Olivia Chow, MP

What would you do if you had six billion dollars?

Six billion dollars. That is the amount of tax cuts that were handed out to big corporations such as polluting oil companies in last week’s federal budget. Imagine what we can do with $6 billion dollars: new funding for the TTC, create green jobs for the future, provide affordable child care and post secondary education, and increase seniors’ pensions. Instead, Stephen Harper chose his pals on the oil patch over those hit hardest by this recession.

With the tax burden continuing to shift from oil companies to ordinary Canadians, life is going to get even tougher this summer when Ontario residents start paying the Harmonized Sales Tax (HST) on everything from funerals to internet fees, haircuts and movie tickets.

Stephen Harper has made it clear where his priorities lie, putting big oil companies before kids. Child care and childhood nutrition were once again ignored in this budget. Thanks to Harper, Canada will retain its dead last ranking among OECD countries for its lack of investment in child care.

Harper’s Conservatives could have used this year’s budget to help build a clean-energy future, providing dedicated funding for public transit and creating green jobs. They didn’t. Now, with no new funding for Transit City, Toronto property tax payers will have to shoulder the cost of new streetcars and light rail, riders will continue to face excessive wait times for buses and streetcars, and commuters will continue to waste time and energy idling their cars on clogged highways.

This year’s budget does nothing to lift seniors out of poverty. Jack Layton’s New Democrats passed a motion in the House of Commons to allow Canadians to invest in low cost, secure, public pensions through an enhanced CPP, but anxious retirees are still waiting for action from Harper’s Conservatives.

Thanks to many of you who came to Olivia’s budget consultation session last month, we heard your priorities. As a result, New Democrats will not support this budget as-written. Last Friday, we moved an amendment to shelve billions of dollars in handouts to polluting oil companies and use the savings for better priorities: building a clean-energy future while creating jobs, and lifting every senior out of poverty.

The vote on the amendment will be on Tuesday (tomorrow) at 5:30 pm. We hope the Liberals will work with us to improve the budget.

Olivia Chow, our MP, will continue to do her best to make this Parliament work for all of us.