Liberal Party of Canada Leader Justin Trudeau’s Response to the Speech from the Throne

October 18, 2013

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to take part in this debate.

Let me start by stating my disappointment that we are not actually debating the Speech from the Throne. Instead we are having a short debate on a self-congratulatory motion from this government. After eight years, we’ve grown used to that tone. More troubling, they are limiting the opportunity for members of all parties to participate in a debate on the government’s agenda.

One of the things I have seen across the country is disappointment that this government does not even respect its own Members of Parliament. That Canadians, particularly in Western Canada, elected MPs to represent their voice in Ottawa; instead what they got is the Prime Minister’s voice in their communities. That the government is denying the traditional role for its own backbench to speak on the Throne Speech is only the latest example.

This isn’t what is expected of us in this place. Like many of you, I spent the summer getting out and meeting with Canadians. I spent time back home in Montréal, with my family, with my constituents in Papineau, and I’ve travelled to more than 60 cities, towns and villages, listening to the concerns of teachers, truck drivers, farmers and small business owners.

The opportunity to meet with Canadians – to talk with them, to listen, to learn more about challenges they’re facing – that’s an incredible gift. It’s a privilege we all share in this place, and I hope to do their stories justice today.  One thing emerged over those hundreds of one-on-one conversations: Canadians feel let down. And while it’s great to get out there, out of the bubble, and hear some honest feedback, I have to tell you: if you care about public service, it was tough to hear.

The more I listened, the more it became obvious that it wasn’t easy for them to say, either. There’s cynicism in the air, but it’s not what we Canadians like to feel. It’s not who we are when we are engaged and connected to each other. Those stirrings of mistrust and suspicion – they don’t sit well with Canadians.

But at the same time: I get it. It’s hard not to feel disappointed in your government when every day there is a new scandal. Another lapse in judgment. Canadians are being led by a government that says it’s committed to accountability and transparency. That same government has lost five caucus members to scandal. The Prime Minister’s Office remains under RCMP criminal investigation for a $90,000 cheque to a sitting legislator. The former chair of the Security Intelligence Review Committee is charged with fraud, abuse of trust and money laundering. The Member from Peterborough – until this past summer, the Prime Minister’s Parliamentary Secretary – has been charged with four counts of breaking elections laws. And those are just the ones we know about.

The individuals in question can resign from the Prime Minister’s Office, or be told to leave caucus. They can even flee extradition in Panama. But this Prime Minister put them there. He gave them an opportunity to abuse the public trust. He thought they were worthy, and one by one, they’re proving him wrong. What does that say about the Prime Minister’s judgment?

I understand that Canadians feel disappointed and let down. It’s a natural reaction when day after day you’re given more evidence that your trust was misplaced. That your hope was unwarranted.

Yesterday’s Speech from the Throne was an opportunity for this government to get back on track. To start earning back Canadians’ trust.

What we heard yesterday from the government falls into two categories: hot air and white noise.

The priorities they identified are fine as far as they go, but they don’t go very far. Canadians need more job opportunities, better job opportunities, not a jobs grant that has been rejected by all ten provinces because it demands funding from stretched provincial budgets.

They need to feel that their priorities are the government’s priorities, that their interests get more attention and airtime than the government’s desperate attempts at self-preservation.

Where is the plan to attract investment to this country to create good, middle class jobs? Instead, the government turns investment away with its Keystone Kops approach to policy.

Where is the plan to finally create trade agreements that work for Canadians?

Where is the plan for our young people, for whom this so-called recovery is a weak one indeed?

Where is the plan for middle class Canadians who are swimming in record levels of debt? Debts they incurred to keep this country afloat through the economic crisis. All they hear from this government is a crass attempt to take credit for their hard work, their entrepreneurial spirit, their willingness to take risks.

These are difficult problems to solve, Mr. Speaker. This government has grown so long in the tooth, so tired, that it cannot even be bothered to try.

Instead, we get policies focused on bringing the CRTC firmly into the 1990’s. Instead of a forward-looking approach to data and telecom, we get a smattering of policies this government itself rejected in the past.

In a world of Apple TV, YouTube, Netflix and Big Data, this Conservative government is still looking under the couch for the remote control.

No wonder they are having such trouble changing the channel.

To Canadians, I say: There is much more to this government’s agenda than what you heard yesterday afternoon.

As they approach their party’s Halloween convention in the great city of Calgary, the Conservatives are once again putting on a costume, but just revealing how out of touch they are with Canadians.

Their Environment Minister doubts climate change, questioning evidence about melting summer sea ice in her own constituency.

Their Development Minister confirms that the government will no longer fund projects that provide access to abortion services for victims of rape in war, or young girls who were forced into marriage.

Their Health Minister overrules her own department’s doctors and medical professionals’ decisions.

Their Anglophone ministers condemn the PQ government’s plan to legislate away minority rights, while their senior Francophone minister says: “There’s nothing that upsets me in there.”

These aren’t rogue Members of Parliament. These are Cabinet Ministers. The most senior elected officials, hand-picked by the Prime Minister. Their positions – climate change denial, a crackdown on reproductive rights, denying Canadians medical treatment, finding no fault with an attack on individual rights and freedoms – are an affront to Canadian values.

Canadians elected this government to represent their interests. But one thing has become perfectly clear, Mr Speaker: this government serves only its own interests.

It has only one goal, and it’s not to serve Canadians. This is a political government staring down an unending series of political problems and they are responding the only way they know how: with political solutions. And none of it – none of it – helps our struggling middle class.

Our economy has more than doubled in size in the last 30 years. Who has benefited from that growth? Not the middle class. Despite all of our economic progress as a country, middle class families haven’t had a real raise in decades.

As incomes have stagnated and costs of key items like post-secondary education or transportation have risen far faster than inflation, Canadian households have had to shoulder more and more debt. As a share of disposable income, our households are now more in debt than even those in the United States.

The middle class now worries – and rightly so – that for all their hard work, they won’t be able provide their children with the same opportunities they had.

Canadians who struggle with lower incomes care about this, too: they see the promise of upward mobility as the return for hard work disappearing before their eyes.

And wealthier Canadians also have a stake in middle class success. Until the government recognizes that a strong economy is one that provides the largest number of good jobs for the largest number of Canadians, public support for a growth agenda is in peril.

Canadians were promised, above all else, leadership when it came to the economy. It’s what many voted for. What are the results?

Well first, growth has been particularly stagnant under this government. Now in his eighth year of office, the Right Honourable Member from Calgary Southwest has the worst record on growth of any Prime Minister since R. B. Bennett, at the height of the Great Depression.  Under this government’s self-proclaimed “steady hand,” we’ve seen ten consecutive federal budget surpluses turn into seven consecutive deficits.

This government has ballooned our national debt at an unprecedented rate. By the next election, they will have added more than $150 billion dollars in just eight years.

The unemployment rate remains stubbornly higher than it was before the recession hit, five years ago now, with young people unemployed at nearly twice the national rate.  And sadly our unemployment rate seems to improve only when workers give up and leave the labour force.

And we’ve seen this happen – in our own families, in the communities we live in and represent, from one end of this country to the other – we’ve seen this happen while we were being told, “Don’t worry. The economy is our priority. We’ve got it all under control.”

I think we could handle the hypocrisy if it didn’t come packaged in a slick marketing campaign that we paid for. Because you know what always drives home this government’s economic record for me? The Economic Action Plan logo.

Every time I see it, with its three arrows pointing Heavenward, I think to myself, “Yep. That’s exactly what the Economic Action Plan has delivered. Rising debt, rising unemployment, rising disappointment from Canadians.” That is the economic legacy of this Conservative government.

As I listened to the Speech from the Throne, one word came to mind. It’s one I’ve used to describe this government before, and not surprisingly, it still fits. That word is unambitious. As I said back in April, this is a government whose primary economic message is: Well, it could be worse. Be thankful you don’t live in Spain.

That attitude is completely out-of-step with the values of Canadians. The Canadians I spent time with this summer are ambitious. They aren’t complacent. They’re not willing to settle for good enough when they know that better is possible.

That’s the fundamental disconnect between this government and the people they were elected to serve. Session after session, this government commits itself to the idea “better” simply isn’t possible. That to demand something more of our leaders – of ourselves – is naïve, a waste of time.

Maybe if you have been in power too long, and grown out-of-touch. Maybe you start to believe that special appointments, secret deals and public denials are the norm. Maybe then that kind of world view begins to make sense.

But to tell Canadians that their political engagement is futile, that their Occupy activism is empty, that their 1,600 kilometre Idle No More walk through a Canadian winter makes no difference – that kind of defeatism has no place in this House. It has no place in the Canada I know and serve, in the country whose future we determine together.

Canadians expect more, and they should. They have every right to. We look forward to having even more conversations with Canadians, to doing our part to restore hope where it is fading. It is time – actually, it is well past time – to return to these great stone buildings the respect, the dignity, the public trust that they deserves.

It’s good to be back here.

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