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The Liberals have announced that the surplus for last year is .3 billion not the billion announced in the 2000 budget. They have also announced that next years surplus will be about billion, even after billion in tax cuts take effect.
This is made possible by the Liberal cuts to social spending - billion in the last five years. They have taken about billion from Employment Insurance and another billion from health care, post secondary education, and social programs. Even with the recent agreement with the provinces , the Liberals will only return to 1994 levels of health care spending for one year. Also, for most of the next five years, the federal contribution to health will be - to billion below what it was before the Liberal cuts.
The Liberals have manipulated funds to create a huge social deficit that is the price Canadians are paying to "get our fiscal house in order." Every year the government is collecting - billion more in EI premiums than it is paying out in benefits. Under this plan the unemployed are paying for the government’s fiscal balance.
Daily, we are reminded of our social deficit;
- In unacceptable waiting lists for essential health services.
- among students entering university this year where tuition has risen by 126% over the past decade - and who face debt loads of over ,000.
- on the streets of our biggest cities where 5000 children are homeless every night.
- on farms where families are trying to make ends meet in the face of falling commodity prices .
- in regions where work is seasonal, workers are scrambling to scrape by on inadequate "employment" insurance.
Despite these shortcomings not one penny of that billion surplus will go to ease health care emergencies this year. Not one cent will go to provide affordable housing for families sleeping in the streets. Not one penny will go to unemployed workers who have bailed the country out of its deficit..
Alas, for all the talk we have heard from Liberals, the Reform/Alliance and Conservative parties about "mortgaging our children’s future," the price of their obsession has been:
- more poor kids,
- deeper levels of poverty,
- less access for kids from poor families to get the education they need to pull them out of poverty.
- more young people facing student debt loads so high that taking out a mortgage to buy a house is an impossible dream.
NDP Priorities
The NDP would re-invest in social programs and infrastructure to:
- Rebuild health care and develop the programs we need to move medicare forward: homecare and pharmacare.
- Alleviate student debt loads, and make accessibility a new national standard in education.
- Attack the disgrace of child poverty with as much diligence as the fight to eliminate the federal deficit.
- Restore benefits to the unemployed who have borne the steepest burden of the battle on the debt and deficit,
- Build environmental and physical infrastructure capable of ensuring clean air, safe drinking water, and liveable Canadian communities.
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