Thirteen consecutive times, I am reminded by one of the greatest finance ministers we have ever had, the member for Wascana.
However, in terms of the way we conducted expenditure review, we identified savings very differently from the way the Conservatives are doing it. We were careful to provide detailed information to Canadians long before the cuts were implemented.
In fact, we can get all that information. It is still available on the Internet, at www.expenditurereview.gc.ca. I do not know how much longer the Conservatives will leave that up. But if we go to that website, we see, line by line, a description of which programs were being cut, where, when they were being cut, why it was being done and by how much. That was provided before the cuts were implemented. That is the level of detail that Canadians expect from their government in a functioning democracy.
It is important to keep in mind that was almost seven years ago. The level of transparency, in terms of information for Canadians that is demanded by the public today, has actually increased. The Liberal government that I was proud to be part of and the expenditure review committee that I was proud to serve on that identified billions of dollars of savings for Canadians, was more open and transparent then, seven years ago, than the Conservative government is today.
I will add that our decisions were made by ministers working in concert with public servants. We did not have to pay a consulting company $90,000 a day. We did not have to outsource our decision-making on those difficult decisions at the time. However, it is important that that level of detail be provided to Canadians today.
Unfortunately, now the Conservatives routinely hide even the most basic information from Canadians and members of Parliament. They are not just hiding this information from the opposition in a partisan sense, they are also hiding it from their own members on that side of the House. Members elected in the Conservative Party have the same fiduciary constitutional responsibility as part of their jobs to hold their government to account and to demand the information that members on this side of the House have.
Last year, the Conservatives were found in contempt of Parliament for hiding the cost of legislation that was before the House. They hid the cost of their crime bills and the cost of their F-35s. They refused to provide the information that Canadians needed in order to make informed decisions. They refused to provide that information to parliamentarians representing Canadian citizens. By hiding that information, they were attacking the very democratic foundation of our country. For that, they were the first government in the history of the Westminster system to be found in contempt of Parliament.
The Auditor General has since eviscerated the government for keeping two sets of books on the F-35s: a real set that was kept hidden from Canadians and the Parliament of Canada, and a phony set the Conservatives used during the last election.
Now the Conservatives are at it again. On Monday, the government held a briefing for MPs and senators on this budget bill. The legislation would implement changes, for instance, to old age security and raise the age from 65 to 67. Government representatives were asked how much these changes to old age security would change the cost of the program for Canadians. The government refused to answer. Worse, it said that we would find this information out after the bill was passed and when the chief actuarial officer updates his report.
The Conservatives would not tell us this information prior to the vote on the bill. They insist that these changes to OAS are necessary in order to save money. They say that the system is not sustainable. In reality, as we have heard from several reports, including Finance reports, reports from the Parliamentary Budget Officer and OECD reports, that is absolutely false. In Canada's case, old age security is sustainable as is.
As well, the Conservatives will not tell us how much these changes will save the treasury. They will not provide this basic information that we, as parliamentarians, need to make an informed decision. Is the real reason because these numbers would show Parliament the truth, that in fact OAS is sustainable? That we do not have to make these draconian changes that would punish our most vulnerable citizens? These regressive changes would hurt, in many cases, the poorest of the poor.
We do know that the Prime Minister is breaking his election promise to Canadians by raising the age of OAS from 65 to 67. He promised he would not cut Canadian pensions. This is a cut on Canadian pensions and an attack on low-income seniors.
We also know that the Prime Minister is ignoring the advice of the OECD, Canada's chief actuarial officer and the Parliamentary Budget Officer who all agree that these changes are not necessary. We know that the Prime Minister is ignoring his own experts on this matter. The experts agree that it is sustainable. Even if OAS were not sustainable, if changes had to be made, there are changes that could be made that would be progressive. For instance, we could adjust the clawback threshold. There are areas we could look at.
Let us look at who gets OAS. Some 40% of Canadians who receive OAS make less than $20,000 per year and 53% of those who receive OAS make less than $25,000 per year. Older single women living in poverty are disproportionately affected by OAS changes. To qualify for the guaranteed income supplement that is received by the poorest of the poor, Canada's most vulnerable citizens, one would have to qualify for old age security. Those people will lose about $30,000 over a two year period.
Now the government is saying that people can work a couple of extra years. Well, that may be fine if one is a politician, journalist, accountant, lawyer or consultant. However, it is a little tougher if one is a pipefitter, welder, carpenter or a woman working in a fish plant in Newfoundland in cold, damp conditions on a concrete floor all day. We have to think of all Canadians. Those who are doing physical labour are some of the most vulnerable.
It is important to realize that with these changes to OAS the government is saying that it is giving advance notice so that people can save a little more. How can families making $20,000 or $25,000 be expected to save a little more? I think this shows the degree to which the government is out of touch with the realities of Canada's working poor, and the realities of income inequality in Canada.
Raising OAS is only part of this kitchen sink bill. The reality is that this bill is 421 pages in length, has 753 clauses and amends 70 laws. It includes a complete rewrite of our environmental laws, a unilateral cut of 3% to the provinces for health care funding at a time when our population is growing, the tearing up of 100,000 immigration applications that have been worked on for years, sweeping changes to EI, and the removal of several laws including the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act, and the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act. It includes the elimination of several government bodies including the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, the First Nations Statistical Institute and the National Council of Welfare.
The bill actually gives the Governor General a salary increase of $30,000, after taxes. I do not think our Governor General was pining for a pay increase. I am not sure if this kind of salary hike is appropriate at a time when government programs and services are being slashed.
The point is this is a very big piece of legislation. It covers a wide range of issues and areas of public policy. For example, included in the sweeping changes to EI is a change that would allow low-income recipients who find work to keep more of their income. There are some of us who may look at part of that and say, “Okay, that makes some sense.” However, we cannot support that when the budget bill also includes measures that would gut old age security for a lot of seniors, preventing them from receiving it at the time when they need it, or that potentially reduces Canada's environmental oversight and regulatory framework.
The Liberal member for York West has been championing, for a long time, changes to protect long-term disability pension plans. There are some of those measures in there. We could, if provided the opportunity, support some of those measures, but we are not given that opportunity because this is an omnibus bill. It forces us to vote for the entire kitchen sink bill and not exercise our responsibilities as parliamentarians to evaluate and support individual measures that may be meritorious while others would not be.
The general direction this legislation would take Canada is not something I would support, but there are measures in this bill that I could support. By bundling these different changes in a single piece of legislation, the Conservatives are denying Parliament the opportunity and the ability to fulfill its responsibilities to provide oversight and clear direction.
I would like to quote Andrew Coyne on this matter:
....the practice has been to throw together all manner of bills involving wholly different responsibilities of government in one all-purpose “budget implementation” bill, and force MPs to vote up or down on the lot. While the 2012 budget implementation bill is hardly the first in this tradition, the scale and scope is on a level not previously seen, or tolerated.... It makes it impossible to know what Parliament really intended by any of it. We’ve no idea whether MPs supported or opposed any particular bill in the bunch, only that they voted for the legislation that contained them. There is no common thread that runs between them, no overarching principle; they represent not a single act of policy, but a sort of compulsory buffet.
Over the coming days this House is expected to continue its debate on this legislation. A number of changes in the legislation will be discussed. No doubt a number of changes will fall through the cracks. I expect the Conservatives are counting on this.
Finally, on the issue of income inequality, this was not an ordinary economic downturn. It is not an ordinary recovery. We are part of a global economic restructuring. Canada's recovery is being driven by our natural resource wealth. As such, we are seeing a commensurate higher dollar and a very different effect of the recovery on different parts of the country. We are seeing the crowding out of a lot of traditional high-value manufacturing jobs. We are seeing an increase in the gap between rich and poor.
In several recent polls, Canadians have indicated that the issue of income inequality is one of the most important economic issues facing the country and in some cases the most important. There is nothing in this budget addressing income inequality specifically, but there are measures in this budget that actually make it worse. We believe that income inequality should be on the agenda of the Canadian Parliament and this budget, among other things, denies Parliament the opportunity to have a fulsome debate on one of the issues that is important to Canadians, and that is growing income inequality.
