The following is the text of NDP Jack Layton's speech delivered Thursday:
It is heartening to see so many people here today supporting the good work that the Shepherds of Good Hope does to provide assistance to Ottawa.
In communities across Canada, I meet people just like the incredible staff and volunteers here at the Shepherds of Good Hope.
People who give their time, money and spirit to bring some relief and comfort to people who need it, to our struggling neighbours.
It is these quiet acts of compassion that bind our communities – and that build a stronger Canada.
I commend and thank all the staff and volunteers here at the Shepherds of Good Hope for their extraordinary and committed work.
Mes amis, je veux vous féliciter à l'occasion de votre vingt-cinquième anniversaire. C'est un peu triste, n'est-ce pas?
Ce qui a commencé avec une soupe préparée pour des gens affamés par un petit groupe de femmes dans le sous-sol d'une église est devenu une grande organisation qui propose toute une gamme d'appuis.
Au cours du dernier quart de siècle, vous avez donné de l'espoir et du soulagement à d'innombrables personnes dans le besoin à Ottawa.
But today's celebration is bittersweet - because you should not have to be doing this. In a well-balanced society and community, one founded on values of fairness and equality, volunteers and charitable agencies shouldn't have to be picking up the slack for governments that fail to ensure that everyone in our society can afford to buy food.
Canada is one of the richest countries in the world.
We are currently generating more wealth than we have at any other time in our history.
Yet, ordinary Canadian families are lining up at food banks in record numbers. In Saskatoon, yesterday, a student named Chris told me that with student loans not even covering the rents students must pay in that booming town, students are increasingly resorting to food banks for nourishment.
And yet these stories are repeated every day, everywhere: 2.3 million Canadians are dealing with hunger and food insecurity every day.
Hundreds of thousands are forced to sleep on friends' and family's couches while they wait – sometimes up to 20 years – for a spot in affordable housing to open up for them.
1.2 million children are living in poverty, this after a unanimous resolution moved by Ed Broadbent that child poverty should be eradicated by now. Instead, more kids are poor. That is not right.
Dans un pays riche comme le Canada, personne ne devrait avoir à s'inquiéter tous les jours de son prochain repas, ou s'il pourra dormir à l'abri le soir.
Mais ce n'est pas uniquement un problème statistique.
Non seulement trop de Canadiens vivent dans la pauvreté – Mais des gouvernements successifs ont refusé de prendre les mesures nécessaires – moralement et légalement – pour subvenir aux besoins de base de la population.
Poverty is not just an economic condition or a social problem.
It is a matter of human rights.
It is about human dignity.
It is about the basic quality of life to which all human beings are entitled. That's not just me talking: it says so in the UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
I was startled yesterday when a young aboriginal woman named Trina King Fisher hauled out my recent book on Homelessness, already dog-eared, and she read out the paragraph that obligates Canada to address basic needs like housing and food and mandates that there be continuous improvement – as a matter of rights. This international commitment was very empowering to her, and it should be to all of us.
As a country, we have a responsibility to ensure that no member of our society is denied the essentials of life.
But today, we are seeing a very disturbing trend in Canada: the growing gap between the rich and everyone else.
More wealth is being generated than ever before – but that does not mean that everyone is better off.
In fact, the opposite is true.
The reason is pretty clear – the benefits of economic growth are not being shared equally among all Canadians.
Instead, they are being enjoyed almost exclusively by those at the top, while everyone else is left scrambling to cope with the rising costs of essentials like food, housing and gas prices.
Les grandes entreprises et les banques font des profits records, alors que les familles d'aujourd'hui ont du mal à joindre les deux bouts.
Aujourd'hui, les cent PDG les mieux payés au Canada gagnent en neuf heures et trente-trois minutes autant d'argent que le Canadien moyen gagne pendant toute l'année.
Et en quatre heures et quatre minutes, ils gagnent le salaire annuel d'une personne travaillant à temps plein au salaire minimum.
Alors que les profits des grandes entreprises et les salaires des PDG montent en flèche, le salaire du Canadien moyen n'a pas changé depuis vingt-cinq ans.
En fait, pour les Canadiens les plus pauvres, le salaire a diminué de plus de vingt pour cent.
The incomes of new Canadians have also dropped dramatically.
In 1980, they earned 85 cents on the Canadian-born worker's dollar. Today, a male immigrant earns only 65 cents to the dollar.
And for immigrant women, it's only 56 cents.
For far too long, and on too many fronts, those at the bottom have been falling further and further behind.
Sadly, more and more people who were just hanging on at the edge of poverty are being pushed over.
I was on a phone in show a couple of days ago. Dale Goldhawk was the host. And a woman called in, apologizing for having to raise her situation and insisting that she knew there were people far worse off than her. But she broke into tears as she described how her full-time minimum wage job did not allow her to afford a decent place to live For the last 20 years, ordinary Canadians have been struggling to get by, but they have been let down by the people running the show in Ottawa.
Even a recent UN report says that levels of social assistance and the minimum wage in Canada are failing to ensure an “adequate standard of living for all.”
The damage being done I fear is irreversible.
Malgré les délais d'attente pour les logements abordables qui peuvent atteindre vingt ans, le gouvernement a annulé le financement pour le logement abordable. En ce moment, le gouvernement supprime progressivement tous les programmes de logement, et ne prévoit pas de fonds pour aider les sans-abri ni les démunis. Le budget de deux mille huit n'y a pas alloué un cent.
Ils ont fait des compressions draconiennes dans les programmes de femmes, en éliminant les programmes de soutien pour les femmes, qui sont touchées par la pauvreté de façon disproportionnée.
Plutôt que de créer des places en garderie, ce dont on a vraiment besoin, le gouvernement envoie des chèques de cent dollars aux parents. Cette somme est une goutte d'eau dans l'océan pour les services de garde d'enfants. Beaucoup de parents doivent quitter leur emploi parce que ça coûte trop cher.
Les gouvernements n'ont rien fait pour aborder la pauvreté chronique dans les communautés des Premières nations.
They have turned a blind eye while hundreds of thousands of hard-working Canadians have lost their jobs in the manufacturing and forestry sectors.
And when these jobless workers try to put their lives back together, they get little support from the Employment Insurance program that the previous government left in tatters.
Over the last 20 years, everyday Canadians have seen the doors that they could knock on for assistance bolted shut.
En même temps, nos gouvernements ont ouvert les portes pour les banques et les grandes entreprises.
Ils ont donné des réductions d'impôt et des subventions aux grandes entreprises.
De très grosses réductions d'impôt.
Dix milliards de dollars par année pour les grandes entreprises sous le dernier gouvernement libéral.
Et encore quinze milliards de dollars pendant le mandat de monsieur Harper, adopté avec l'aide de Stéphane Dion.
Ces compressions font mal maintenant, mais ce n'est pas tout.
Ils vident la capacité fiscale du gouvernement. Il y aura des conséquences irréparables. Nous ne pourrons pas faire les investissements sociaux nécessaires pour aider les gens dans le besoin à l'avenir.
Le choc fiscal sera moins amorti, les familles d'aujourd'hui seront moins protégées pendant les périodes d'incertitude économique.
Et le gouvernement ne sera plus en mesure de garantir un niveau de vie de base à tous les Canadiens.
C'est inacceptable.
One of the fundamental responsibilities of government is to ensure that no citizen slips below a decent standard of living.
Canadians want to help those who have slipped through the cracks.
That is the foundation of the New Democratic Party.
The NDP was born out of the experience of struggling families – and of those who helped them – during the Great Depression.
CCF activists – who went on to become founding members of the NDP – were horrified at the destitution of so many during those years.
That destitution took away not only people's shelter and food; it also robbed them of their dignity.
Those activists were determined that nobody should have to face those conditions.
So, they got to work.
They put in place a universal healthcare system – so that no family would ever again have to choose between paying the medical fees for one child and feeding their other children.
Later, they fought and won a campaign to establish pensions for seniors.
In the 1970s, during a time of severe scarcity of affordable housing, NDP leader David Lewis, got through Canada's internationally celebrated national housing program through the minority Parliament of the day.
This philosophy embodied in Douglas and Lewis and so many others continues to guide us today.
We have a lot of work to do – in a lot of areas… to ensure no one is left behind.
And with energy costs soaring in Canada – we must ensure that the solutions to climate change, don't aggravate an already dire situation for those who struggle to make ends meet.
Take climate change for example.
Canadians believe that it's high time we place a price on carbon.
While many, like me believe that the most effective way to price carbon is through a cap-and-trade system where the big profitable polluters begin to pay their fair share, others suggest a carbon tax.
Advocates of a carbon tax suggest that by making the costs for certain things more expensive, people will make different choices.
But Canada is a cold place.
Heating your home is not a choice.
Il fait froid au Canada. Les gens n'ont pas le choix de chauffer leurs maisons.Il ne faut pas les punir, et c'est ce qu'une taxe sur le carbone fait.
Already, far too many seniors on fixed incomes, single-parents, renters, people who live in the far north – are forced to choose between putting food on the table or heating their home I don't want to make that decision even more difficult.
Instead of making it more expensive to heat your home while consuming the same amount of energy and emitting the same amount of pollution, I want to help make it more affordable to heat your home – by helping to make it more energy efficient and pollute less.
Il ne faut pas que cette décision soit encore plus difficile.
Plutôt que d'augmenter le coût de chauffer les maisons tout en utilisant autant d'énergie et en produisant autant de pollution, nous voulons que ce soit plus abordable de chauffer les maisons – en améliorant l'efficacité et en réduisant la pollution.
We can do it through a national energy weatherizing program. The costs can be absorbed by ensuring the big polluters start paying their fair share.
This is just one innovative idea of how we can reduce poverty and tackle change.
Let me tell you a story.
Two years ago, some of you may recall, a budget was presented with a big corporate tax cut for profitable companies.
It was worth billions, $4.6 billion to be exact.
We called on the government of the day to abandon that corporate tax cut and put that money instead into meeting Canadians' needs.
$1.6 billion, we ensured should go to affordable housing construction, as well as some funds for the environment through transit investment, and for education and training.
We also insisted that $100 million be invested in a low-income housing retrofit plan to help people reduce their energy bills by weatherizing their homes.
That housing money is being invested right now: $ 56 million right here in the Ottawa and Gatineau region.
That's the kind of leadership reducing and eliminating the poverty crisis needs.
We must end the era of broken promises and lofty but empty goals.
We can't be afraid of the daunting challenge.
25 years ago, you were not afraid to serve that first bowl of soup.
I believe that a country where no person is allowed to fall below a decent standard of living is not only fairer, but richer.
I believe it's time to dream big again.
It's time to build compassionate Canada.
A country that is green, prosperous, where no-one is left behind.
Don't let them tell you it can't be done.
