Mr. Speaker, I would first like to inform you that I intend to share my time with my colleague, the member for Parkdale—High Park.
It is often said that a picture is worth a thousand words when it comes to illustrating a point. For the people listening to us today, I would say that they are going to find a picture that is worth a thousand words, when it comes to the intentions of the extreme right-wing Conservative Party government, when they read Table 5.4 in the budget. It is on page 217 of the French version, and is accessible on line. For people who prefer, the same table appears on page 201 of the English version. It is worth taking a look at. It offers a perfect illustration of the gulf that separates the New Democratic Party from the ideology-driven government we see in the present Conservative government.
Let us look at what is in front of us. Here we are in February 2008. So next month, at the end of March, we will be finishing what is called the 2007-08 fiscal year. We are presented with all sources of revenue, of budgetary revenues. For personal income tax—tax paid by people, by individuals—the figure for 2007-08 is $112 billion. Two years from now, for the 2009-10 fiscal year, it will be up to $125 billion, which is a 12% increase. On the next line, we see corporate income tax—tax paid by corporations, by companies, here in Canada. For the same period, we see $42 billion today, but that goes down to $36 billion for 2009-10—a 14% reduction.
That shows, and how well it shows, the difference between the Conservatives and our party, because this little present that the Conservatives are handing to the most profitable corporations will be paid for by families in Quebec and Canada. That is the simple reality of it.
A budget is a reflection of a series of choices. The choices the Conservatives have made are summed up extraordinarily well in what I have just quoted.
What has happened in the last year for us to get to this point? It is not complicated. This fall, the Conservatives, with their usual fanfare, announced that they had found the solution to the hundreds of thousands of jobs being lost in the forestry and manufacturing sectors. They were going to give out $14 billion in tax cuts. Well, there is one little problem for our Conservative friends, who make themselves out to be big experts on the economy. Most of these corporations did not make a profit last year, for the simple, good reason that after the government put all its eggs in the oil sands basket, the loonie soared to heights never before seen, making it increasingly difficult to export forestry products and manufactured products. The more the Canadian dollar is worth, the harder it obviously is to export.
So where have these so-called tax reductions to help the manufacturing sector and forestry industry companies gone? They have all gone to the most profitable sector: the big oil companies, the most polluting companies—the biggest polluters—and the banks, which are already making stupendous profits.
Indeed, the Conservative government is completely unable to stand up to the banks and to demand reasonable interest rates for credit cards or the end of customer abuse with automatic teller machines. The poor unfortunate Minister of Finance was seen begging the banks for a little relief in automatic teller machine fees. He was greeted with a sharp no and just left. He does not get it that he is the one giving the orders, not the banks. But if you are a Conservative government, receiving orders from the banks is something you accept.
This is also the matter of equity between generations. The 350,000 jobs—yes, you heard me right—the 350,000 well-paid jobs which vanished from the manufacturing sector in the past five years often had conditions of employment which were sufficient for a family to live a decent life. Those employees often had a pension plan with their jobs.
If you want an image—which people in Quebec will immediately understand—to better understand the change, just drive along the autoroute des Laurentides and take a look where, a while ago, there was a huge GM plant. Today, all you see there are shopping centres. You cannot raise a family selling clothing for $10 an hour. The problem is even more acute for future generations, for which a solution will have to be found sooner or later, since they obviously do not have any pension plan nor any other fringe benefit worthy of the name.
I listened very carefully to the hon. member for Lévis—Bellechasse holding forth a little while ago against what the Bloc had to say. I would like to take the unusual step of giving a colleague a bit of advice: he should update his CV. Speaking about sustainable development, there is a project that is very dear to him and that he supports and proposes: the Rabaska project for a methane terminal in Lévis. What is also very interesting is that his colleague from the Beauce thinks it is too dangerous to have methane tankers crossing between New Brunswick and Maine. He came out with some criticism of it during the summer. A study has been done on the safety of this, but no serious, in-depth studies have ever been done on the safety of the Rabaska project, a methane terminal located very close to the population centres of Lévis and Quebec City.
Last Saturday, the NDP introduced Denis L’Homme, a former associate deputy energy minister in Quebec at the Ministère des Ressources naturelles, who is highly respected in his field and among his peers. He could tell the temporary Conservative member for Lévis—Bellechasse a thing or two about sustainable development and what it means to think about the effect on future generations when decisions are made involving environmental, economic and social factors—something that the Conservatives seem singularly incapable of doing.
The headline in today’s Toronto Star was very telling.
It is worth drawing people's attention to a title in today's Toronto Star, that it is a show about nothing, “Devoid of big ideas beyond a tax-free savings account, [the minister's] low-key plan looks likely to keep the Tories in office”. The only reason it is going to keep the Tories in office is because the Liberals are going to keep them in office.
This is the supposed official opposition. It loves calling itself the government-in-waiting. It is going to wait a long time and it is going to wait to be replaced as the official opposition in the next election, and I will the House why. It is because it is the weakest opposition party ever to have sat in the House of Commons. It is an embarrassment. Many of the members who are going to be told to sit on their hands do not want to do it. This was once a party that had ideas. It no longer has.
Today, we are going to be looking at some amendments. One of the amendments has been put in place by the Liberals, which is obviously not something that seeks to gain a great deal of support. They do not want to bring the government down. They are terrified of an election.
I should say as well that the Bloc’s amendment to the amendment surprised me a little because there are several things on which they could have achieved a consensus if they had only wanted. It would have been easy to find things on which everyone could agree.
For them to finish by saying they want simply to eliminate the federal spending power without specifying the federal spending power in areas of provincial jurisdiction was a transparent attempt, in our view, to ensure that the consensus of the three opposition parties needed to defeat the government could never be achieved.
We in the NDP are not afraid of our ideas or of defending them. The New Democratic Party has proudly introduced ideas as important as free universal health insurance for all Canadians. We will continue to champion ideas like this. But when we see a budget that has nothing on health, housing and families and gives everything to big corporations, we know exactly what to do: we will stand and vote against it.