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Does not go nearly far enough to create jobs and help struggling families, says NUPGE president James Clancy.
Ottawa (5 March 2010) – The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is disappointed that the 2010 federal budget fails to provide the types of investments needed to create jobs and help struggling families.
“Canadians need and want the government to make a bigger commitment to job creation, better support for the unemployed and enhanced retirement security for seniors,” says James Clancy, NUPGE's national president. “But this budget just doesn’t go far enough in addressing these issues.”
Canada is facing its worst job crisis in a generation. The jobless rate remains stubbornly high – it was 8.3% in January – with more than 1.5 million Canadians out of work. More than 350,000 jobs have been lost in Canada since the recession started. In the face of this jobs crisis, the budget stayed the course with a small stimulus of $19 billion.
“This budget has left 1.5 million unemployed Canadians in the lurch by providing a very weak stimulus and by failing to set timetables and targets for creating jobs,” argues Clancy. “The Harper government is paying too much attention to the budget deficit and not enough to the massive jobs deficit.”
“During an economic recession, the test of any budget isn’t if the government has a plan to balance its books, but whether the government has a plan that will help Canadian families balance their books,” says Clancy.
Contradictory goals
The union pointed out that the budget contains the contradictory goals of trying to stimulate the economy with stimulus spending while at the same time introducing restraint and austerity measures to reduce the deficit.
“It just doesn’t make sense to spend money to stimulate the economy on one side, and pinch pennies on the other,” adds Clancy. “That’s like driving with one foot on the gas and one foot on the brakes. More public spending is needed in the years ahead if we’re going to get the economic engine restarted and make the turn from recovery to expansion.”
The union was disappointed that the budget failed to fix the Employment Insurance (EI) program so that laid-off workers have adequate benefits to support themselves and their families while they search for new jobs.
“This budget does nothing to help the 50 percent of unemployed workers who are shut out of the EI program because of very strict eligibility requirements,” Clancy says. “They should have made the EI system more accessible and increased benefits in order to help people who have been thrown out of work through no fault of their own.”
The union criticized the budget for ignoring the growing retirement security crisis in Canada. Today, only one in five workers belongs to a workplace pension plan. RRSPs have failed miserably in providing retirement security for the vast majority of Canadians. The public pension system provides a secure income in retirement but the benefit levels fall short of what is needed to maintain a decent standard of living.
'Anxious about our retirement security'
“Canadians are anxious about the future of our pension system and they’ve called for immediate action, but the budget provides no meaningful safeguards for private pensions and no improvements to Canada Pension Plan benefits," Clancy says. “What will it take to get this government’s attention on this critical issue?”
The union also said the corporate tax cuts in the budget are ill-advised and will be ineffective. The budget restated the government’s commitment to reduce the corporate tax rate to 15 percent in 2012, a move that robs the federal treasury of $15 billion every year.
What about tax fairness?
“Corporate tax cuts provide no stimulus whatsoever to the economy,” Clancy notes. “In fact, they do the opposite by taking money out of government revenue, money that could be used to provide real stimulus and invest in critical public services and programs like health care, education and pensions.”
“What exactly have these corporations done to deserve these generous tax breaks?” he asks. "They certainly haven’t created more jobs. But the big banks definitely charge sky-high credit card interest rates and the big oil companies continue to drive up gas prices."
"It isn’t economic logic but narrow ideology that keeps these corporate handouts flowing,” said Clancy. “We need the federal government to rebuild a progressive tax base and restore fairness to our tax system. That's how we'll build a better economy and a fairer society."
"For a fraction of the value of the planned corporate tax cuts, the government could lift every senior out of poverty in 2010 by increasing benefits under the Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS).”
“At the end of the day this budget doesn’t reflect the priorities of Canadians: it doesn’t go far enough to get our economy back on track in an equitable and sustainable way, and it doesn’t do enough to protect and support struggling families,” Clancy says.
NUPGE
The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) is one of Canada's largest labour organizations with over 340,000 members. Our mission is to improve the lives of working families and to build a stronger Canada by ensuring our common wealth is used for the common good. NUPGE