Madam Speaker, it is an honour to stand here to speak as the member for Churchill, as a member of the New Democratic Party in this House, to Bill C-9, the budget implementation bill.
While it is an honour to speak to it, this is fundamentally a document of ideas that is profoundly disappointing. Why is it disappointing? Because this is a budget, an implementation bill, and an agenda, that leaves Canadians behind.
As the MP for Churchill, this budget leaves my region behind. It leaves northerners who live in my region of Manitoba and all across the country behind, when it comes to the needs that they have expressed so clearly are important to them.
Take, for example, one of the greatest needs that we have, housing. There is nothing there. In the area of health, an area in which we face great challenges, whether it is the lack of medical professionals or the lack of services, while the government maintains the continued amount of transfers as there was last year, there is no investment in our health care system in a way that meets the demands people have.
More broadly, in terms of infrastructure for our regions, many of our communities are far away from each other and are looking to diversify their economies, looking to build linkages. This budget has nothing new. While some things were promised last year, there is no vision for rebuilding, for reinvesting, and for ultimately moving forward at a time of difficult economic recession.
Also, in terms of the industries that are integral to our region, this budget holds nothing. When it comes to forestry, not only is there no plan to support forestry communities, but we actually have measures in the budget implementation bill that further continue the suffering that communities such as The Pas, Manitoba or Opaskwayak Cree Nation experience in my region. Through this budget implementation bill we see the raising of export tariffs on softwood lumber products from my province by 10%, in addition to the pain felt as a result of the government selling off our lumber and refusing to stand for forestry communities.
More broadly, the budget implementation bill leaves Canadians behind across the board, in light of the experiences they have had over the last few years, more specifically in the last year. For Canadians who have lost their jobs, some of them in my region and regions all across the country, the budget does not hold the support they need. When we look at employment insurance that workers have paid in, week after week, year after year, and hold on to that for times of difficulty, we have a government that, instead of supporting the workers at the hardest time they are experiencing, instead of helping, is actually looking at emptying the employment insurance account and also increasing premiums over time.
When it comes to pensions, there are some references to pension measures, but we in the NDP have been proud to forward so many initiatives called on by the labour movement, called on by working people all across this country, and called on by seniors. Yet, this budget holds none of that. It does not propose to improve the retirement security that so many Canadians are looking for.
The budget also holds nothing for young people. While there are some measures in terms of summer jobs and certainly some charitable enterprises, the budget leaves young Canadians behind. What about job initiatives year round?
Young people who have been the first to lose their jobs and are struggling to find new ones during one of the most difficult economic times have been coming to me and sharing the challenge of trying to find proper employment, not just during the summer but year round. Many of them get stuck in minimum wage jobs, oftentimes even after they have graduated or invested years in post-secondary education. They are forced to look at jobs that do not remunerate them in a way that reflects the education they paid for and invested in. The budget has nothing when it comes to supporting young people entering the job market and finding sustainable work.
It also has nothing to support young people with the continued burden that a post-secondary education is proving to hold here in Canada. Tuition fees are increasing in almost every province in Canada, with the exception of a few. As a result, student debts are increasing at historic rates. I mentioned it before in this House, but we have the shameful number of $13 billion as the amount of money that students, former students and current students, now are faced with as they go into a very uncertain job market. This budget holds nothing to alleviate that stress.
This budget is also dangerous. It leaves Canadians behind because it takes away some of the supports that link us, that link our communities, that make us stronger. I reference two areas in particular.
One is that of privatization. The budget implementation bill talks about removing Canada Post's legal monopoly on outgoing international letters. Much has been said about protecting Canadian institutions. Canada Post is one of the institutions that Canadians are very proud of and would hope that our government would support. We are seeing that the government not only is not standing up for it but it is choosing to chip away pieces of it. It is selling off parts of it. The government is weakening an institution that allows us to communicate, an institution that is part of our identity as Canadians.
This budget also puts Canadians behind. It weakens Canada through deregulation. My colleague from Edmonton—Strathcona has spoken with regard to the environmental regulations that are being done away with in this budget. As many Canadians hear more information about this, they are becoming increasingly disturbed by these measures that are found in budget, such as exempting federally funded projects from environmental assessments.
Further deregulation is proposed in the telecommunications area. We have heard from the CRTC and from others. There is great concern with respect to the government's agenda in this area.
What I and many others cannot understand is how the government proposes to move forward as a country while it sells off, deregulates and privatizes parts of our economy, parts of our identity that truly keep us together and that reflect who we are as Canadians and that reflect Canadian values.
Finally, I would like to note the way in which this budget forgets many people whom I have the honour of representing, and they would be first nations and Métis people.
This budget is a disgrace when it comes to aboriginal issues. Front and centre is the failure to commit funding to the Aboriginal Healing Foundation. This area is a great passion of mine. I know first-hand what it means to the people in my region. I know what it means first-hand to the survivors, young people and people all across the board who live in northern Manitoba who depend on community-driven programming to help them heal from the trauma of residential schools.
I was in my riding last week and I heard not only from my constituents, but I also heard from people across Canada. They spoke of the hypocrisy of a government that apologized to residential school survivors, made them believe that a new page would be turned when it came to our history and yet, all it said was “sorry”. The programming that residential school survivors and their communities have called for has been cut.
While the current government with this budget is leaving Canadians behind, we in the NDP have hope. We have hope that our initiatives, whether they be on pensions, EI, the environment, housing, restoring funding for aboriginal organizations, are the initiatives that ought to be followed. Canadians are calling for these initiatives to be followed. In fact the majority of members in this House are calling for these initiatives to be followed. Because this is not something for us. This is for the benefit of all Canadians, the people we are here to represent.
