they need it. Even that system has been gutted over the years. We have said loud and clear in the House that the EI system must be reformed. There must be money put into that system.
We know $50 billion-plus have been created as surpluses in that system, but they have not been ploughed back in to help workers with retraining, with assistance when they have been laid off, or whatever their circumstances have been. This is a travesty.
I am very proud to say that the members of the NDP are standing up as a united caucus. We will be voting against the economic and fiscal update and the ways and means motion on Monday. We understand the devastation it will bring. We understand it completely missed the mark in helping the people who need it. It is an ideological attack put forward by the government on democracy, on workers and on women. It has failed the people who are in need and therefore we will not support it.
