More than a quarter of Bermuda’s households characterised as “poor” , 150 businesses are “awaiting dissolution”, and banks’ reports of $74 million in non-performing loans between July and September were among the statistics that One Bermuda Alliance party leader Craig Cannonier had planned to highlight during his reply to the Throne Speech in the House of Assembly today.Premier Paual Cox’s announcement of the election means he will now not give that speech, as Parliament will only reconvene after the election has been held on December 17.The speech, a draft of which the OBA gave to The Royal Gazette in the aftermath of the announcement, was heavily weighted with numbers and statistics, including: “... a staggering 36 percent of our young people are out of work. Let me repeat that Mr. Speaker: one in three young Bermudians is out of work.”Mr. Cannonier would also have repeated the OBA’s campaign mantra of ‘change’ in the House of Assembly this morning if the election had not been called. He was expecting to tell his fellow MPs: “But that future depends on change; change in the way we work together as a people, change in the way we go about our business as a country and change to a government more fully committed to meeting the needs of the people.”He also was prepared to tell stories of economic hardship, including: “The young college-educated couple in Crawl with a two-year-old boy and a mortgage; struggling to get by on her bank salary after he was laid off from his job with an exempt company . . . Mr Speaker, I draw attention to the hardships and hurt because they are the key to determining the work of Government.”Directly responding to the contents of the Throne Speech, delivered last Friday by Governor George Fergusson in the grounds of the Cabinet Office, Mr Cannonier had wanted to say: “Despite observing that the only issue that matters to most Bermudians is ‘having a decent job,’ the Speech outlined no economic recovery plan, no jobs plan, and no hope for families struggling to make ends meet. This is Bermuda’s immediate national priority, yet the Throne Speech was silent on what to do. The failure to address the serious economic challenges facing Bermudians is the large hole at the centre of the Government’s Throne Speech.”He would have cited two reasons for the PLP Government’s “lack of action,” according to his reply to the Throne Speech.“The first is the Government’s massive debt, rising some 700 percent since 2005 to $1.4 billion, and maybe beyond. Debt interest payments this year total $85 million all of it going to overseas creditors rather than to Bermudians here at home. A few weeks ago, a local economist commenting on the Island’s economic decline said the Government’s ability to stimulate recovery to help people through job-creating projects was ‘almost out of firepower’. In other words, the Government had few resources left to invest in people.”The second reason, according to Mr. Cannonier’s speech, is the Government’s “... denial of responsibility and reality. For years now, the Government has refused to acknowledge the damage its policies and actions have caused, including unpredictable tax increases that broke a bond of trust with international business, tourism marketing failures, immigration red tape that made operating a Bermuda-based business problematic, and a poorly conceived term limit policy that damaged the Island’s business reputation while doing little to protect Bermudian jobs.”He also planned to take issue with the Throne Speech statement that much of the economic downturn is due to the world recession. “Instead of levelling with the people that there is a tremendous amount of work to be done here at home, the Government told Bermudians that our economic difficulties are all due to the ‘global economic downturn.’“The so-called global recession became the Government’s cover for the failure of its policies and it begs the question: If you can’t acknowledge a problem exists, how can you be expected to fix it?”He was to conclude by saying the speech “offered no plan nor hope to the many thousands of people struggling each and every day to stay afloat”.“Instead it served up lists of Government initiatives already underway, promises lifted from its past Throne Speeches and 11th hour concessions to long-standing public demands for action.“There is good reason to question the sincerity of the exercise. An election must be called within the next 60 days, meaning the ideas contained in the Speech will become null and void, at least until a new Throne Speech by the newly elected government. So for this Speech, it’s okay to promise opening the St George’s golf course, even though the property is part of a lease agreement with the hotel. And it’s okay to finally promise the long-sought expansion of human rights, against years of this Government’s indifference and resistance to it.”