FOR IMEDIATE RELEASE: FEBRUARY 1st, 2000

Alternative Federal Budget - A Clear Strategy to Achieve The Greater Good For Canadians

Kingston: Each year since 1995, the Alternative Federal Budget has presented a strategy that would have reduced and eliminated the deficit, but also generated higher economic growth, created more jobs, and achieved greater social equality and justice. On February 1, 2000 in the face of the demands for tax cuts from the corporate sector, their political, academic and media friends, the Alternative Federal Budget will set out a clear strategy to achieve the greater good for the majority of Canadians. Canadians expect more of their governments in terms of providing public goods such as health care, education, social security, public safety, and public infrastructure for the benefit of all. Every opinion survey shows clearly that Canadians deeply value public social programs such as health and education, because they rightly see them as the key to social equality and personal security. Yet public policy is being shaped around proposals for income-tax cuts, and an ongoing drive to dismantle and privatize public services. The debate is being dominated by those proclaiming that the public good will always be served better when wealth is spent by individuals directly, rather than by their governments. The Alternative Federal Budget rejects this view. .
Opinion surveys confirm that most Canadians do not regard tax cuts as a great priority. They understand that we pay taxes in exchange for a broad range of services and protections that most working people would never be able to afford if they had to purchase them privately. These include such things as schools, hospitals, childcare, roads, public transportation, parks and recreational facilities, water and sewage systems, and electrical utilities. A recent poll revealed that at least twice as many Canadians want the federal government to invest in social programs such as health and education (55%) in the coming federal budget, rather than reduce the debt (24%) or cut personal income taxes (19%)..
Governments have decreased their contribution of public funds to health and education causing an increase in the costs to individual families of these public services. This form of privatization denies services to some and increases inequality for all. This has slowly grown over many years, but seriously accelerated in recent years, especially since the deep cuts introduced through the Canada Health and Social Transfer. For Canadian families, this means spending their savings, going into debt, or doing without necessary services. Finance Minister Paul Martin revealed in November 1999 that his government expects to run cumulative surpluses approaching $100 billion over the next five years. This year's Alternative Federal Budget makes the case for spending the entire federal surplus to rebuild Canada's weakened public sector and tattered social programs. .
If the federal government is truly serious about investing in our children, our health and our communities, there is a certain minimum that it must do. It must at the very least: .
? eliminate the need for food banks by ensuring that every person in Canada has a sufficient annual income;
? in this anniversary year of the all-party resolution of the House of Commons to eradicate child poverty by the year 2000, implement the measures to reduce child poverty proposed by Campaign 2000;
? invest in a national strategy to provide decent and affordable housing for all Canadians;
? lay the foundations of a truly national childcare policy
? rebuild, consolidate and enhance Canada's public services, especially health care, education, and clean water and sewage systems. .

The Alternative Federal Budget would commit $5 billion of the expected surplus in the 1999 fiscal year to a National Priorities Capital Endowment. The money would be used for capital spending in priority social areas and for writing off the debt of poor Third World nations. Between 1980 and 1997, the poorest forty percent of Canadian families saw their incomes fall by a fifth after inflation. Families in the middle saw their earnings drop by eight percent. On the other hand, the earnings of the twenty percent of families with the highest market incomes increased by almost five percent. The Unemployment Insurance program has been drastically cut back as a result of policies announced in the 1994 and 1996 federal budgets. Only about thirty-six percent of unemployed workers now qualify for benefits, down from over seventy percent prior to the changes. When federal funding for social assistance was cut and the program area was included in the Canada Health and Social Transfer, the federal government understood that it was releasing provinces from the requirement to provide adequate assistance on the basis of need alone. Since then, almost all provinces have implemented forced labour through workfare programs. .
Food bank usage has soared since 1980; homelessness in Canada is a national disaster. The promised abolition of child poverty by the year 2000 has proven a hollow mockery. The AFB's goal to reduce the number of poor Canadians from 17.5 percent of the population to 9 percent or less over the next five years reflects a policy of "zero tolerance" for poverty.
The 2000 Alternative Federal Budget is a multi-year plan to build a healthier, more dynamic, more prosperous Canada. Clearly, the federal government should adopt the same goals. Anyone who is interested in obtaining a copy of the Alternative Federal Budget should contact the Kingston Action Network at 531-1872. .