Human Resources Committee on Oct. 25th, 2006

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

I understand your point, but let me give you an example that contradicts what you said. Let us take, for instance, the employees of the federal government. For any given position, the salary is the same in every region. I have worked for the Business Development Bank of Canada, before I became an MP. I would have been paid the same wages in Edmundston, New Brunswick as in Vancouver or Toronto. But I had a much better standard of living where I was. My salary was the same as my colleagues, but the cost of living was much lower, and I did not have to face the heavy traffic every morning.

Once all these elements have been considered there is something that... A professional is a professional: a radiologist is a radiologist, an engineer is an engineer. Sometimes, there might be differences in salary, but I always have the same question, and I put it to those students who think that they would rather work in the region where there are currently studying. What is the cost of living? Did you look into it? Did you stop to reflect on the relation between the salary and the cost of living? Basically is it worth it? Perhaps you are negative? This may just be your way of seeing things. The big salary may seem attractive, but if the cost of living is three or four times higher than somewhere else, is it worth it?

Let us compare what is happening now at Fort McMurry to what is happening in my region, Madawaska-Restigouche. A house that would cost $80,000 to $100,000 in my region costs $350,000 in Fort McMurry. Twenty-five dollars an hour seems attractive, but what is left after taxes? As we heard, taxes are going up. Once we have paid everything how much do you have left?

[André Lavoie]

This reminds me of the film the Great Seduction. I do not know wether you have seen it, but this is just the kind of situation it describes.

We must also mention what is going on in certain areas with resources. The crisis in forestry in Quebec has given rise to a new phenomenon. There are regions with resources where, quite often , over the years, big companies were relied upon to develop resources in the area, and this is how cities were built.

There are real tragedies unfolding at this time, in some of these regions. Just yesterday, Norsk Hydro announced that it was closing its Bécancour plant. This is given rise to some tragic situations. Of course, my colleague was right in saying that all the noise made by the media is not helping at all to make these regions more attractive.

However, there are other, more encouraging examples: the region of Drummondville, Trois-Rivières, Gaspe, are entering into a new phase with the development of wind farms. New projects can be created in such regions,.

There is also the issue of the next generation of SME entrepreneurs. Our SMEs will enter into a new phase within the coming ten or fifteen years. Our SME entrepreneur population is also aging. This gives the younger generation a chance to take over the management of those regional companies. I think that if we build our projects around an economy that is more geared to smaller enterprises, we can enable the regions to stand on their own feet, this seems obvious. I think that we should be looking at the positive examples that are out there in order to promote them, rather than give all our attention to big companies that are shutting down.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Lavoie.

We're going to move to Madam Bonsant, for five minutes.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Mr. Lavoie, I agree with you about double billing, both federal and provincial. This is why the sovereignist movement arose en 1970. This is really a dual administration and dual payment. I agree with you, because this is so in many cases.

I was a bit shocked to hear you say just now that SMEs are not at all favourable to parental leave. The business world is complaining about the low birth rate. The way to increase the birth rate would be to offer parental leave and one-year maternity leave, so that the young generation can return to family values. We also need child care centres, because I think that young parents are not ready to leave their baby with a grandmother or an aunt or with anyone they can find out there.

Mr. Argento, I was also rather shocked to hear what you had to say about the mobility of construction workers. If you take someone with a seasonal job on a farm where potatoes or some other crop is being grown and you make a construction worker out of that person, what will happen to the farmer who was employing him? His company might well be an SME. How will he cope with losing his manpower? You are just taking from Peter and giving to Paul.

I think that with the current scarcity of manpower and the large number of school dropouts, we should perhaps incite schools, chambers of commerce and companies to seek out the 15 and 16 year-olds to show them the real meaning of work and education. There is a great potential for recruiting manpower among young people who dropped off school because they do not know what they want and because they have no guidance. With a bit of patience, you could explain to the older workers who are afraid of losing their jobs that they could train the new generation, in this way we could probably solve the problem of school dropouts and scarcity of manpower. But we must not tell them that they have to hand their jobs over; we should rather tell them that they have experience to transmit. In this way, we would avoid emptying the country side and creating urban congestion. Actually, people are leaving the rural regions. The general store is emptying its shelves, Rona is closing down and then the younger generation leaves and we wonder why schools are being closed and the young are not returning to the region.

I would like to hear what you have to say about all this, because I feel very strongly about this issue.

[André Lavoie]

Yes, because I believe that this deserves clarification.

We can all agree that the Canadian Federation of Independent Business is not against the principle of parental insurance. However, the National Assembly voted unanimously on a bill that sets out the foundations of a system that means we are buying a Cadillac when in fact we can only afford a Volkswagen. And the legislators decided to negotiate the terms of purchase of this Cadillac. That is the kind of parental insurance system that we have established. Later on, there were negotiations with the federal government, but the Quebec government did not obtain the money that it had counted on. It therefore passed the bill onto employers, when we had achieved some savings on complementary pension plans and we had saved money at the CSST regarding preventive leave. When you pass the bill onto employers and salaried workers, I personally find that indecent. It is precisely that aspect of parental insurance that we are opposed to, because we were members of the Conseil de gestion de l'assurance parentale. The CFIB at least deserves credit for one thing: when a piece of legislation is passed, we fall in step and try to adapt and even promote the legislation. But at some point, there is something indecent about passing the bill on to the smallest and weakest, when large corporations and government benefit because they have complimentary systems. But I will not get into that debate.

With regard to child care, I can tell you that within the CFIB, we have over 200 members that are private day care centres. So I am sure you could appreciate that we are certainly not against the child care system that exist in Quebec. However, we have questions right now about the universality of this system and our capacity to maintain it as it exists. When you have a $7 a day universal system, that is all very nice, except that if a CPE is subsidized by the state to the tune of 100 per cent and a private day care centre has to make up for a significant financial gap in order to offer its services; things just cannot work this way. Indeed, a private child care centre has to charge the same price, but it does not have the same income as a CPE.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Well, again, this is a matter of transfers that are not working, but that is political.

[André Lavoie]

Look, I do not want to get into the issue of transfers, I do not want to get into politics here this morning. However, there is a reality for the heads of SMEs, and I think it is important to put things in perspective in that regard

We cannot oppose the principle, but in the final analysis, we represent members who end up footing the bill. There is another aspect. This will be the last one in fact, because I am going to stop here. It is all very nice to promote social programs, except that you have to understand the reality experienced by the head of an SME. If I have a company with five employees, Ms. Bonsant, and I lose one, 20 per cent of my workforce just left.

Generous programs are all very well, and we have very progressive legislation in Quebec in terms of labour standards and the Labour Code. These are the most progressive laws in Canada, and we have to be aware of that. The Quebec Charter of Rights and Freedoms is all very nice and it is a good thing to give rights to workers and salaried people. I am not opposed at all to giving rights to labour. On the contrary, that is fantastic, but perhaps we should also be listening to the concerns of employers. It is a headache right now for employers to keep their labour force. So obviously, if I grant parental leave and the employee does not even have the obligation to advise the employer that he will be leaving in the coming days, and on Friday morning informs me that he will not be coming in the following Monday because he is taking paternity leave, there is some imbalance here somewhere.

Perhaps it is in the way all these systems are applied that we should give some respite to some employers at some point.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

That's all the time we have.

I'll let Mr. Argento make a quick comment before we move on.

[Alfonso Argento]

With regard to manpower mobility, Ms. Bonsant, we are saying in the first place,that a farm worker who is used to growing potatoes or cherries, cannot become a construction worker. This is impossible, specially in Quebec where everything is legislated wall to wall, as the gentleman explained.

We would rather have geographic mobility. If I am a carpenter in Montreal, I could work in Ottawa and be recognized.

Le me give you an example, because a picture is worth a thousand words, as they say. Maybe seven or eight years ago, we were building the Portage Bridge between Ottawa and Hull—that was the name of the city at the time. There are certainly people here who are familiar with the bridge. Now, this bridge is under two territorial jurisdictions. One part is in Quebec and the other in Ottawa. So they had to count how many carpenters were working on either side of the bridge. It was ridiculous. They were inspectors on both sides. This is the kind of problem that arises with mobility. There is no question of recruiting workers specialized in agriculture to turn them into construction workers or vice versa. This is not done, but something very different is going on.

In fact, we have problems between provinces. It is often easier to work in the United States than in a neighbouring Canadian province. This is ridiculous. These are the points that we are trying to make.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much, Mr. Argento and Madame Bonsant.

We're going to move to Madame Savoie for five minutes.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you.

I would like to come back to the issue of temporary workers. You also spoke of farm labour. I wonder what you mean by reviewing the standards, because we heard a great deal about the way temporary workers are being abused. I wonder how we can help these workers. We could first offer them some protection, and then we can make sure that we are not heading the wrong way. There is also some protection for Canadian workers.

How do we balance all these elements?

[Jeff Morrison]

In fact we heard of some of the allegations concerning workers, especially in your area on the RAV line in Vancouver. I will say we are concerned about that particular incident. Of course, we don't take those allegations lightly, and they are not acceptable. However, in the case of Vancouver, we asked our B.C. counterparts, and provincial officials have asked for proof of these allegations. We've yet to receive anything, so it's difficult to comment on that particular incident.

However, I will say that HRSD and Citizenship and Immigration do have a responsibility to ensure that temporary foreign workers are being treated fairly and that they are receiving competitive wages. We would encourage officials from CIC and HRSD to ensure those responsibilities are met.

I know there's an underlying statement that in particular some of the unions make when referring to temporary workers, which is that this is just a way for construction industry employers to bring in cheap foreign labour. I want to say that is absolutely not the case. In fact it doesn't make sense. It's very expensive for a company to go out and find temporary foreign workers. There are relocation, travel, recruitment, and retraining costs, none of which you have with the Canadian worker.

In short, should we be accepting any of these sorts of unfair treatment? Absolutely not. It is an absolute responsibility of the federal government to ensure that this not happening. However, those potential problems should not be dissuading us from ensuring that temporary foreign workers are a source of future labour supply.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I accept the statement you've made.

Would you then agree that the workers who are brought in, assuming they're filling a real gap, should be paid a wage similar to Canadian workers for the corresponding job?

[Alfonso Argento]

Of course, there is no reason why they shouldn't. They come here to help us, and there is no reason for us to take advantage of them. What we're saying is, yes, we should use them, but also respect them.

[Jeff Morrison]

If I may add, it's also important to remember that it's a condition upon bringing in these foreign workers that in fact employers demonstrate they've exhausted all possible avenues to hire a Canadian first. No one has ever suggested that this requirement be eliminated. We think employers should absolutely be required to hire a Canadian first and only bring in temporary foreign workers if no one else is available.

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

We're out of time.

What's that?

[Denise Savoie, NDP, Victoria, BC]

I'll give it to you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

I'll take your minute, thank you.

I know we're over time, and we appreciate your coming, but I want some clarification on the payroll tax regarding training.

Mr. Lavoie, you touched on it a few times. You referred to Bill C-90. I just want some clarification. We heard it mentioned in other parts of our discussions. Is it something that employees, employers, etc., all agree on? You also commented about some of the legislation, and I wanted to make sure that was the case.

Secondly, are there other challenges with that? Obviously we also talked about formal versus informal training. I wanted to know what qualified for that 1%.

I'm asking for all of that in one minute.

[André Lavoie]

I'll try to restrict myself to a minute.

As far as the formal and informal, this is part of our problem in that we're restricted to the training act. As I said, it was conceived on the accounting logic. Basically what they're asking the employers to do is to figure how much training they have done in their businesses over a year and report that they have done at least 1% of their payroll. If they can't prove they have done this through the mechanism attached to the act, then they have to take 1% of their payroll and send it to the Ministry of Revenue.

We're trying to get away from that logic for the smaller businesses with $1 million and less in payroll and implement some system that will allow the employers to bring their manpower up-to-date as far as their skills are concerned, and recognize those skills within the labour market, without having to go through the education system. That we agree on; there's a consensus among unions and employers in Quebec.

I would say that the devil is in the details. All will depend on the way it is implemented. Of course, we might have some disagreement on the way it's implemented, but our main concern, as far as CFIB is concerned, is to keep it simple and make sure we don't overregulate, because then we're going to kill the whole idea of the principle. This is unfortunately what happens in a lot of legislation, as far as principles are concerned.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Once again, gentlemen, I want to thank you very much for being here for these very important issues and providing some additional insight to us. As we cross the country, we are finding some similarities, but once again, there are also some unique ideas from region to region that are helpful as well. Thank you very much for being here today.

The meeting is adjourned.