Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to offer a few thoughts in this important discussion about the budget.
I find it interesting and somewhat passing strange that at a time when we should be discussing matters that affect the lives of all Canadians, which is the delivery of programs that support working families, their children and communities in some very challenging times, particularly in northern Ontario where the forest industry has struggled, continues to struggle and is collapsing in front of us, that we would be debating the importance of closing or not closing loopholes for people at the higher end of the income scale, for the most part. I will talk about income trusts in a couple of minutes.
In this debate it is hard to figure out who is Conservative and who is Liberal. Over the years, the Liberals, when in opposition, tended to talk from the left and speak a language that was compassionate and caring. They seemed to understand social justice. However, when they were in government, which we saw for 13 years, they became the most aggressive cutters and slashers of money going to provinces for programs that move us forward in a way that speaks to justice, caring, compassion and believing in community.
We are here today having this debate, listening to the two sides banter and bicker back and forth about who will or will not close the loophole and how that might happen, when what they should be talking about, in my view, is the very integrity of the taxation system so we have the resources at our disposal to provide for the programs that people out there know, understand and have come to accept that federal and provincial governments need to deliver.
I would like to be here listening to people speak about the imbalance that exists between the rich and the poor and the growing poverty in our communities because we are no longer providing the kind of national leadership and vision that the people I speak to want from this level of government. Many people are no more than a paycheque or two away from poverty themselves as they look at the way the economy is evolving and the insecurity that seems to have taken hold.
In my part of Canada, that wonderful forestry laden area of northern Ontario, community after community are losing their mills, their source of income, losing the place where people got up in the morning and went to work so they could bring a paycheque home in order to look after themselves, their children and their families. These are people who went to work weekdays and then on the weekends and evenings ran the soccer club, worked in the arena, organized the volunteer sector and volunteered at the hospital.
Because the government is not giving the kind of leadership that is required, where the economy and particularly this budget are concerned, people are finding themselves without jobs and without much alternative but to leave town and head to other places where there are possibilities of jobs, leaving their families behind, all of the stress that brings with it and all the difficulties it creates.
I have travelled across the country over the last nine months to a year looking at that sort of soft underbelly of many of our communities, particularly the areas where the economy is supposed to be booming and there are jobs. There is encouragement from government. We hear it here on a regular basis day after day that if people do not have jobs and are struggling financially that they should move to Alberta or British Columbia where the economy is doing well.
In some cases that is a good thing to do but for many people who actually hear that clarion call and respond to it because they have lost their jobs at home, their own community is suffering and they must leave, they find when they get there it is not the greener grass that they had anticipated or thought would be there for them.
There are all kinds of challenges that the government has not thought through or worked cooperatively with other provinces and communities to make sure that the fundamentals are in place, the foundational structure that needs to be there to support these people and their families when they come looking for work.
Over and over again, in communities that I visited, we have a housing crisis. We have people living on the streets. Calgary, for example, is a bastion of free enterprise, the place that everybody points to as the mecca. It is where oil and gas, and the benefits come from. While on one hand we as a government provide literally billions of dollars every year in subsidies to the oil and gas industry, we find that communities like Calgary are having a very hard time providing housing for their own people, never mind the new people who are coming in response to the invitation to come and work in Alberta.
When I was there, a study had just been done on the homelessness that exists in that city and it was wavering around the 3,500 level every night. I was there in the winter and I showed up at a shelter where in fact somewhere around 1,200 people were housed a night. The people drive up with city buses, load those two buses up and send about another 100 homeless out into the suburbs, where they bed them down in warehouses on mats on the floor.
These are people who are struggling in some cases, people with drug addictions, people with alcoholism, people with mental health issues, but mixed in among that group is a significant number of people who came to Calgary looking for work, who got work, but then discovered that there was no place to live.
The reason that we have so many of the poor now out on the streets in places like Calgary and Victoria is because these new people coming and getting work, who can afford to pay for housing, are pushing the poor out onto the street, and many of them are finding that even if they have the money, they cannot get the housing that they need anyway.
Therefore, we have this terrible evolution of difficulty and challenge happening out there for people who really do want to work, who want to work full time to support their families, but we have not, as a country, responded to some of the challenges and some of the difficulties that come with the way our economy is evolving and changing.
I guess I am a little disappointed here this morning that there is not much debate about that, not much discussion coming from the Liberals particularly about that nor the Conservatives. There is nothing in this budget that I can see, and maybe some of the Conservatives who are here, and there are a few who are participating in this discussion, can tell me what is in this budget that is going to respond in an immediate and constructive way to some of these real challenges that exist out there now.
As long as we do not do anything about them or respond to them, or in some instances ignore them or pretend that they do not exist, they will grow, and we as a country will pay the price for that. It will cost us more in the end because we will then have all of the social and health problems that come with not looking after the basic needs of people who need to look after themselves and their families.
That is one issue that I was hoping that I would hear addressed by the government members and hear some contribution to from the Liberals.
The other is an issue that was brought very forcefully, aggressively and passionately, to this place last week by the Canadian Labour Congress. It brought people here, literally thousands of them from across the country, who are struggling with the demise, the falling apart, and the difficulty that is being experienced by our manufacturing sector.
I have to look no farther than my own area of the country, wonderful northern Ontario, and particularly northwestern Ontario, where community after community over the last couple of years has awoken in the morning to find that their mills were closing. There is no alternative. There is no response. There is no coming to the table by the federal government to say, “We are having difficulty in the manufacturing sector. Here is a strategy that we are trying to bring in and roll out. Why do we all not get together on this and see if we can make something happen?”
The doom and gloom, the black cloud, that hangs over that part of the country and down into southern Ontario and across into southeastern Ontario is very alarming.
We had workers here telling their stories to members of Parliament, who chose to come, that were heart-rending, that were gripping in their honesty and intensity. Workers told us that with the loss of their jobs go the losses of any benefit packages they had to look after themselves and their children in terms of health, dental needs, loss of any support for glasses, all of the things that those who are working at good jobs with benefits and pension packages often take for granted.
Yet, here we are today with an opportunity to respond very directly and clearly to that challenge and not doing that. Instead, we are bantering back and forth, and arguing over whether a tax loophole should exist or not exist, and whether there should be fairness in the taxation system.
Well we all know that there should be fairness and that we as a federal government need to be looking after the integrity of the tax system, so that we can provide support and services to communities, working families and the manufacturing sector.
We need to get the country back on the rails, and ensure that everyone has a chance and an opportunity to participate and do well.
