Hughes on Headlines: “PM’s frivolous travel sets the wrong tone”
Algoma-Manitoulin-Kapuskasing MP Carol Hughes
OTTAWA, ON – This past week in Parliament began with a budget that set in motion major cuts to federal departments and programs and was punctuated with a flippant trip to Boston by the Prime Minister to watch game 4 of the Stanley Cup finals. If this seems like mixed messaging to you, you are not alone.
Days after his Finance Minister delivered a rehashed budget that failed to make life more affordable for Canadian families still struggling to recover from the effects of the recession, the Prime Minister soaked himself in privilege and took a Challenger Jet to Boston. It is worth noting that these Jets cost $10,000 an hour to operate. That is taxpayer’s money not well spent.
The budget set out cost-cutting goals that have firm targets but is short on the details of how this will be achieved. What is known is that all departments will be asked to cut back and unidentified programs will be cut. Additionally, the government set a third deficit reduction goal in three years after their own figures revealed they have fallen short of their previous targets.
In the House we had an example of how program cuts will be characterized by the government when the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans referred to a Labrador Search and Rescue center being axed as merely a “call centre.” This is the way that cuts to important programs will be rationalized; by changing the way they are described to downplay their importance.
Ultimately, this is not a job creation budget. It doesn’t address the reasonable and affordable proposals New Democrats presented to the Prime Minister in February and to Canadians during the federal election. There was nothing to strengthen CPP, nothing to provide relief for family budgets, nothing for the millions of Canadians without access to a family doctor and it failed to lift seniors out of poverty.
That this is happening while the Prime Minister is taking full advantage of his position and flying around on the public dime, for completely unnecessary reasons, is grotesque. If Stephen Harper was truly serious about austerity, he would have watched the game on television like millions of hard-working, tax-paying Canadians. Sadly, we see that the government has embarked on the ‘do as I say, not as I do’ path only days into the new Parliament.
