Bill C-201 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (travel and accommodation deduction for tradespersons)

This enactment allows tradespersons and indentured apprentices to deduct from their taxable income any travel and accommodation expenses that they have incurred in order to secure and maintain employment in a construction activity at a job site that is located at least 80 kilometres away from their ordinary place of residence.

Income Tax Act

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

moved that Bill C-201, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (travel and accommodation deduction for tradespersons), be read the second time and referred to a committee.

Mr. Speaker, I cannot believe that the time has finally come to debate Bill C-201, an act to amend the Income Tax Act (travel and accommodation deduction for tradespersons). It is the very first bill I introduced in this chamber after being elected in January 2006 and it is a bill that is near and dear to my heart.

However, my wait is nothing compared with the wait experienced by the workers who are at the heart of my bill. The Canadian building and construction trades have been lobbying for this legislation for over 35 years. Their tenacity on this file is remarkable and ought to be indicative to the government that this issue matters deeply to the very people who have literally built our country.

In fact, I would be remiss if I did not publicly thank Bob Blakely, the chief operating officer of the Canadian Building Trades Unions, for his personal commitment to this bill and for never ceasing to fight for the best interests of his members. Bob knows only too well what a bumpy road it has been to get to this point today.

Both Liberal and Conservative governments have made promises to the building trades in the past about concrete action to come. However, those games of political footsie led exactly nowhere.

It is time for the games to stop and for all members in the House to stand up and be counted. Lip service is no longer good enough. I am delighted to give members the opportunity to clarify their positions in the coming vote on my bill.

I know, Mr. Speaker, that you follow American politics closely, so you will remember former Speaker Tip O'Neill coining the phrase “all politics is local”. It is the principle that a politician's success is directly tied to his or her ability to understand and influence the issues of constituents.

While that certainly encapsulates the genesis of bill that we are debating today, I introduced it because of the amazing education and awareness-raising efforts of the members of the Building and Construction Trades Council in my hometown of Hamilton.

In particular, I want to single out the leadership of business manager Joe Beattie, who invited me to meet with the building trades about this issue before I was even elected.

We can see that the Hamilton building trades are not just savvy lobbyists, they are also clairvoyant. They knew I would eventually get elected, even before I believed it myself.

The case that was put to me by Joe, along with the members of Carpenters Local 18, UA Local 67 and Sheetmetal Workers Local 537, made sense then, and it still makes sense now. It makes sense for workers, who would benefit from a reduction in their temporary relocation costs and a reduction in time spent unemployed. It makes sense for employers which will benefit from access to larger pools of qualified workers and reduced costs relating to participation in programs such as the temporary foreign workers program. It makes sense for the government, because it would benefit from increased long-term income tax revenues and reduced dependence on costly social programs.

However, let me not put the cart before the horse. Let us start at the beginning and look at the issue that my bill is seeking to address, the specific remedy that it offers and the opportunity that it represents for the government and all members of the House.

Right now, there are two major human resource challenges facing Canada's construction industry: regional labour shortages and barriers to labour mobility.

The 2011 edition of the Construction Sector Council's “Construction Looking Forward” report suggests that to replace retiring workers and maintain productivity, construction employers, collectively, must hire more than 320,000 new workers between now and 2019. While training programs and recruitment from non-traditional labour sources are part of the solution, they will not be enough to ameliorate the significant labour shortages that are projected for the decade ahead.

Compounding this problem is the unevenness of demand for construction workers. Some regions of the country, such as Newfoundland and Labrador, are expected to face significant worker shortages until next year. Others, such as Ontario, will offer fewer work opportunities in the short term, but many more between 2015 and 2019. A third group, including Quebec, Nova Scotia and Alberta, will offer consistently high numbers throughout the forecast period.

With the demand for labour thus high in some parts of the country and lower in others, it would be in everyone's best interest to facilitate the mobility of unemployed workers from one part of the country to job openings in another.

This would be an easy problem to solve if construction jobs were permanent, but they are not. Construction is a transitory business. When a hospital, a mall or, for that matter, a Pan Am stadium is built, the job is done. Work can last for days, weeks or months, but the bottom line is that it is not permanent and no worker can fairly be expected to move his or her family to a new city every time the workplace changes, and therein lies the rub.

Under current rules, construction workers often incur large personal expenses to accept jobs in other parts of the province or country because neither their travel nor accommodation expenses are tax deductible under the Income Tax Act. As a result, these costs create a huge disincentive for workers to accept work in those parts of the country that are experiencing skills shortages.

Figures compiled on behalf of the building and construction trades department of the AFL-CIO suggest that the average mobile worker spends approximately $3,500 of his or her own money to temporarily relocate. That is a significant barrier to the appeal of working mobile. Without wanting to be too cute, I ask my hon. colleagues to imagine what would happen in this place if we told members tomorrow that they could no longer get financial assistance for their secondary residence here in Ottawa while they are here on the job, or for their travel for that matter.

If that is not enough to spur us on to creating fairness for the building trades, let me just remind members that this House already acknowledged that transitory workers merit financial support, and budget 2008 provided a tax break to truck drivers to assist with mobility challenges in that industry. I am calling on us to do the right thing here today and create a labour mobility tax credit for the building and construction industry too. Specifically, my bill would allow tradespersons and indentured apprentices to deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable income, so they can secure and maintain employment at a construction site that is more than 80 kilometres from their home. Adopting this bill would remove one of the largest stated barriers to labour mobility in our country and would pave the road for workers to move freely between regions of the country where their skills are in demand. For me, this is absolutely the right thing to do, and I do not believe that this issue has to be partisan. In fact, I know it is not.

Let me remind members than in April 2008, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities supported my bill in intent if not by name. The two germane recommendations were numbers 1.6 and 1.7. Recommendation number 1.6 reads:

The Committee recommends that the federal government examine the moving expenses provision of the Income Tax Act with a view to extending this provision to individuals who must leave their principal residence to work on a temporary basis, provided their principal residence is retained.

Recommendation number 1.7 says:

The Committee recommends that the federal government provide funding to assist individuals who agree to relocate to enter employment in occupations experiencing skills shortages.

Both of those recommendations are spot-on.

Yes, these recommendations were adopted during a minority Parliament, so it may be assumed that the government members did not actually support them. However, let me provide further evidence to the contrary. Before the Standing Committee on Finance on November 19, 2012, the Conservative member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca responded to a presentation by a representative of the building trades by saying, “...I've been advocating since 2005 for a tax credit on travel and mobility”.

Just a month later, another report by the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities made this its 30th recommendation. It stated:

The Committee recommends that the Government of Canada study the anticipated cost of introducing new fiscal measures that would help people who find jobs far away from where they live, for example a tax credit for travel and lodging if a person must work more than 80 kilometres from his or her residence, and that it study the potential impact of such measures on labour mobility and labour shortages.

This time, the government had the majority of members on the committee, so that recommendation would not have passed without the support of the Conservatives.

I want to publicly thank the Conservatives who were members of the committee at that time. They are the members for Mississauga—Streetsville, Don Valley East, Okanagan—Shuswap, Brant and Calgary Northeast, and the member for Simcoe—Grey, who is now Canada's Minister of Labour. I know that the member for Mississauga—Streetsville, in particular, understands this issue and has been advocating for it inside his own caucus. Also, I hope the Minister of Labour is using her new clout to assist his efforts in every possible way. Since she has repeatedly mentioned her own family roots in Alberta's construction industry, I trust that she understands what is at stake here.

Certainly, all of the opposition members on the committee got it right away. I was but one member of that committee, and I was proud to note that my NDP colleagues at HUMA, the members for Hochelaga, Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup and St. John's South—Mount Pearl, have always stood four-square behind the building trades in their communities and immediately expressed their support for my bill.

I am also cautiously optimistic that my Liberal colleague from Cape Breton—Canso will see fit to vote for it, although truthfully I am not sure which side he was on when the issue was being discussed when the Liberals were in government, during their 13 years in office. What I do know is that in opposition he has been nothing but supportive, and I want to thank him for that.

This issue does have broad-based support. What is stopping it from becoming law? At one point both the Minister of Finance and the former Minister of Labour were concerned about how much my proposed tax credit would cost. They were not entirely convinced by the admittedly rough initial calculations, which showed that it would be revenue neutral, since the cost of the tax credit would be more than offset by savings in employment insurance payments that would no longer have to be made as unemployed Canadians went to work in other parts of the country.

However, the building trades took the minister's concern seriously and had the projections related to my bill audited by Hendry Warren. The audited numbers were given to every member of this House during the last building trades lobby day, and I trust that everyone will have familiarized themselves with the costing of my proposal. However, let us take a quick look at the numbers again just to make absolutely certain that we are all on the same page.

Hendry Warren estimated that there are 1.6 million construction workers in Canada. An estimated 10% of them travel each year. At an average cost of $3,500 per worker per year, a 15% tax credit would cost the government $525 per mobile worker per year, for a total cost of $84 million.

Working with the same number of 160,000 travelling skilled trades workers whose average weekly employment insurance benefit would be $393 per week for an average period of unemployment of four weeks if they were not working means that the government would pay $251 million in EI benefits per year. That means that the tax credit proposal in my bill would actually save the government $167 million per year.

Let me repeat that, Mr. Speaker, because these numbers will be germane in your consideration of whether my bill will ultimately require a royal recommendation. Far from being an expenditure, my bill would actually save the government $167 million each and every year, and that is just premised on savings on EI.

As the audited statement makes clear, when savings from all social programs are taken into account along with increased long-term income tax revenues from employment, the labour mobility tax credit is more likely to yield a return on the government's investment of nearly five to one. We would think the Minister of Finance would be doing a happy dance at the prospect of such a windfall.

The bill really is a win, win, win. As I said at the outset, workers win because the travel and accommodation costs would no longer be a barrier to accepting decent jobs for decent wages in other regions of the country; employers win because they would have access to larger pools of qualified workers without needing to resort to the costly temporary foreign workers program; the government wins by having taken a concrete step toward addressing regional skilled labour shortages, all the while reducing dependence on costly social programs and actually boosting long-term income tax revenues. It does not get much better than that.

Let me conclude by bringing this discussion full circle. I want to end where I began.

Locally and nationally, the building and construction trades have lobbied for the bill for over 35 years. They represent an industry that is critical to our economy. In fact, construction is Canada's largest private sector industry. Its direct impact is immense. Construction accounts for 12% of Canada's GDP.

The industry has more than 260,000 businesses, employing more than a million Canadians. It is responsible for installing, repairing, and renovating more than $150 billion worth of infrastructure every single year. It is a threshold industry on which everything else is based.

In a very real sense, the building and construction trades have built our country. It is time for us to shore up their work. It is time for us to heed their call for action. It is time for us to provide them with a tax credit for travel and accommodation expenses when they accept work more than 80 kilometres away from their home. It is time to pass my bill.

Income Tax

[John Rafferty, NDP, Thunder Bay—Rainy River, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition signed by many constituents in my riding of Thunder Bay—Rainy River in support of Bill C-201, which is a bill whose sponsor is our hard-working and quite wonderful member from Hamilton Mountain.

This bill will allow tradespeople and indentured apprentices to deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable income so that they can secure and maintain employment at a construction site that is more than 80 kilometres from their home.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, later today the House will begin debate on Bill C-201, which is my private member's bill to allow tradespeople to deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable income so that they can secure and maintain employment at a construction site that is more than 80 kilometres away from their home.

In support of this bill, I have been flooded by petitions. I am pleased to table yet another set in the House today. This time the petitioners are from Saskatchewan, British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario, including Whitby, the hometown of the Minister of Finance. There are literally hundreds of names on the petition, all urging the government to give quick passage to my bill.

I thank the petitioners for their support and I am pleased to be able to table this petition on their behalf.

Income Tax Act

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, last month I was in Nanaimo, where I had the opportunity to meet with a large number of labour activists from all over Vancouver Island, alongside my colleague from Nanaimo—Cowichan. One of the issues we discussed at length was my private members' bill, Bill C-201, which will be debated in the House for the first time next week.

I am delighted to say that the second petition I present in the House today was circulated as a result of those conversations. It is signed by almost 100 people from Vancouver Island, who are all urging the government to support Bill C-201 so that tradespersons and indentured apprentices can deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable income when they work at a construction site more than 80 kilometres away from their homes.

I very much appreciate this expression of support from the west coast, and I am pleased to be able to table this petition in the House today.

[Michel Bédard]

Bill C-201 would amend the Income Tax Act to provide for a new deduction for travel and accommodation expenses for employees who are employed at a construction site in order to keep their job.

This bill does not concern questions outside federal jurisdiction. It does not appear to clearly violate the Constitution. There is no other private member's bill similar to it on the order paper, and there is no government bill similar to it on the order paper.

Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, maybe the Prime Minister should not have left the country. I think this may be the first time that two Conservatives are not on the same page with respect to their talking points. I asked the member for Calgary Northeast about the details of the Canada jobs grant and he said that he was still out there consulting. Yet the Minister of Labour just said that she was really excited about this program. She must know some details that the member for Calgary Northeast does not. However, I want to ask her about something more specific today.

She will know that one of the ways to fill a skills shortage in the country is by assisting people with labour mobility. We have people in some parts of the country who are unable to access employment whereas we have skills shortages in other parts of the country and there is an opportunity for us to do the right thing and bring people together.

The minister knows, because she has been lobbied by people in my riding, including Joe Beattie from the Hamilton-Brantford Building Trades Council, about my Bill C-201, which would facilitate such labour mobility for people who are working more than 80 kilometres away from home to be eligible for a tax credit for accommodation and travel expenses. The bill was actually supported in the HUMA committee recommendations. Could the Minister of Labour tell the House today whether she also supports the bill?

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I said in my comments, there were many areas in the study on skills shortages that we actually agreed upon, on all sides of the House. What the member wants is that I suggest that in some areas of the country there are skills shortages of such a nature that we absolutely have to bring in temporary foreign workers and that we have to be able to get access to cheap labour. Frankly, that is a recommendation with which I cannot agree, because until we actually provide decent wages for jobs and provide Canadians with the kind of skills training that enables them to fill the jobs in the areas where there are shortages, and until we provide incentives for labour mobility, temporary foreign workers should be the very last resort.

As members know, from following the debates in this House, is that whether at HD Mining or at RBC, what is happening now is that temporary foreign workers are coming into this country and are displacing Canadians and Canadian jobs. That is completely unacceptable, so we are calling on the government to help Canadians access those jobs. Again, it would do that by offering decent wages, by investing in a comprehensive skills training program and by supporting labour mobility initiatives, such as my Bill C-201, which I am very hopeful will come to the House soon. I look forward to the support of my colleagues on the government side of this House.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House this afternoon to move concurrence in the ninth report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities presented on Wednesday, December 12, 2012, with respect to labour and skills shortages in Canada. The subtitle of the report is “Addressing Current and Future Challenges”.

There is no doubt that a vital competitive economy in the global era requires the development of a skilled workforce that provides Canadian employers with the workers they need and that provides Canadian workers with the opportunities they deserve. In order to achieve that goal Canada needs to find the right match between skills and employment opportunities so that we do not suffer from skills shortages and high unemployment at the same time.

My NDP colleagues and I supported the standing committee's report on labour shortages in Canada, and we were particularly pleased to see recommendations on incentives for training and labour mobility. However, we also think there are some important areas in which the recommendations did not go far enough in addressing the crucial challenges that Canada faces.

Let me begin with some general areas of concern that were raised in testimony by a number of witnesses who appeared before our committee.

It is true that labour shortages were already being felt prior to the 2008-2009 recession, especially in the western provinces. The recession eased this pressure, but already shortages are reappearing in certain regions and sectors.

Given the aging population, it is likely that labour and skills shortages will increase, but this will not be true for all regions nor for all occupational groups. While shortages may be less severe in occupations requiring fewer qualifications, low-skilled occupations are also experiencing shortages, especially in regions with strong and rapid economic growth.

The first finding of the study, which was reiterated by many witnesses, is that no single solution will magically solve the challenges caused by labour and skills shortages. Various complementary solutions must be identified.

One solution that was mentioned often by the witnesses who appeared as part of the study was to make all the essential information on future labour needs available so that educational programs can be created and modified accordingly, and so that consequently young people can choose occupations that will be in high demand.

Obviously that will not be possible without high-quality labour market information. The holders of these data must work together to avoid duplication and find ways to improve both the quality of the information as well as the distribution of all LMI products to the people who can benefit the most from its use.

Another solution the committee heard throughout the study was to maximize the untapped potential of individuals and certain groups of the Canadian population that have a lower participation rate or a higher unemployment rate than average, such as mature workers, people with disabilities, aboriginal peoples and recent immigrants. These groups represent a huge pool of untapped talents and could help address a significant part of the skills shortages.

Other suggestions made by witnesses include increasing labour force mobility, increasing awareness of trades and professions in demand that are not popular with young people, providing workers with adequate on-the-job training, increasing the level of basic skills, improving worker productivity and increasing reliance on partnerships between various levels of government, companies, educational institutions, students and workers.

Of course, special mention was made of the temporary foreign worker program, around which there was a significant consensus that there had to be reform. Given the recent media spotlight on the temporary foreign worker program, I do not think that will surprise any member in the House.

The recommendations in the report address many of these concerns. In fact, there were 38 recommendations made by the committee, most of which my NDP colleagues and I agreed with. Let me re-emphasize the word “most”, because as one can imagine, on a Conservative-dominated committee, much of the language in this report is both self-congratulatory and slanted to the needs of employers only. Nonetheless, we did find some significant common ground.

There were, however, also areas of significant disagreement, and I want to spend the better part of my remaining time on those areas. These areas represent a huge missed opportunity, and I would hope that moving forward, the government will take a second look at our minority report and use it to shape additional measures that were lacking in the original recommendations.

Let me begin with comments about labour market information.

Time and time again the committee heard from witnesses that labour market information in Canada is not good enough. We heard that the data are not granular enough and do not allow for sufficient breakdown by occupation or region. The data are also not published frequently enough and do not allow for high-quality projections of shortages in the future. In fact, the committee's final report offers numerous instances in which the testimony from industries and the data available from current surveys disagree on whether or not there is or will be a skills or labour shortage in a given industry.

The Certified General Accountants Association recently published an examination of available sources of data that concluded that our current LMI is not good enough to enable policy-makers to effectively deal with labour shortages. It recommends “...closing the statistical information gap and improving the relevance and reliability of labour market statistics at the regional and occupational levels”.

Given that good LMI is the linchpin to good skills training and labour force development policy as well as crucial to good immigration policy and management of the temporary foreign worker program, we find the report's recommendation on LMI to be very weak indeed. We need more than better publicity for the data that are already being produced.

The experts on the advisory panel on labour market information established by the Forum of Labour Market Ministers have already provided an excellent blueprint of the steps that could be taken to improve the collection, analysis and use of LMI in Canada. For that reason, my NDP colleagues and I recommended that the government take steps to implement the recommendations made in the final report of the advisory panel on labour market information.

We also noted in our report that the weakness of our labour market information has been exacerbated by cuts to Statistics Canada and its surveys and by the elimination of core funding for sector councils, which play a crucial role in bringing together industry partners and provide very useful sector-specific LMI. Therefore, we also recommended that Statistics Canada be provided with the funding it needs to improve labour force-related surveys and that core funding be restored to sector councils.

Moving on to a second area that merited additional attention, I want to focus next on the need to develop the Canadian labour force.

While employers are experiencing shortages of both skilled and low-skilled labour, unemployment in Canada remains high, with six unemployed Canadians for every job vacancy. The Conservatives' response has been to blame the unemployed for their unemployment, to reduce access to employment insurance while trying to force Canadians to move to other parts of the country and to use the temporary foreign worker program to drive down wages.

By contrast, New Democrats believe that Canadian workers and employers benefit when Canadians are given the tools they need to be able to take available jobs. That is why we believe that investments in skills training are so important. We laud the report's recommendation that the government consider incentives to employers to invest in on-the-job training. However, we also recommend that the government review its bilateral agreements with the provinces to ensure that they provide maximum benefit to Canadians in need of training. For instance, the fact that the largest part of funding for skills training provided through labour market development agreements is limited to those who qualify for employment insurance benefits makes no sense when more than 6 in 10 unemployed Canadians are not qualifying for EI.

Similarly, we believe that Canadians need support for labour mobility rather than to be threatened with the loss of their EI benefits if they do not move for the jobs. We are pleased that the report recommends support for a tax credit for travel and lodging for those working more than 80 kilometres away from their residence. This is a proposal I have been pushing for years by introducing Bill C-201, an act to amend the Income Tax Act for travel and accommodation deduction for tradespersons. The building and construction trades have been lobbying for this bill for over 30 years, and it continues to be one of the key priorities at each and every one of their legislative conferences.

In every Parliament the government has made vague promises of progress to come; then each Parliament ends without concrete action. The time to rectify that situation is now, and I appreciate the committee's support in this regard. The ask is simple: allow tradespersons and apprentices to deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable income so that they can secure and maintain employment at a construction site that is more than 80 kilometres away from their home.

At a time when some regions of the country suffer from high unemployment while others suffer from temporary skilled labour shortages, the bill offers a solution to both. Best of all, it is revenue neutral for the government because the cost associated with the income tax cut is more than made up by the savings in employment insurance.

Now that the Conservatives have a majority in the House of Commons, there are no more excuses. The government can and must support the bill and act unequivocally to support Canada's building and construction trades. I am hoping to be able to test the government's resolve on this issue in the very near future.

Let me just give a quick shout out to some of the people from my hometown of Hamilton who have been instrumental in putting this issue on Parliament's agenda. In particular, I am thinking of Joe Beattie, Tim Penfold, Geoff Roman, Gary Elleker, Dave MacMaster, Paul Leger and all the members of the Hamilton-Brantford Ontario Building and Construction Trades Council, whose support for the bill has been unwavering and who, frankly, were the first to bring the issue to my attention.

I could talk about my bill and the need for its speedy adoption all day. Nonetheless, I recognize that my time here is limited and I also want to get some other issues on the record with respect to the current skills shortage.

One of the other barriers to labour mobility that was raised over and over again was the lack of affordable housing. Regions that are experiencing an economic boom cannot develop housing fast enough to offer workers reasonable accommodation at prices they can afford. Therefore, in our minority report we recommended that the government support NDP Bill C-400, which called on the government to create a national affordable housing strategy in co-operation with the provinces and territories.

Members will know that in the time since we tabled our report, the Conservatives defeated that bill in this House. To New Democrats and housing activists from coast to coast to coast, that was a devastating rejection of a desperately needed program. Canada remains the only G8 country without a housing strategy, while 1.5 million families and individuals are unable to access adequate, affordable housing. It is a national disgrace. Certainly the evidence we heard at committee confirmed that the lack of affordable housing should have been a priority for our federal government.

Similarly, testimony confirmed that the Conservatives also mismanaged the temporary foreign worker program, allowing employers to bring in temporary foreign workers with little to no monitoring for compliance with the rules of the program. The result has been that Canadian workers have lost out on jobs that should have been available to them, while temporary foreign workers face exploitation and rights violations.

If managed properly, the temporary foreign worker program should provide a temporary solution to a serious problem while emphasizing a longer-term response that promotes the best interests of Canadian workers and employers and our economy. The government has announced a review of the temporary foreign worker program, and New Democrats recommend that this review be conducted in a thorough and transparent manner, with a report tabled in the House of Commons as soon as the review is concluded.

Although this is another topic about which I could talk for hours, I will keep moving along.

Let us look next at the need for effective partnerships. In its skills strategy, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development suggests that all relevant stakeholders must be involved in order to ensure an effective, comprehensive approach to skills policies. Designing effective skills policies requires more than coordinating different sectors of public administration and aligning different levels of government: a broad range of non-governmental actors, including employers, professional and industry associations, chambers of commerce, sector councils, trade unions, education and training institutions and individuals must all be involved.

New Democrats agree that policies are stronger when all relevant stakeholders are involved and consulted, and that is why we recommend that the development of policy options to improve labour market information to ensure a better match between the skills of graduates and the needs of employers and to develop strong curricula must always include all relevant stakeholders: federal, provincial, territorial and aboriginal governments, businesses and industry, employee representatives and labour unions, educational institutions and student associations as well as not-for-profit groups.

Speaking of students, my NDP colleagues and I respect that one of the major goals of post-secondary education is skills training. However, we also recognize that this is not the only goal for Canada's colleges and universities and that there is a role for pure research.

We also respect academic freedoms and the rights of scholars to freely choose their subject areas and research projects. Therefore, we recommend that consultations on curricula always be undertaken with appropriate respect for the multiple roles of post-secondary educational institutions.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not say a few words about the participation of aboriginal peoples in the labour market. Our committee heard some very compelling testimony in that regard. As the report notes, aboriginal peoples' labour market outcomes must be improved to ensure that aboriginal peoples benefit from resource development to reduce aboriginal poverty and to provide the skilled labour force that Canada will need in the future.

A key element of aboriginal labour market outcomes is education, yet the report offers no recommendations on aboriginal education at all. If educational outcomes are to improve for aboriginal students, they need adequately funded education that respects their unique culture and history in safe and healthy school facilities.

First nations education is the jurisdiction of the federal government, which does not provide equitable funding for first nations children.

While budget 2012 provided some new funds for first nations education, only eight new schools were built out of 170 needed, and so far, no money has been committed directly to first nations schools for front-line education services.

According to the Assembly of First Nations, $500 million is needed to bring funding for first nations K-12 education to parity with non-aboriginal Canadians. The AFN has also noted that a gap in funding for post-secondary education has prevented more than 13,000 first nations students from pursuing higher education. Those realities are completely unacceptable. That is why my NDP colleagues and I recommended that the government provide sufficient and equitable funding for first nations K-12 education as well as post-secondary education, including vocational training and apprenticeships, and that the government remove the punitive 2% cap on funding increases to first nations.

The Conservatives' failure to take consultations seriously has already derailed this process once, with the chiefs withdrawing from the process due to inadequate consultation. That is why we further recommended that the government recognize first nations' jurisdiction over education and abide by the federal government's duty to consult by holding extensive and meaningful consultations leading to the creation of a first nations education act that respects first nations' rights, culture and history.

The federal government also provides funding for Inuit education through territorial transfers and land claims agreements. The education system is seriously failing Inuit youth, with only 25% graduating from high school. Those who do manage to graduate are still not at the same skill level as non-aboriginal students.

The report of Thomas Berger, a conciliator appointed to resolve differences in the negotiations for the implementation of the land claims agreement, found that education was a key factor in impeding progress on Inuit representation in the public service. It called for an increase of $20 million annually to education funding beyond what is provided through territorial financing.

The same holds true for other jobs. Inuit youth need culturally and linguistically appropriate education that enables them to stay in school and graduate with the skills they need to join the workforce. New Democrats therefore recommended that the government increase funding for Inuit education beyond the funding provided through territorial financing and land claims agreements.

Finally, the committee heard from multiple witnesses that the aboriginal skills and employment training strategy, ASETS, has been very successful in providing the training aboriginal Canadians need and the links with employers that help them find jobs after their training. However, the committee also heard that funding has been frozen since 1996, despite the fact that the need is greater than ever as the aboriginal population grows.

ASETS holders have also noted the heavy reporting burden that comes with their funding. A review of the program is beginning, and New Democrats recommend that the federal government include ASETS holders in the ongoing program review in a meaningful way and work with them to establish a process for stable, predictable and adequate funding to maintain and improve this highly successful program.

Let me try to sum up. To meet our labour force goals, we need more and better labour market data; incentives and/or requirements for employers to offer training programs; more support for workers seeking training; better EI programs; more affordable education programs; enhanced support for labour mobility; the ability of immigrants here to have their credentials recognized and a much faster and more efficient process; and better support for an immigration program that does more than simply provide cheap foreign labour with no path to citizenship.

Overall, we need to see the skills shortage as one important issue among a series of important labour market issues, the most important of which remains the still very high unemployment rate. With 1.4 million Canadians out of work, it is hard to make the argument that we have a national labour shortage. What we have are regional shortages that cannot overshadow the fact that the Conservative government's most lasting failure is to develop and implement a strategy to create Canadian jobs. Until that happens, at best we will be tinkering at the margins.

Opposition Motion—Employment Insurance Program

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak in support of our NDP motion to fix Canada's employment insurance system and to help those Canadians who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

The House has only been in session for one week. I rose in question period every single day in that week to hold the government to account for the consequences of the draconian changes to Canada's EI system. We raise these issues to throw the spotlight on the government's failure to address the needs of Canadians, but frankly we also do it in the hopes that the evidence we bring to bear will get the government to reconsider its direction.

Certainly, our efforts have worked in the past, even with the Conservative government. After months of raising questions in the House, the government finally backtracked on the F-35, reversed itself with respect to the export of asbestos and of course, most infamously, we were even able to force the Conservatives to concede that there really was a recession in 2009 and to invest in infrastructure renewal. Even with EI, we saw a partial reversal by the minister when she conceded we were right about the punitive impact of her changes to the working while on claim program. Truthfully though, I am less optimistic this time around. Why? It is because the chasm between the reality faced by unemployed Canadians and the minister's fiction about that reality is widening every day and I do not think that is happening by accident.

Let me just give two quick examples to illustrate the point. To justify the government's agenda of change with respect to employment insurance, Conservative members insist on saying that there are thousands of jobs going unfilled in Canada because the unemployed do not want to work. That is simply not the case and the government knows it is utter nonsense. Statistics Canada has shown that there are five unemployed workers for every reported job vacancy in Canada. In Atlantic Canada there are as many as ten unemployed workers for every job that is available. Clearly, the real issue is the government's abysmal record on job creation, not the desire of Canadians to work. What an inconvenient truth. No wonder the Conservatives are continuously loading the dice against Statistics Canada's ability to do its job effectively.

From that overarching myth, let me give another example of Orwellian doublespeak by the government. On Friday, I called on the government to come clean on the new quotas that the minister has given to her staff for recovering money from EI recipients. She is demanding $150 million a year. The minister denied it vehemently, saying there was no such quota, but outside the House she later conceded that there are indeed objectives to that effect. How can we in the opposition, and more importantly, how can Canadians have a fruitful discussion with the government about the devastating impact of its changes when the government so steadfastly refuses to be honest? I understand spin but the government has taken that notion to a level that is completely unacceptable.

Members may remember Stephen Colbert's term “truthiness”. Well, we have it here in spades. Truthiness is what one wants the facts to be as opposed to what the facts are, what feels like the right answer as opposed to what reality will support. That kind of truthiness is a huge threat to our democracy because the legitimacy of democratic governance relies on an informed citizenry.

Let us try to turn the tide and talk about the challenges facing EI recipients in a realistic way. Let us look at the changes the government has introduced since its spring budget last year and see if we can work our way to a consensus about what needs to be done to reverse the damage. I am not overly optimistic but Canadians depend on us to give it our very best shot.

Throughout the recession the Conservatives largely left the existing EI program in place and in this new spirit of hope for co-operation I will even give them credit for adding several EI related stimulus programs to their economic action plans in 2008 and 2009. However, that was then and this is now.

Despite the fact that the economic recovery is far from complete, the Conservatives are now tightening the screws by making eligibility requirements even stricter so as to further limit access to EI, and by limiting the EI appeals process. These punitive reforms cater to negative stereotypes about EI recipients and ignore the realities of regional labour markets and seasonal industries. They will hurt both workers and communities.

Let us look at the facts. It is a fact that fewer unemployed Canadians will receive EI under these new rules. The government estimates that the changes will lead to 8,000 claimants being denied benefits, amounting to $30 million a year. It is a fact that unemployed Canadians will now be forced to accept lower wage jobs, paying up to 30% less than their previous job. This will drive down wages for all Canadians. It is a fact that valuable skills will now go unused. A skilled tradesperson or teacher on EI will now be pressured to accept a different, often lower skilled job. It is a fact that workers in seasonal industries will be particularly hard hit, since frequent claimants are the most targeted under the Conservatives' reforms.

Clearly, this is an ideological attack on workers. If the government were serious about connecting Canadians with jobs, its agenda would not be focused on tightening EI, but rather it would be focused on the urgent need to create jobs.

The real problem in Canada is that there are too few jobs. Further punishing the innocent victims of Canada's economic turmoil does nothing to right the ship. On the contrary, it adds to the decline of the thriving families and communities whose purchasing power drives local economies. If the government wanted to help workers, then it would be investing in training and apprenticeship programs that would train unemployed and young workers for available jobs. It could have adopted my Bill C-201, which would help tradespeople and apprentices to deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable income so that they could secure and maintain employment at a construction site that is more than 80 kilometres away from their homes.

Those would be concrete steps in the right direction for connecting people with jobs. However, by focusing on cuts to EI instead, the government is simply laying the groundwork for employers to bring in migrant workers and pay them less than the prevailing wage. Am I surprised by all of this? Of course not.

Members will remember the Prime Minister's comments, in 1997, when he told the American Council for National Policy that, “In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don’t feel particularly bad for many of these people”. Not to be outdone, his colleague, the Conservative member for South Shore—St. Margaret's later called unemployed Canadians “no-good bastards”. The minister is on the record saying that she does not want “to make it lucrative for them to stay home”.

Clearly, Canadians cannot trust the Conservatives on this file. The Liberals pioneered the approach of attacking the unemployed, making EI less accessible and raiding the EI fund to the tune of $54 billion. Only New Democrats have consistently fought on the side of workers. We know and believe that employment insurance is not a government benefit. It is paid for by workers and employers. Canadians pay EI premiums in good faith so that EI will be there for them in times of unemployment.

The reason my colleagues and I brought forward today's motion is to protect that sacred trust from governments' repeated attacks. We will roll back the callous Conservative cuts and we will continue to work with labour, business, provinces and territories to find longer-term solutions to help Canadians find jobs, without treating unemployed workers as the problem.

I invite the Conservatives to reconsider their approach and to support our motion. There is no shame in making a mistake. The shame lies only in the refusal to acknowledge it and correct it.

[Ryan Cleary, NDP, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to the witnesses.

Mr. Smillie, I want to take you up on a couple points that you made. You talked about the mobility of the construction workforce, more specifically how to get people where the work is. That's a very good question. I'm having that problem in my home province of Newfoundland and Labrador, in terms of how to get people to jobs in remote areas.

I have a specific question about a private member's bill, Bill C-201, which is before the House of Commons. Are you familiar with it?

[Hoang Mai, NDP, Brossard—La Prairie, QC]

Thank you.

I have a question for the building and construction trades.

You talked about Bill C-201, which was put forward by one of my colleagues. However, I was just wondering if that really addresses the issues you raised in terms of jobs and transferability.

[Robert Blakely, Director, Canadian Affairs, Building and Construction Trades Department, AFL-CIO, Canadian Office]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

My name is Bob Blakely, and I am privileged to represent the men and women who build and maintain Canada.

With me today is Mr. David Wade from the Newfoundland and Labrador building and construction trades.

We're in an industry that employs over a million Canadians but has no permanent jobs. For every construction job that happens in Canada, the day you are hired on, you are one day closer to being laid off. Unlike others who are here with an “ask”, I am here to give you money.

I have a scheme that will help meet a number of challenges the Government of Canada faces and get Canadians with skills from one area to another in this country. If you look at the labour market information available, you will find that areas like Newfoundland and Labrador will face significant labour shortages from now until 2014. Ontario will be flat until 2015. Alberta, Nova Scotia, and Quebec need numbers of workers.

In a transitory business, we need to be able to move people from one place to another in the country. According to some of the studies that have been done, 70% of all construction workers move, either within the province or within the country, in order to access work during their careers. What we are proposing is a tax credit program that would allow workers who fall within areas where skills are required to be able to claim a tax credit for money they spend moving from one part of the country to another. Workers benefit by getting a reduction in their temporary relocation costs. Employers will benefit from having access to a much larger pool of workers. The Government of Canada will benefit. If you look at the investment scheme described in the materials, you'll see that after an initial short-term investment, the Government of Canada will recover money at a rate of about five to one.

We have a number of suggestions as to how you could set up a pilot project and monitor it. I'm not going to waste a lot of time going through that. Suffice it to say, we're asking here for something that will help construction workers move from one part of the country to another. Newfoundland, which has been a traditional exporter of people, is going to be an importer of people over the next three or four years.

We're also asking for some tax fairness here. If, instead of being construction workers, we were engineers or architects or superintendents who incorporated ourselves as one-person companies, we would be able to write off our travel expenses at 100¢ on the dollar. We can't do that as working guys.

Teamsters, who are long-haul truckers and who move across the country, can write off their expenses. We're asking for a tax credit that would help move people, who we desperately need, from one part of the country to another. I know Mr. Jean can tell you that in Fort McMurray they need people.

If you look at the background, at how long we've been talking about this, in 2008 the standing committee on human resources and social development talked about creating some sort of relocation assistance to help people who move from place to place. There is a private member's bill that has been introduced in the last three parliaments, which now is Bill C-201, introduced by Chris Charlton from Hamilton Mountain. It talks about how we could assist people with skills to move.

The time has come. The baby boomer generation, which no one expected was ever going to retire, is going to retire. We have spaces for nearly 2,500 people to enter the construction industry in the next five years, and another 163,000 people in the five years after that. It's an industry that is going to change. If we have trained people all across the country, we need to be able to move them.

We are talking about a way the Government of Canada can lever its investment and have a worker in Corner Brook work in Alberta for a very low cost, instead of being on unemployment insurance at home because he can't afford to travel.

That's my pitch. Thank you.

Income Tax Act

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-201, An Act to amend the Income Tax Act (travel and accommodation deduction for tradespersons).

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to reintroduce this bill on behalf of Canada's building and construction trades as well as their indentured apprentices for the third time since I was first elected.

The building and construction trades have been lobbying for this bill for over 30 years and it continues to be one of the key priorities at each and every one of their legislative conferences.

In every Parliament the government has made vague promises of progress to come, then each Parliament ends without concrete action. The time to rectify that situation is now.

The ask is simple: allow tradespersons and apprentices to deduct travel and accommodation expenses from their taxable income so that they can secure and maintain employment at a construction site that is more than 80 kilometres away from their home.

At a time when some regions of the country suffer from high unemployment while others suffer from temporary skilled labour shortages, this bill offers a solution to both. Best of all, it is revenue neutral for the government because the cost associated with the income tax cut is more than made up by the savings in employment insurance.

Now that the Conservatives have a majority in the House of Commons there are no more excuses. The government can and must support this bill and act unequivocally to support Canada's building and construction trades.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)