Mr. Speaker, as most of my colleagues have done, I would like to begin by thanking the people of my riding, whom I have had the honour of representing in the House of Commons since 1995. On October 14, the voters of Ottawa—Vanier gave me a sixth mandate and I am very grateful to them for this. I am also grateful to the hundreds of individuals who have been involved in the campaigns of candidates of all parties who were vying to represent the riding. The involvement of those several hundred people has contributed to a healthy democracy. I salute them for the sacrifice of their time, their energy and their funds to ensure that the democratic process is indeed operating properly.
During those 37 or 38 days of campaigning, we had the opportunity to debate national issues, of course, but also some local ones as well. Among them—issues which I will have the opportunity to defend during this 40th Parliament—is one in particular that I would like to mention now. I have in fact already presented petitions on it since the start of the session, the fifth one today. It concerns the possible construction of one or two new bridges in the national capital region. As a result, heavy truck traffic could be taken out of the downtown area of the national capital and directed toward established and developed communities. The solution put forward by the consultants or experts and chosen by the National Capital Commission (the NCC)—at least until proven otherwise—would prove disastrous because it would merely transfer the problem to long established and well developed communities. A far more attractive solution is available to the NCC and I hope that it will select a better solution guided by the wisdom of those advising it. We will have an opportunity to revisit this issue.
There was also much mention made of the behaviour of the members of the House of Commons. That is why, on the first day of this 40th parliament, I let my name stand on the list of candidates for the Chair. I felt that it was important to focus on the desire expressed by voters for better behaviour from us all. Naturally this is a responsibility we all share, including whoever is in the Speaker's chair. I am pleased that all candidates for that position, and all party leaders in their congratulations to the winner, repeated that same message and that our Speaker acknowledged that he himself bore part of the responsibility.
Finally, and we will have an opportunity to revisit this later, I raised the need to start the planning immediately of the events to celebrate the 150th birthday of our country in 2017. I know that we are moving into a period of downturn, of instability and of political difficulty, but a brighter future is coming and it is up to us to start planning right now for this great celebration of 150 years of Canadian federation. We will get back to this.
The throne speech has some good points, I have to admit, and some bad points—I hope the members opposite will acknowledge that—and it is also missing some things. There is no mention whatsoever of seniors or fighting poverty. The throne speech is also silent on Canada's linguistic duality, and I know, Madam Speaker, that you are sensitive to this. If the throne speech reflects a government's commitment, then associations across the country saw the government's lack of commitment on this issue.
I have to say that the government did redeem itself somewhat last Friday, when it rejected a decision made by the CRTC in August. At the time, the CRTC did not grant any licences for French-language community radio in our region, but did grant two licences for English-language radio. I have already congratulated the Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages, who made the decision to refer the matter back to the CRTC so that it could do its homework a bit better and take into account the Official Languages Act, as we amended it in 2005.
We will see what happens.
Among the good points in the throne speech, I would like to mention the move to recognize newcomers' foreign credentials, the reduction of interprovincial trade barriers—having been the only minister responsible for internal trade, I can say that there is much work to be done on this front, and I wish the government well—help for certain industries, investment in research, banning of bulk water exports and, naturally, the much stronger focus on food safety. I believe that all parties could support these measures.
There are also bad points. I must admit that I have a great deal of trepidation about the government's planned justice bill. We will see what it has in store for us. The government's environmental track record is not exactly outstanding, and some of us may have concerns about initiatives involving the private sector.
The throne speech focused mainly on the economy. I believe that the government has a duty to stimulate the economy, especially in anticipation of the recession that is on the horizon—if it is not already here—and the deficits that, sadly, will come far sooner than they might have, as my colleagues have said. Still, I believe we will need to go beyond this.
We will need to go beyond this need to stimulate the economy. We will have to at least look at the very structure of how we operate in terms of debt accumulation. Right now we and others around the world are dealing with the debt problem by adding more debt. At some point that whole house of cards is going to come crashing down.
We need to collectively engage in a debate about what growth is sustainable, what level of debt is sustainable and how we achieve savings. Right now, Canadians basically are not saving at all. The Vanier Institute, if I am correct, has determined that 131% of a family's disposable income is spent. If 131% of a family's disposable income is being spent annually just to keep the family's standard of living where it is on average in Canada, it means that family will keep on accumulating debt. That is not a sustainable position.
In the same way, the last time Canada faced a recession, in the early 1990s, Canadians were saving at a rate of about 10%. Today we are hardly saving at a rate of 1%.
How do we dig ourselves out of this hole? Governments will have to provide incentives, will have to provide encouragement and will have to show the way. That is the reason for the reluctance of going into deficit. It was a Liberal government that got us out of deficit in the 1990s and it was not an easy thing to do. We had better start planning an exit strategy right away as well. These are matters that have to be addressed.
There is another matter in the Speech from the Throne that is of great preoccupation locally. I will quote a very innocuous paragraph. It is in English on page 10. It states:
Fixing procurement will be a top priority. Simpler and streamlined processes will make it easier for businesses to provide products and services to the government and will deliver better results for Canadians.
I have to take exception to that. One area in particular is information technology procurement where there has been serious talk of bundling all contracts so that only large contracts would be given out, or perhaps one large contract, of $1 billion plus over a period ranging up to 20 years. If we did that, basically we would be freezing out 5,000 small and medium size enterprises in this area alone, let alone the rest of Canada. That is the wrong way. There has been no case made, or presented to this House at least, to justify this. I know it is the large corporations that are lobbying for this, obviously.
If the threshold to bid is $1 billion or more, then obviously the small companies will all be frozen out and I think our economy will suffer. It is very well known that it is small and medium size enterprises that are the backbone of our economy and we should be very careful about how we deal with them. That is one issue that I promise constituents I will be getting back to, because I think it is the wrong approach.
