Published by Senator James Cowan on 21 May 2009
Yesterday Liberal House Leader and former Finance Minister Ralph Goodale delivered a powerful speech to the Economic Club of Canada.
Every thoughtful Canadian should read his remarks.
After outlining the extraordinary political and economic events of the past six months, Mr. Goodale explained the Liberal Party's determination to hold the Government to account for their performance – or lack of performance – in delivering the infrastructure funding provided for in the recent Budget which the Liberals allowed to pass this Spring.
He is very critical of the bureaucratic and overly political approach which the Harper government has adopted for the distribution of the stimulus funding – ignoring the better system used by the Martin government for distributing gasoline tax transfers to the municipalities.
The result is that very little infrastructure funding has been spent to date and there is real concern that much of this year's construction season will be wasted.
Mr. Goodale is also critical of the Harper government's stubborn refusal to change the Employment Insurance eligibility rules to meet the needs of the rapidly escalating number of unemployed Canadians – more than 350,000 have lost their jobs in the last six months!
Those unemployed Canadians deserve better access to EI – less than sixty percent of those who have paid EI premiums are eligible to receive benefits.
Dealing with these and other big issues facing Canada requires strong, confident and competent leadership at the federal level – leadership which Mr. Harper seems unwilling or unable to provide.
More and more Canadians are looking to Michael Ignatieff for that leadership.
I encourage you to read the full text of Mr. Goodale's Economic Club speech by clicking here.