With his next budget, the prime minister has the opportunity to help Canadians who need it, not just banks and big oil.

How many times has the average Canadian seen one of those taxpayer-funded ads that try to celebrate this country’s “economic recovery.” Dozens? Hundreds? Once is too many. So when I sat down with Stephen Harper last week to offer ideas for his next budget, I underlined this point: There’s no recovery until the half a million Canadians thrown out of work are back on the job, back building our country.

The prime minister, to his credit, agreed with me.

It remains to be seen whether he will adopt our ideas to revamp the federal stimulus with a determined focus on employment. Last year’s overdue efforts created more photo opportunities for ministers than family-supporting jobs for Canadians. That has to change in 2010.

It also remains to be seen whether Harper will reach out to hundreds of thousands of jobless Canadians whose employment insurance benefits will soon run out. Because they’re searching for jobs that just don’t exist, they risk falling tragically onto the provincial welfare rolls. The government should extend their EI benefits until overdue job creation measures fully kick in.

On March 4, budget day, the prime minister has an opportunity to set a new direction. To do so, he will need to acknowledge that the old politics of sweeping corporate giveaways is failing.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer already blames reckless tax cuts for a structural deficit as deep as $19 billion. We are now halfway through a five-year rollout of corporate tax cuts that will rob the treasury of $15 billion each and every year. They’re robbing our economy of stimulus, and they’ll leave another generation of Canadians to cope with the consequences — unemployment and deteriorating services.

It isn’t economic logic but narrow ideology that keeps corporate handouts flowing.

The Department of Finance’s own studies say that tax cuts are a weak economic stimulus. And despite ten years of cuts, Statistics Canada data shows that big business is investing less of its income than ever in technological innovation.

Minister of Finance Jim Flaherty can no longer argue that Canada’s corporate tax rates are uncompetitive. Even before the latest cuts, our combined federal and provincial rates were 5 per cent lower than the average combined U.S. federal/state rate. Worse, since U.S. corporations pay a 39 per cent tax on global income, cutting taxes for their Canadian subsidiaries simply hands billions of dollars to the U.S. treasury.

Can anyone call that good fiscal management?

But it’s not just what corporate tax cuts won’t do, it’s also what they’re already doing, namely driving a wedge deeper between the rich and the rest. Tax cuts may be a boon for banks and big oil, but they do nothing for struggling industries that are not making profits — job-supporting industries such as manufacturing, forestry, and tourism. In one sweeping gesture, these giveaways steal funds from working people’s priorities and widen disparities between thriving regions and struggling ones.

It doesn’t have to be this way. The prime minister can take the initiative in his next budget.

Eliminating the next two planned corporate rate cuts will save $6 billion annually, according to Department of Finance figures. That alone could fund significant job-creation, strengthen EI, and lift every senior out of poverty.

If our goals are job-creation and innovation, broad-brush handouts are a failure. Why continue to reward corporate non-performance and finance rich executive bonuses? Let’s invest instead in those who really need it. Let’s invest in those Canadians who want to get back to building this country.

When I sat with the prime minister this week, I repeated our call to put women and children first in this next session of Parliament. One promising step would be to hire more early childhood educators, homecare workers, and nursing aides — quality jobs in the service sector. I also shared several pragmatic ideas to create family-supporting jobs in the new energy economy.

But one idea captures with special clarity the choice that Harper now faces. For a fraction of the value of his planned corporate tax cuts, he could pull every senior out of poverty in 2010. The mechanism is clear; the price tag modest. Expanding the guaranteed income supplement can bring dignity to the lives of a quarter of a million impoverished older Canadians, overwhelmingly women.

It’s the right thing to do, not just ethically, but economically too. Ask any senior how she’ll use this extra help to improve her quality of life. Chances are, she’ll spend most of it at the local corner store or any number of small businesses. The same small businesses that will go on to hire more employees and lead this country’s way to recovery.

Banks and big oil don’t deserve more of your government’s generosity, Prime Minister Harper. Halt those giveaways, and use the savings to help those who really need it.