Mr. Speaker, this week the Office of the Superintendent of Bankruptcy Canada reported that Alberta personal bankruptcies soared by 27% throughout 2008. In December 2008 alone, personal bankruptcies in Alberta rose 106%. This comes on the tail last week of the reported worst one month job losses on record.
No group is suffering more in the downturn of the economy, certainly in the jurisdiction from which I come, than temporary foreign workers, a program that the government introduced and emphasized when it included changes to the immigration bill, nefariously, in the last budget that it tabled. Again it is putting in inappropriate measures.
I want to share what my constituency office reported to me just last night. Just last night, three cases came in on temporary foreign workers who had been encouraged to come to our country under this program and are now out of work and have been abandoned.
A family of five from Germany came to Canada under the temporary foreign workers program. The father was laid off and is not able to find employment that meets the narrow criteria of the permits under that program. He was offered alternative employment but is unable to accept it because it is not “carpentry” work. This family is not able to afford the plane fare back to Germany. These people are currently at the mercy of their landlord who is graciously allowing them to stay. They are using the food bank. The other two examples are exactly the same. A worker from India and a worker from another country came to Alberta, were promised jobs and were laid off. There has been no assistance offered to them and there is no opportunity for alternative work.
This budget invests paltry little in creating new well-paying jobs that these persons could fill. Others across Canada are being laid off daily, likely as we speak.
There is no money whatsoever going into the new emerging green economy that every other nation in the western world and other nations are adopting. We are losing ground and we are losing our competitiveness. While we argue about whether the government is adequately caring for people who have been laid off, it is stridently refusing to provide any money to move these workers into a new economy where they could flourish and prosper.
Energy jobs in Alberta are not declining due to environmental red tape as the government would suggest. Quite the contrary, they are disappearing because of the Conservatives' failed policies.
Hundreds of thousands of jobs are being created in other nations due to the new green economy that they have embraced, that the International Energy Agency has embraced, that the United Nations has embraced, that has been embraced worldwide, that President Obama who will be visiting us soon has embraced. We are missing a golden opportunity to exchange policies. We could have open free trade and exchange green products, technologies, awareness and skills.
The budget document purports to be transforming Canada into a new green economy and yet no new money is being provided to foster these technologies. There is zero money targeted to develop, and most important, to actually deploy the renewable energy which creates jobs on the ground. This is despite recent analyses that Canadians could actually meet the majority of their electrical and energy needs through new green energy. There are fabulous reports coming forward, one in Ontario and one in Alberta. As the hon. Minister of the Environment reported, he would like to move toward meeting the majority of Canada's electrical needs from green energy. The reports are showing that we can do it through real green energy, such as solar, wind, geothermal and virtual power, instead of the Conservatives' so-called green energy, which is just more dirty coal-fired power and tar sands.
The abandonment of this sector which is just getting started in Canada and getting a competitive edge, means not only lost economic opportunities to businesses but a lost competitive edge. Many of these businesses are located in my own constituency. Through their own means companies have started up industries to install alternative lighting to save energy. Industries are now operating across North America helping public facilities in the United States and Canada to retrofit public buildings and train their maintenance workers to run these buildings. All are lost opportunities because the government has blinders to the new economy.
What the government is also blind to, and it was evident in the House today, is the lack of understanding of where the world is moving, including our neighbour to the south, the United States of America.
How many references are in the budget on climate change, on giving money to address it? A singular reference. Not one new regulatory trigger has been tabled by Parliament, the single most important measure to actually move us toward the green economy to ensure we do not incur the massive liabilities incurred through climate change. Not one new regulatory trigger and no fiscal incentive are in the bill. The government touts nuclear power as the singular solution to Canada's energy security and climate change goal, and that is absolutely appalling.
Where is the money to develop an energy security policy for Canada? The United States of America has had such a policy strategy and actual legislation in place for some years. Is Canada only going to become the means to meet the United States' energy security, or is the government finally going to move forward and allocate monies so we can move toward developing a strategy for the benefit of Canadians, not just simply to mine our resources and send them south?
On sustainability, the government also says it does not pick favourites, it has broad-brush tools. Well it has picked favourites. In its so-called clean energy fund, it picks out one technology for the coal-fired power industry and for the tar sands, and that is to pour yet more millions of dollars down the well into testing a technology that we have no idea if it works.
The so-called long lists of non-emitting power sources, where are they? They are not being encouraged in any way by the budget.
The government talks about the money it is putting into research and technology. Let me tell members what is being done with research and technology. The Conservatives talk about their innovation fund. I have had calls from across Canada, including leading edge academics who say their money is disappearing. It is being so-called streamlined. What that means is a path from money being put into creating jobs for leading edge scientists and their burgeoning associates and it is going into buying equipment offshore. It is absolutely shameful. Again, we had the opportunity to be leading edge, developing the technologies, marketing them, but this is absolutely lost.
There is nothing in the budget on water. If we talk to any Canadian or anyone around the world and ask them what their most critical need and concern is, they will tell us it is their disappearing water. It is the fact that water is becoming contaminated.
In my jurisdiction, where we think we have plentiful water, already we are finding water over-allocated in southern Alberta. We are finding a crisis in northern Alberta where the water is declining because of climate change. The glaciers are depleting. There are a good number of people in Canada who depend on those glaciers for their drinking water. Farmers depend on that water to feed their cattle. The industries of Alberta depend on that water, yet there is not one cent, despite the fact there is a clear regulatory mandate on the government to manage water for the benefit of Canadians.
My colleague who spoke earlier asked a question of our colleague from the Bloc about the issue of the intrusion into the budget, nefariously, of amendments to laws. This is absolutely reprehensible. The same kind of measure that was done with the immigration act in the last bill has been repeated with critical environmental laws.
The Navigable Waters Protection Act is one of the most important acclaimed laws in the world. That law was the centrepiece of one of the most important Supreme Court of Canada precedents, which clearly declared that the federal government had clear jurisdiction over the protection of the environment. Now with one fell blow, with zero opportunity for consultation, the government has put that into its budget bill, in a Bush type gesture, so there can be no consultation. Conservatives are taking away the right of affected Canadians, including our first nations, to have the opportunity to discuss the implications of these changes.
These changes are exactly what the government is doing by saying that environmental law is simply red tape. Nefariously, through the budget bill, the government is taking away the opportunity for citizens to come forward and express concern when there are intrusions in their lakes or their rivers—
