Budget must make good jobs the first priority

With the CIBC reporting that job quality at its lowest level in 20 years, and that low-paying jobs are becoming the norm, the NDP’s opposition day motion calls on the Conservatives to make investing in good, middle class jobs the first priority of Budget 2015.

“This report confirms what the NDP has been saying for years – successive Liberal and Conservative governments have left Canadians working harder than ever and falling further behind,” said NDP Finance critic Nathan Cullen (Skeena – Bulkley Valley). “Tom Mulcair has a practical plan to help create good-paying jobs by supporting manufacturing and small businesses, and putting in place a $15 an hour federal minimum wage.”

The motion reads as follows:

“That, in light of sustained high unemployment since the 2008 recession and the long term downward trend in job quality since 1989 under successive Liberal and Conservative governments, as documented by CIBC, the House call on the government to make the first priority of Budget 2015 investment in measures that stimulate the economy by creating and protecting sustainable, full-time, middle-class jobs in high-paying industries in all regions of Canada and abandoning its costly and unfair $2 billion income-splitting proposal.”