Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak in this take note debate concerning the economy.
As everyone in the House is well aware, we had a bit of time to explore our constituencies of late because of the proroguing of Parliament. Nonetheless, we certainly got around to many places, some reeling from the recent economic downturn and others not so much.
I have a large riding with over 170 communities, so there are varying degrees of what this economic downturn has meant to people. There are a few things I would like to take note of and put in front of this House today, and I would like to thank my hon. colleague for splitting his time and allowing me to do so.
One of the things that my colleague from Don Valley West aptly pointed out was pensions. He talked about a bridging mechanism, not simply just for the individual who is of concern here, or a pension going from working years to the senior years, but it is also in many cases a vanguard for revitalizing a community. I will give an example.
The community of Grand Falls-Windsor in my riding had a huge setback last year. Close to 1,000 jobs in a mill that was over 100 years old were affected in a smaller community of only 13,000. When a mill shuts down in that particular context, one can well imagine that the ill effects of the economic downturn would be amplified as a result. In the case of Grand Falls-Windsor, it takes time to revitalize that particular economy because it is not as diversified as what other economies would be.
Who steps in to fill that void? The pensioners involved with the AbitibiBowater operation are now the major contributors to the economy, where before they were not as large a contributor as those working currently in the mill. In this particular situation, these individuals have now become that bridge toward revitalizing or diversifying the economy, or getting to that next big industry that is coming to the area.
Government programs help to encourage the revitalization of an economy but it does not happen overnight. It takes a period of time to get there. I hope the government, and it made mention of it in its Speech from the Throne, follows through with a couple of quick fixes here. One involves the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. In the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, having a pensioner be an unsecured creditor is not a great situation. Let me refer back to that case once again.
I have petitions with close to 3,000 signatures to present to the House at a later date on behalf of the pensioners at AbitibiBowater. What they are saying is that the value of their pensions has been decreased by 30% since the economic downturn. Therefore, even though the company is in bankruptcy right now, in a trust agreement, the value of their pensions has decreased by 30% and, if it wound up, they would get 30% less than they were expecting. That is a major hit for a small community that already had that major hit when the mill shut down.
I put pension securities in front of this House. I wanted to take part in this debate because I honestly believe that pension securities are about to become a major issue, not just for smaller communities like I have just mentioned, but for all major urban centres, as well as all regions across this country. I would implore every parliamentarian in this House to get engaged in this debate about pension securities, not just the private ones that I just talked about, but the CPP, the OAS and the guaranteed income supplement.
As a matter of fact, I receive more calls in my office about the guaranteed income supplement than any other issue out there. It is an aging community where the average age is above the average across the nation and pensions are a grave concern because they keep people at an income level that stays above the poverty line.
There are other issues that I would like to mention as far as the economy is concerned. I agree with many of the statements made about the homelessness initiative. I do believe that the national strategy needs to be strengthened. When we consider this to be more of a social concern than an economic concern, we need to consider that with the downturn in the economy the social concerns do rise to the fore.
We need to keep our communities strong in order to bring in innovation, to revitalize, to make economies different and allow them to be a part of the 21st century. In order for that to happen, we need that strong social fabric. I would implore everybody in the House to not isolate the social fabric, which is so strong in this country, to a certain level so that it is not part of the economic debate. That would be a huge mistake.
I recently attended a homelessness seminar in Gander. A lot of people are not aware of just how grave this situation is for people who are not only homeless currently but are about to lose their homes. Energy costs are a major issue. I would ask the government to consider what was done in 2005, which was an energy rebate for those seniors who remained in their homes, especially when it came to the price of oil and electricity.
A lot of indicators show that inflation is going up and that the price of gas, home heating oil and electricity is rising, which will make it that much more difficult, especially for seniors, who live in their own homes. In my riding, a lot of them still live in single dwellings, which are difficult to heat. That is one thing to consider.
There is another issue. I mentioned diversification earlier. Atlantic Canada has an organization called ACOA, the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. One of the elements of ACOA that has been successful among many has been the idea of community funding. There was a program that recently lapsed called the innovative communities fund. When the traditional industries, the forestry, fishing and mining industries, in smaller communities wrap up, we find that it is hard for these communities to attract new business because a lot of the people who had high paying jobs in those industries have left.
How do we get a particular community to adapt? First, we need to retain the people who have been living there for years and have the skills to allow it to continue. Therein lies the point of investing in communities. When we invest in communities to help diversify, it helps to retain the skilled people who allow that community to survive for the next generation. Everybody wants to pass the community they grew up in to the next generation. Maybe not everybody but most of the people I talk to do.
The government talked about community programs in the Speech from the Throne. I hope it will allow these regional development agencies the autonomy to tailor these programs for that community and allow the people of that community to take charge and be masters of their own destiny. That is essentially what the government needs to do.
However, there is a problem with that and I would like the government to raise the bar on this issue. In the last round, it decided to use what it calls the CAF program, the community adjustment fund. The dollar value itself is fine and dandy. The problem is that these are programs based on national standards that may not particularly fit an individual community. They lacked flexibility for communities to adapt. Therefore, the government may want to consider that when it talks about how it is there for particular communities. I have issues with it but nonetheless there are ways of raising the bar and fixing these particular programs.
As this is a take note debate I would like the government to take note of this problem. When it comes to infrastructure spending, it should try to drift away a little bit from this idea of cost shared programming. Does the government know how difficult it is for a community that has less than 1,000 people to do 50-50 cost-sharing in a particular stadium? Those communities do not have the tax base and, more important, they do not have that business tax base, which is where they get caught.
Those communities must be allowed the flexibility to get some of that federal money. If the government is going to give them $200,000, it is so difficult for them to finance $200,000 on top of that. The government needs to look for ways to help these small communities be a part of this economic stimulus program, which is failing most of them.
