Job-Killing Budget: Finance Minister Can’t Stand the Truth
Conservative Budget is a Job Killer, Olivia Underscores in Parliament
June 13, 2012
OTTAWA – The Trojan Horse budget bill will lead to massive job losses. The independent Parliamentary Budget Officer has calculated that 103,000 Canadians will become jobless thanks to the reckless Conservative budget cuts. But the Harper government can’t stand the truth, as an exchange with Olivia Chow showed.
The MP for Trinity-Spadina denounced the Conservative budget for what it is: an unfair, harsh package of reckless cuts that will slash a hundred-thousand Canadian jobs. At the same time, the budget bill does virtually nothing to address the high unemployment or training needs.
Finance Minister Flaherty couldn’t take Olivia quoting the non-partisan Parliamentary Budget Officer’s assessment on the job-killing nature of the budget and started heckling the MP. Olivia stood her ground – together with her New Democrat colleagues, she will push back against the Conservative budget at every turn.
Canadians deserve a fair budget that stimulates job growth and the protection of vital services, not reckless service cuts and job losses.
Transcript:
Ms. Olivia Chow (Trinity—Spadina, NDP):
Mr. Speaker, my speech will describe the winners and the losers in this budget. Tonight I only have time to talk about the losers. To hear about the winners, members will have to wait until tomorrow after question period.
What does a job mean to an average Canadian? It means earning a salary to put food on the table, pay rent or meet the mortgage on time, buy Christmas presents and have money for pizza day at school for the kids. When a person loses a job, it is devastating. For some people it means losing their self-esteem, self-confidence, friends, and their community of work colleagues.
In the Conservative budget we are debating tonight, we are really talking about the lives of 43,000 Canadians who will lose their jobs directly because of this budget, and there are a lot more than 43,000 Canadians who are going to lose their jobs indirectly.
However, 43,000 Canadian workers will no longer have the money to contribute to the economy. They will suffer the humiliation of being laid off. Some will lose their house. Others will suffer depression. A few may not even recover from being unemployed or ever be able to find a job again.
Some lives will be destroyed. Those 43,000 Canadians are casualties of this terrible budget. The number of 43,000 was the number quoted by the Parliamentary Budget Officer in his analysis of this budget on April 26. He confirmed that this budget would slow the economy down. He confirmed that when combined with prior cuts, there will be a total of 103,000 jobs lost.
An hon. member: From where?
Ms. Olivia Chow: About a third of them are from the public sector, to answer the questions about where. The rest will be from the private sector.
Hon. Jim Flaherty: Where? Which country? What are you talking about?
Mr. Peter Julian: Let her speak. Let her speak.
Mr. Brian Masse: Why does the Minister of Finance want to heckle?
Hon. Jim Flaherty: Because she is making up numbers.
Ms. Olivia Chow: The PBO’s number points to the fact that this budget will create—
Mr. Brian Masse: Why does the Minister of Finance want to heckle?
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bruce Stanton): Order—
Hon. Jim Flaherty: Because she is making up numbers. That is why your party is a joke.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bruce Stanton):
Order, order. Order. I can be patient with hon. members as well. We only have about a minute and a half left. The hon. member for Trinity—Spadina has the floor. Again I would ask members who wish to carry on conversations to take it outside.
The hon. member for Trinity—Spadina.
Ms. Olivia Chow:
Mr. Speaker, we are talking about the lives of more than 100,000 workers. This budget actually plans for unemployment to rise. It does nothing to train Canadians. It does little to create jobs. It is a job-cutting budget. It is a job-reduction budget. It is a job-loss budget. Who said more than 100,000 workers? Again, it was the Parliamentary Budget Officer on April 26.
If the Minister of Finance chooses not to listen, it is the same kind of behaviour as saying, “The F-35 is only $15 billion. Actually, it is $25 billion.” It is that same kind of math. This budget would lose 100,000 jobs. That is the problem with this budget.
The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bruce Stanton):
Order. The hon. member for Trinity—Spadina will have six minutes remaining for her speech and five minutes for questions and comments when the House next resumes debate on the question.
