May 9, 2006 - Response to Budget continued
Mr. Speaker, I see that I may have to do this in two parts. I came to Ottawa to stand up for the needs and priorities of Victorians. Today I stand against this budget because it fails the people of Victoria in many important ways. I will focus on three of these: post-secondary education and skills training for which I am the critic, housing and the environment.
A budget is a tool used to achieve practical ends. How much is allocated to one line item reveals how much that item is valued. Conservative budgets show what ends Conservatives want to achieve and they are not the ends that even Conservatives acknowledge that Canadians want.
[Translation]
The Minister of Finance states in his own document, and I quote: “There is also a clear consensus among Canadians on the importance of support for health care, post-secondary education and training, and infrastructure”. He also says that Canadians must have access to “affordable, accessible and high-quality post-secondary education and training”.
This budget offers a bloodless version of those fine words, although we do have to acknowledge that this budget is an improvement over the Liberals’ do nothing model, because this government has finally taken steps to support education and training.
The tax incentives and grants to promote training and learning are a good start, as is the move to exempt bursaries from federal income tax.
However, in the global race for the knowledge economy, the new economy, the government has stumbled at the starting line.
[English]
My party proposes a national, concrete, long term strategy that recognizes that the level of skills required in most sectors will reach new heights and our economic prosperity of the future rests on those skills. Included in the NDP strategy to start would be a recognition that skills training is required throughout one’s life by using the employment insurance system, for example, to support retraining and skills upgrading programs including soft skills like language training that many members in the House have benefited from. A lifelong learning strategy would finally reinvest in our college and university students, and improve access to education.
In this budget there is no increased financial support for students. Instead, the government makes it easier for students to start their working lives with larger debt loads than ever before. This is an administrator’s budget where $1 billion of the $1.5 billion NDP budget intended to support the reduction of skyrocketing tuition fees was instead channelled toward university infrastructure, and an $83 book allowance. That is maybe one textbook. This budget shows the finance minister is out of touch with the real costs of a college education.
[Translation]
There is a very broad consensus among Canadians across the country that there should be a transfer specifically for post-secondary education. I would even add that this is part of the Conservatives’ electoral platform. Where, then, is this transfer?
The Minister of Finance recognizes that keeping funding for post-secondary education in the overall cash transfer envelope poses a problem, but he is doing absolutely nothing to change this deficient process.
How will Canadians be able to clearly see what the provinces are doing with federal funds for education and training? This makes no sense, coming from a government that supposedly promised transparency.
[English]
This Conservative budget falls far short of actual student needs and it skirts around another issue critical to my city’s future, to Canada’s future: affordable housing.
[Translation]
Later same day….
Mr. Speaker, I was speaking about housing, which is a critical issue to my city of Victoria. The budget only skirts around it. The budget’s $800 million one time only affordable housing allocation is a 50% cut from money already passed into law by the NDP budget last year. Even with promises for aboriginal housing, it is still $200 million short of what was already committed. Where is the national affordable housing program that Canadians want and deserve?
Perhaps the Conservatives could learn from my city, Victoria, which has led the way by establishing an affordable housing trust in perpetuity. This is the level of government least able to pay for affordable housing, leading by example, while the federal government throws a pittance at a national problem. The federal government may acknowledge its responsibility to affordably house Canadians, but instead presents a budget that favours well housed corporations.
Where are the budget tools to tackle climate change? Since 1990, Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions have risen 24% instead of moving anywhere near a target of a 6% reduction. It appears that unwillingness to act at the federal level is the real culprit in this very disturbing trend. Innovation and leadership are coming from municipalities in cities like Victoria, which are implementing community energy plans. However, to carry these through successfully, they require energy efficiency programs, such as the ones the Conservatives are presently cutting, instead of more corporate tax cuts to the oil and gas industry.
[Translation]
First, the Liberals refused to impose new emission standards on their friends in the business community, and gave the hydrocarbons sector grants of $1.4 billion per year. Now, the Conservatives are continuing to provide these grants to this sector which is already reaping huge profits.
It would appear that the real problem is not the difficulty of meeting the Kyoto targets, but rather the government’s reluctance to make a sincere attempt to do so.
We are not lacking innovative solutions to the climate change problem. The NDP has proposed a national energy efficiency improvement program which would reduce emissions substantially. We also propose that tax grants and reductions no longer be used to support the producers of polluting fuels, but instead to encourage the Canadian clean energy industry. Such a measure would be not only an environmental strategy, but an economically astute environmental strategy.
At this dawn of the age of the green economy, the short-sighted solutions proposed in the budget may seem adequate, but overall they testify to a profound lack of long-term vision and an abdication of leadership on the part of the present government. In that respect it is continuing in the same vein as the Liberal government of the past.
I ask the government to take another look at its budget and to make the changes needed to show commitment to the real priorities of Canadians around housing, post-secondary education and the environment.
Read the rest of the debate in Hansard