Mr. Speaker, recently the shares in Suncor Energy gained 53¢. It is producing 266,000 barrels a day above the targeted average. On the second of this month, the Canadian Oil Sands Trust rose 3.6% to $1.27. The oil companies are doing quite well. What these companies do not need are more tax cuts and tax subsidies.
There is a subsidy of $1.5 billion for big oil and gas companies in the budget. On top of that, in the upcoming five years a total of $14 billion in corporate tax cuts will be given to all profitable organizations and companies. In the year 2012, we are looking at an amount of $6 billion in one year. That is a lot of money to a very profitable industry.
I know we are in the middle of a discussion in Bali about Kyoto and beyond and about greenhouse gas emissions. In Alberta there are beautiful boreal forests, wetlands and peatlands. The tar sands lie directly underneath all that. Turning the tar sands into oil is the world's most polluting and carbon intensive oil process. It drains the wetlands, diverts rivers and strips trees and vegetation from the surface. The production process emits three to five times as much greenhouse gas as conventional oil development. The tar sands development is slated to destroy an area of Canada's boreal forest the size of Florida.
In May of this year 1,500 scientists, led by an international panel on climate change authors, recommended that Canada protect at least half of its 1.5 billion acres of boreal forest, and we need that. What we do not need to do is to give these companies more corporate tax cuts.
I would like members to think about what we can do with $14 billion. Think about what we can do for public transit and for clean air. Last summer we had a record of 48 smog days in my hometown of Toronto. This weekend I took the subway to different places in Toronto. I was at the Bloor Street and Yonge Street subway station where millions of Torontonians pass through. It is a hub. The ceiling is falling apart and wires are hanging from it. The Toronto Transit Commission desperately needs more funding for the upkeep of its subway system. It is called a state of good repair.
While I waited for streetcars and buses, I looked around. The Toronto transit system is struggling. Hundreds and hundreds of people wait for streetcars on Queen Street and King Street. More riders want to take public transit, but there is not enough federal investment in it. In fact, Canada is the only G-8 country without a national transportation program. We are the only G-8 country that does not support the operating costs of a transit system. We absolutely need to invest in out public transit.
I also want to quote the mayor. A recent report states that 46% of the population of Toronto is born outside of Canada. In Vancouver that percentage is 40%, with mother tongues other than English and French.
We do need a lot of settlement services, housing, support services, community centres and libraries. The mayor said recently that Toronto did not get a nickel from the federal government to support city services. What the city of Toronto is desperately looking for is support from the federal government so these services can be provided.
Also, a lot of new immigrants and some not so new immigrants, those who have been in Canada 10, 15, 20 years, are looking to bring their parents from overseas to join them and live together. Yet the wait times in overseas visa offices, if a person wants to bring his or her loved ones to Canada, is anywhere from three, five or eight years. There is a very long wait to reunite families and that is plainly unfair.
Another area that is of great concern in my riding is post-secondary education. We notice that federal cash transfers for post-secondary education, as a percentage of the gross domestic product, have declined steadily over the past 23 years of first Liberal and then Conservative governments. In 1983 the spending of post-secondary education was .56% of GDP. By 1992-93, the spending was .41% of GDP, and it keeps dropping.
We know we need at least a $4.9 billion investment to fully restore the federal share of post-secondary education funding to 1992 and 1993 levels. This is according to the Council of the Federation. This kind of funding is needed to freeze and roll back tuition fees, hire faculty, purchase equipment, reduce cost size and increase support for student services.
What we need and what we have pushed for is doubling the investment on federal student grants, offering new grants of $1,500 to every Canadian student loan borrower and giving students a six month grace period after graduation before they begin to repay student loans. A lot of students and graduates in my constituency are desperately trying to pay their student loans. They need to develop their careers and they want to start a family. Because of the huge debt of over $30,000 a year, it is very difficult for them to get a head start.
Right now we waste $12 million a year paying private collection agencies to go after students for their loans. That same kind of money would be much better spent on grants and research funding for deserving students.
We have a bill in the House, which sets out the war on drugs. The U.S. had many years of war on drugs and it did not worked. We know court diversion programs for young people will work. We know residential treatment programs will work. However, there are no residential treatment programs and no community based residential treatment programs that are planned for the long term. We know there are long waiting lists for any kind of drug treatment program.
If people are looking for court diversion programs, they are hardly any. A lot of community centres that do this kind of diversion work do not have the permanent and secure funding to provide these kinds of services.
In conclusion, the budget in front of us is misdirected and unbalanced. It does not give young families anything to hope for. It does not clean our air. In fact, it gives the most polluting industry a great big corporate tax break. This is why the NDP will not support the budget.
