Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise today in the House to respond to the economic statement.
We can all agree that the pace of events on Parliament Hill are racing forward at an unprecedented rate. At this juncture in time, no one can predict an outcome. That is why I would like to address my constituents of Don Valley East and explain to them how we arrived at the current situation.
By all accounts, the events of recent days were triggered by the economic statement that was released by the Minister of Finance last Thursday. After the Prime Minister travelled to high profile international meetings such as the G20 and APEC, which were aimed to stabilize the global economy, it was widely expected that the Conservative government would deliver an economic stimulus package similar to those pledged by other leading economies. Unfortunately, the economic statement contained no stimulus package whatsoever.
Let us compare what the other G20 countries did. China pledged $700 billion; Japan, $65 billion; Germany, $36 billion; France, $30 billion; and the U.S., $1.5 trillion. What was the Conservatives' stimulus package? Zero, nothing. Instead they cut $6 billion, completely the wrong direction, which is not surprising because the Conservatives have been going down the wrong path. This is from a finance minister who brought Ontario into a deficit. He was the architect of the Ontario deficit.
The Conservatives and their finance minister are inept. They do not know what to do.
At no point in our 141 years of Confederation has Canada ever witnessed the completely self-induced destruction of a federal government by its own prime minister. In fact, at no other point in our history has a finance minister been forced to retract the main elements of an economic statement literally within 24 hours. That is a humiliation. It has badly wounded the reputation of the Conservative government in the midst of this global financial crisis.
Canadians do not have confidence in the Conservative government. Without question, last week's economic statement has seriously undermined the Conservative minority government, which is now facing an uncertain future brought on by themselves. Even now the Conservatives are frantically backpedaling, yet none of them seem to realize that the chain has fallen off the bike and they are going absolutely nowhere.
How did we arrive at this state of affairs so quickly? Let me provide a little synopsis.
During the election, the current Prime Minister misled Canadians by stating that he would never take the country into deficit. He fear-mongered throughout the whole election. He is fear-mongering here in the House and so are his members of Parliament. He claimed that the fundamentals of the economy were strong.
The election was unnecessary. It was brought about only because the Prime Minister had seen the books. He was afraid of what the economic future looked like. The election cost taxpayers $360 million, plus a byelection that cost $3.5 million, which he supposedly eliminated in the process. The Prime Minister, in order to hide his economic failures, cost the taxpayers $363.5 million. As well, he broke his own election law of fixed election dates. The law had been passed and the next election was supposed to be in October 2009.
The Prime Minister thinks nothing of breaking laws, of wasting taxpayers money and of misleading the public.
The Prime Minister did not even have an economic plan during the election. He did not know how to create an economic plan so as soon as he was elected, he copied the Liberal plan. However, one cannot copy a plan if one does not know how to implement it. It is like a parrot that repeats words but does not know the meaning of the words.
The Prime Minister, who claimed to be an economist, is inept and so is his finance minister. That is why we are where we are today. Had he been a good economist, somebody would have hired him. Unfortunately for Canadians, he is their Prime Minister and he is a very high risk. Not only is he inept, he is so ideologically bound that he has no idea how to help average Canadians, those who have lost their jobs.
Instead of a stimulus package that all G20 countries had agreed to, the economic statement had no stimulus package, no plan, nothing for the manufacturing industry, nothing for forestry, nothing for the auto industry, and the list goes on. To use an analogy, while Rome is burning, the Prime Minister is asking, “Where is the fire?”
What did the economic statement put forward? There was no comprehensive strategy to navigate the country through a global economic recession. It was a mean-spirited, neo-conservative, Republican type of diatribe.
The economic statement attacked pay equity, the collective bargaining rights of public servants, and blatantly attempted to wreck the foundation of public electoral financing. People should remember why the public electoral funding system was introduced. It was introduced so as to remove corporate interference. However, the Prime Minister still has to come clean on who funded his leadership. To whom is he indebted?
Canadians need to be reminded that the RCMP raided the offices of the Conservative Party. Why? Because of illegalities. The Conservatives tried to shut down parliamentary committees because of the in-and-out scandal, the Mulroney-Schreiber inquiry and many more issues.
The public needs to know that political parties have to be free from rich money and corporate influence. We can say that, but nobody can say that of the Conservatives because they have shut down any inquiry and their books need to be audited.
Seven weeks ago the Conservatives released their campaign platform and there was no mention of pay equity, campaign financing or collective bargaining rights. It was just 14 days ago that the Conservatives released the Speech from the Throne and still there was no mention of these issues. In fact, the Prime Minister had stated that he wanted to turn over a new leaf and work in co-operation with the opposition. Yet, in six days, what did he do?
In the economic statement he became an ideologue and an autocrat, and tried to destroy democracy, but at whose expense? It is at the expense of thousands of auto workers who are wondering if their federal government will stick up for them during their economic crisis. It is at the expense of our forestry sector where we see pulp mills being disassembled and shipped off to China. It is at the expense of the average people who work in our manufacturing sector who are beginning to lose faith in their federal government.
The ancient Greeks had a term for this type of behaviour. It is called hubris. In Greek mythology, overwhelming pride and arrogance inevitably would lead to self-destruction. The Prime Minister has certainly discovered his Achilles heel. He is transfixed, if not mesmerized, by his own narrow-minded political agenda to wipe out opposition parties at any expense.
However, democracy means having opposition parties. We go around the world trying to teach others about our democracy, yet the Prime Minister wants to eliminate opposition. What sort of a Prime Minister is he? Perhaps he should go to Iran and rule over Iran.
By all accounts, the Prime Minister has not only lost the confidence of this House, he has lost the confidence within his own Conservative caucus. Most important, he has lost the confidence of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.
Holding Conservative pep rallies around the Governor General's house or sending out umpteen emails to members of Parliament is not only in very poor taste but also smacks of a lack of judgment, desperation and the desire of the Conservatives to hold on to power.
The Prime Minister was supposed to have addressed the economic crisis but instead engineered a political crisis that has placed his government on the brink of defeat. What sort of leadership is that? By all accounts, the Prime Minister has no one to blame except himself.
What needs to be done? In our Westminster form of government, the opposition is called upon when the government no longer enjoys the confidence of the House of Commons. In this instance, the opposition has already stepped up to the plate and informed the Governor General that we are prepared to govern on a co-operative basis and navigate our economy through the crisis.
If the Prime Minister thought t he had the confidence of the House, why did he eliminate or push back the opposition day? It shows that he is scared. In our democracy, it is the job and duty of the opposition to hold the government accountable and stand as a government in waiting when things go wrong. That is what opposition parties are doing, holding the government accountable.
The Conservatives do not like being held accountable. We have examples of the ministers of agriculture, the previous minister of environment, the previous minister of health, and the list goes on, who, when issues of accountability and transparency came up, they hid or they stopped the functioning of parliamentary committees.
What is the solution for getting Canada out of this economic recession? Recently, the head of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities pointed out that infrastructure spending would serve as one of the most beneficial tools of economic stimulus.
We heard some rumours or some rumblings of investment infrastructure but the $33 billion that have been promised for the past two years have been sitting and nothing has been done. Hundreds and hundreds of local projects are ready to go across the country. We need nuts and bolts investment in roads, bridges, water pipes and housing.
Right now we have the small town mayors ringing alarm bells about sewage treatment plants that are about to suffer catastrophic failure simply because no one in the federal government will listen.
The message is clear: Doing nothing will not create jobs or mitigate a recession. Canadians want to know where the $16 billion surplus is that was left to the government. What happened to that money? How could the government waste away that money?
No one has any faith in the finance minister, who, I remind the people, was the architect of deficit and left Ontario in a $5.6 billion deficit. That is the finance minister whose economic statement was abandoned by the government in less than six days. His talk about so-called technical deficits and fantasy surpluses in the next budget does not fool anyone.
The real question is this. How did the Conservatives manage to burn through a surplus in less than two and a half years? Now they want to sell the government assets. This reminds us of Mike Harris and his government strategy of selling Highway 407 to Spain. What sort of pride can anybody have in Canada if a government wants to sell its assets? Who will own the CBC and who will own the CN tower?
The inability of the Conservative government to be economically competent has led us to this situation.
Against the advice of just about every economist in the country, the Conservatives implemented a variety of ill-advised tax cuts that did nothing to spur consumer spending or stimulate the economy. At the same time, the finance minister launched the largest spending spree in Canadian history known as budget 2007. This is not rocket science. Any Canadian will say that one cannot blow endless amounts of cash when one's income is continually shrinking. The budget officer has stated that the current government is taking in $40 billion less than it is spending.
However, we would not be in a deficit situation if the finance minister had listened to good advice and not implemented the useless tax cuts. When my constituents ask me how we arrived at this point, I will be compelled to tell them the truth. It is the government and the Prime Minister who have taken the focus off of Canadians suffering due to the economy and placed all of its attention on a government that is fixated on nothing more than political brinkmanship and holding on to power at all costs.
The Prime Minister forgets that 67% of Canadians did not vote for him or his party. The rhetoric in the House today from the Conservatives shows that they are in panic mode. It shows they are clinging to power. They are so desperate that I have to let my constituents know that is what the Conservative government stands for. It does not protect Canadians. It is more bound by its own ideology.
