OFFICIAL REPORT (HANSARD)
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
Speaker: The Honourable Peter Milliken
Budget 2007
Hon. Hedy Fry (Vancouver Centre, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, I wish I had two hours to speak about the budget because I would really love to talk about it. However, what I am going to do is focus on two components of the budget which I think are important.
First and foremost is what I like to call the smoke and mirrors component of the budget which is what is said in the budget that is meant to be helping Canadians and what it really means.
Lots of buzz words were used in the budget, things like families and children were a huge priority supposedly in the budget. However, let us examine exactly what is happening to families and children.
We see that there was a tax credit given. We know the poorest families, those who make under $30,000 a year, will not see a penny of that because 99% of that socio-economic group, who make under $30,000 a year, do not pay taxes. One cannot get a tax credit if one does not pay taxes. Therefore, they are not going to see a penny of the money promised.
The money to get people out of poverty and off the welfare lists will help people who make about $14,000 and less. These people are going to be getting $500 a year. That is $500 a year for a family on welfare to help them to live, to feed their children, and to be able to do certain things to help that family. That is not going to go anywhere. That is going to buy two winter coats for two kids and that is it. The amount of $1.37 a day does not take people off welfare. People think they are getting money and they are really not getting any money.
We also heard about the fact that seniors are getting money and there will be income splitting for seniors. In my riding I have a large number of seniors. The fact is women tend to live longer as seniors. The senior women cannot split income, so single seniors in this country will not get a single penny out of this. In fact, they are going to, as usual, be left to continue to live in very low income circumstances. Therefore, nothing is really done for seniors even though they were used in the budget as a group who was being helped.
Let us talk about health care and wait times. Money was put in for wait times and this is a very clever trick that the government did in the budget. The Conservatives took money that the Liberal government had put in that was in the base budget, they added the small amount that they put into that base budget that was put there by the Liberal government, and then they gave us the grand total so that if we were not paying attention we would think that suddenly they put tons of money into something.
Let us look at wait times. The government only put $600 million on top of the money promised in 2004 for wait times which was given by the federal Liberal government. The Canadian Medical Association has said very clearly that $600 million will do absolutely nothing to deal with wait times.
The second part of wait times is health human resources. Anyone who understands the problem knows that people are waiting longer because we do not have health care professionals to deliver the care. There are lab technicians needed, doctors needed and nurses needed. There is not a word in the budget about health human resource development. There is not a single word. I would love to see how wait time guarantees will in fact be met without that component.
We heard again, laid on top of Prime Minister Chrétien's budget for grants for students in the millennium budget scholarship, how the Conservatives added a small amount to that and renamed the whole thing. They said that they had put in all this money, which was mostly Liberal money. They have done absolutely nothing to help students.
The biggest challenge the country is facing is productivity and competitiveness. When we look at a small country like Ireland with 4 million people, it took money given to it by the European Union. What did it invest the money in? It invested it in education, skills and training, innovation, and research and development. It is now among the top five competitive nations in the world. That is 4 million people.
Nothing happened here. There was a bit of money given on top of old money given by the Liberals, a small amount of money, so we think that students were helped.
Let us look at other issues like the environment. The Conservatives said for years in the House that global warming was a myth. Suddenly, they have found science. However, now they still believe that if we put a border around the country that they will be able to fix it. I guess the wind, the sea and the air never heard about that border because I think they can come across Canada's borders very easily. Therefore, the Conservatives are doing nothing globally to deal with environmental issues. They call it the ecotrust, but they have cut the money that the Liberals were going to be transferring to the environment and to the provinces. The money is cut.
On the one hand we hear that the provinces are getting a ton more money on equalization payments and the boast is that this will create peace among the provinces forever. What we have seen is what the provinces were given with one hand was taken away with the other, so that their wait times money has been cut. There is no money for health human resources.
We have watched $250 million a year replace a billion a year for child care spaces with the provinces. We have watched the environmental transfers to the provinces cut. We have watched the skills and training agreement with the provinces cut. The government is cutting the provinces on the one hand and saying it is giving them the money on the other.
What for me is the saddest thing about this budget is that the government was handed a huge surplus due to good, strong fiscal management by the previous Liberal governments over the last 13 years. The Conservatives took that money, $35 billion, and they blew it on little boutique programs that are not, as I said earlier on, really going to help people. The government has wasted this money. What a squandering of an opportunity.
Here is an opportunity on health care. Let us do something about health human resources. The government could think about the aging population and take the opportunity to deal with long term care and bring about a long term health care act to help seniors who are looking for health care.
The government had an opportunity to help with the huge catastrophic drug costs that people are facing for health care. Nothing was done about that.
The government had the opportunity to do something about helping the epidemic of obesity in this country among our youth and with diabetes, and with heart disease and stroke that will occur as a result of that. There was nothing to deal with issues of obesity which should have been a number one issue for the government in terms of health promotion and disease prevention.
With regard to education, it was an opportunity missed. Here was an opportunity to create an education act that would work with all the provinces, in partnership, to ensure that there is not a single child or a single youth in this country who does not have access to post-secondary education, training, skills or the ability to get a licence or trade. Not a penny was given to that. That is what the Irish did in terms of productivity and competitiveness. The Irish trained their people. We had an opportunity to get the best and the brightest in our workforce and nothing was done. Instead, the government cut programs in adult literacy.
We know that science again tells us that early learning is important for children to be able to be the best they can be. That has been cut. Opportunities have been lost.
With social transfers we had an opportunity to talk about the problems that are facing people, the homeless in the cities. Nothing has been done about this.
The number one priority for 80% of people who live in the urban areas in most provinces, including my province of British Columbia, is housing. Why? It is because our property values are increasing. Last year property values increased 24%, but people's incomes did not increase 24%. People cannot find rental housing in Vancouver. People do not have the money to buy a house.
We have poor families that will be getting $1.37 a day, but they still cannot afford to pay rent. There was nothing at all on housing. What an opportunity that was squandered and missed. In our entire country housing is the single most important thing for families.
We have talked about the cities agenda. There was nothing in the budget to help the cities. The government says it will be tough on crime. Here is what the previous Liberal government promised on how it would deal with crime. We promised that we would give $20 million to increase the number of RCMP officers to create a SWAT team that would deal with issues such as gun crime in the urban areas.
The Liberals promised that they would create 2,500 new municipal police positions to help the province to police property crime and gun crimes. The government promised Vancouver's mayor that it would give him 69 police officers. Nothing was done. Then I listened to the minister in the House saying, “oh, let them go and ask the province”. He might as well have said, “let them go and eat cake”.
This is the attitude. What saddens me most is that there was nothing for aboriginal people. Canadians have to go to the four western provinces and actually see the plight of urban aboriginal people. There is homelessness and drug addiction. We see people living on the streets who have nothing. They have the lowest health care status in Canada. There was nothing for aboriginal people and nothing for urban aboriginals.
The budget is ideological. If the government approved of certain individuals, it gave them something in the budget. If it did not approve of other individuals, then they got absolutely diddly-squat. This is so sad. Here we are at a point where we should be dealing with the challenges that face this country.
How do we help people get out of poverty? There must be real strategies to help people get out poverty. The government has to help them with housing, learning, education and training, so they can find better jobs. Nothing was done.
I cannot support this budget because it was an opportunity wasted, $35 billion squandered.
Mr. Dave Batters (Palliser, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my friend's comments across the aisle. She talks about the money squandered and refers to the budget as one big boutique item. Almost two-thirds of the new spending announced in budget 2007 is related to transfers to other levels of government to restore fiscal balance and provide long term predictable funding for the provinces. Two-thirds of the money would go to health care, education, infrastructure and housing, and I could go on. Of the remaining third of new spending, two out of every three dollars invested goes to tax reductions for hard-working families.
The member refers to these boutique items, but two-thirds of the money goes to other levels of government for the exact priorities that she was identifying. That is the first issue I would like the member to comment on.
Second, the member commented on the wish list of things that the Liberals had promised in terms of justice. Canadians watching at home know that there is only one party, and that is the Conservative Party, that is going to provide the answers in terms of justice, judicial reform, help for our police, and cracking down on crime.
The member listed a litany of things that the Liberals were going to do, but is it not the case that after 13 long years of Liberal government they just simply did not get it done? They talked about all the promises, but they did not get it done and that is what Canadians are well aware of.
Hon. Hedy Fry:
Mr. Speaker, the most interesting thing is that obviously the hon. member was not listening to what I had to say because the smoke and mirrors of this budget is exactly what he reiterated.
We see that ordinary families are not going to get any tax relief in this budget. If people make under $30,000 a year, they do not get a penny because if they do not pay taxes, they do not get a tax credit. If they are making under $14,000 a year, which are the very lowest income Canadians, they are getting $1.37 a day. That does nothing for them.
What is more interesting, as the Liberal government we had lowered that lowest tax bracket by one percentage point. The Conservative government increased it last year by one-half a percentage point and did not lower it. The Conservatives do this, they give with one hand and take away with the other, so there is no real relief here.
Being hard on crime is to talk about how to intervene and stop the judges from making the kinds of decisions that they should be making. However, when it comes to giving real help to cities for real police officers in municipalities, real help to boost the RCMP so that it can be effective, none of that was done, absolutely nothing was done.
Mr. Roger Valley (Kenora, Lib.):
Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver Centre mentioned diabetes and other health care concerns that were forgotten by this Conservative budget.
In my riding of Kenora we have a growing epidemic of diabetes and in the first nations communities they are suffering. Children and youth, adults and seniors are all suffering and I want to put it in context. In many communities in the south we have services that can be accessed by the residents, but first nations communities generally have no services.
My question is in regard to the abandonment of first nations communities and what it is going to mean for health care. These people are suffering now. I believe it is only going to get worse, but I would put that question to the member for Vancouver Centre.
Hon. Hedy Fry:
Mr. Speaker, I am glad the hon. member asked that question because I happen to come from a city, Vancouver in British Columbia, and by the way, Mr. Speaker, there is a province beyond the Rockies just in case anyone did not know that across the way.
In that province the city of Vancouver has large numbers of aboriginal people who are living in urban areas. Their lives are typified by poverty, homelessness and substance abuse. They struggle every day to make ends meet. When the Kelowna accord was signed, it may not have been perfect but it was a start. There was $5 billion to help aboriginal people with housing, education and health. However, that was cancelled by the government and very little was given. If we added up the amount for aboriginal people, it was something like $60 million replacing $5 billion. Come on, smoke and mirrors.
Mr. Brian Fitzpatrick (Prince Albert, CPC):
Mr. Speaker, the provinces have exclusive jurisdiction for education, health and social services. There are $2.9 billion in social transfers, $1.9 billion in equalization, $650 million in infrastructure, and $612 million for health wait times. These address all of these issues.
The member spoke as if nothing was happening. We are giving the provinces, who have these responsibilities, the fiscal capacity to get on with their job and the member should give us some credit.
Hon. Hedy Fry:
Mr. Speaker, I am here to say that my premier, Gordon Campbell, in the province of British Columbia, does not believe that he was given anything. For the first two years he gets nothing. He gets no equalization payments to help him with doing anything in the province because the Conservative government added property values as one of the criteria for transferring funds.
As I said earlier, property taxes are high in the urban areas of British Columbia, but people's incomes have not risen with the property taxes. It is paper money. There is no money for the problems that British Columbia has to fund. For us to hear that transfers have been given only to find out that money has been taken away for child care and for agreements on early learning, it means that all of those things are gone. Government cannot give with one hand and take away with the other.
