Debates of April 29th, 2014

Democratic Reform

[Stephen Harper, Conservative, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, as members would know, the Supreme Court has ruled in its wisdom that the federal government can neither abolish the Senate. Nor in fact can the federal government actually propose significant reforms to the Senate. That is all now, according to the Supreme Court of Canada, within the purview of the provinces. Therefore, my position has not changed.

If the provinces believe, as I do, that there should be reform, they should bring forward those forthwith. If they do not believe that, they should bring forward amendments to abolish the Senate.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, for months the Prime Minister kept saying that the leader of the third party was defending the status quo and gave us the impression that he disagreed with that.

Now, all of a sudden, the Prime Minister is waving a white flag and admitting defeat. Why? Because he would have to talk to the provinces and it is far too difficult for him to talk to them.

Is the Prime Minister now the new champion of the status quo in the Senate?

[Stephen Harper, Conservative, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, on the contrary. According to the Supreme Court, only the provinces can reform or abolish the Senate. I encourage the provinces to do that. They have the power to make amendments through their legislators. Nonetheless, it is clear that Canadians do not want constitutional negotiations.

Employment

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the government has allowed the temporary foreign worker program to become a force that drives down wages across the country and takes advantage of vulnerable people from abroad. It has doubled the intake of temporary foreign workers since taking office.

Will the Prime Minister now commit to significant reductions in the size of this broken program?

[Stephen Harper, Conservative, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, that is exactly what we are doing, and we are doing it with the opposition of the Liberal Party. Under reforms brought in by this government over the past three years, applications for low-skilled temporary foreign workers have dropped this year by 30%, in spite of the fact that the Liberal Party voted against them.

Liberal MPs continue to write to the Minister of Employment and Social Development, demanding more temporary foreign workers for their ridings. It is absolutely clear that the government's position is that temporary foreign workers can be used when they are needed, but only when they are needed. They can never be used in place of available and willing Canadian workers.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, last Wednesday, the jobs minister said that abuses were rare in the temporary foreign worker program. The very next day, the program was so broken that the government had to impose a moratorium on an entire sector.

I raised concerns about this program with him a year ago. Will the Prime Minister have us believe that the government just learned about these program problems last Thursday?

[Stephen Harper, Conservative, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, we are getting a revisionist history from the Liberal Party, which not only started this program and expanded this program, and continues to demand temporary foreign workers for its own ridings, but has consistently voted against any restriction on the use of temporary foreign workers.

Our position is very different. We will not tolerate any situation where an employer thinks he can use temporary foreign workers when Canadians are available.

[Justin Trudeau, Liberal, Papineau, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the youth unemployment rate is twice as high as that of other Canadians. The government is driving wages down with the hiring of temporary foreign workers. Canadian students are looking for summer jobs as we speak.

Will the Prime Minister fix his broken program and allow students to get a job with a decent wage this summer?

[Stephen Harper, Conservative, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, again, the Liberal Party opposes any changes to this program. The reality is that the number of applications for temporary foreign workers has dropped this year by 30% thanks to the changes made by this government. Our position is clear.

Because we stand up for Canadian workers, it is one of the reasons why, and I just cannot help mentioning this, we saw in the report last week that the Canadian middle class was doing better than the middle classes of just about any country.

Democratic Reform

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, why is the Prime Minister refusing to give the commissioner of elections the power to compel witnesses to testify to investigators? The Competition Bureau has this power. The elections watchdogs in seven provinces in Australia and in the United States all have this power. What is he so afraid of?

[Stephen Harper, Conservative, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, first, I am delighted to see evidence that the Canadian population, including, by the way, supporters of the New Democratic Party, strongly supports this government's electoral reform legislation, including the principle that people should not be able to vote without being able to show their identity.

Regarding the specific question, the powers given to the independent Commissioner of Official Languages are consistent with those given to all other investigators for similar offences.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, I believe the Prime Minister probably meant to speak of the commissioner of elections and not the Commissioner of Official Languages.

Even with the Conservative about-face, the Chief Electoral Officer still will not be able to encourage Canadians to vote. Encouraging voter turnout is the sort of thing that used to be non-partisan, something we could all agree upon was important.

Does the Prime Minister really believe that encouraging people to vote is a partisan issue?

[Stephen Harper, Conservative, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, let me correct myself. I meant to say, of course, that the commissioner of elections will have powers in terms of investigations that are fully consistent with those of all other investigators on similar offences.

As we know, the biggest single reason why people fail to vote is that they are not aware of the various times of when, where, and how they can vote. That is the core responsibility of Elections Canada, and we encourage it to focus on that responsibility and actually reverse the trend we have seen in elections, to see voter turnout go up instead of down.

[Thomas Mulcair, NDP, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, actually, as we saw from the examples I provided the Prime Minister, it is simply not true to say that other investigative bodies on elections do not have that power. In Australia, in the U.S., and in seven provinces, they do have that power.

Yesterday I made a personal appeal to the Prime Minister to work constructively on this bill. Will the Prime Minister sit down with me and the other opposition leaders to work together to write an elections bill that will truly strengthen our democracy for all Canadians?

[Stephen Harper, Conservative, Prime Minister]

Mr. Speaker, once again, as we know, the New Democrats decided they were against this bill before they read it. Their own critic admitted that.

The reality is that we have seen in polling that the public strongly supports this. The public is very strongly opposed to the NDP's fundamental view that people should be able to vote even if they have no intention or ability to prove their identity. That is an extreme position, a recipe for fraud, one that Canadians do not support, and one that this government will not support.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, although the Conservatives have made some amendments, their election reform is full of holes. Bill C-23 still does not give investigators the powers they need to uncover fraud. Even with the Conservatives' election reform, perpetrators of the robocall scandal would remain unpunished, because Bill C-23 does not allow Elections Canada to compel testimony and to get hold of the documents it needs for its investigation, nor does the bill force call centres to retain telephone numbers and the scripts of their calls.

Will the minister stop protecting fraudsters and fix the holes in his bill?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Mr. Speaker, the Elections Canada investigator has the same powers as a police investigator. The hon. member's problem with the bill is that it requires people to show a piece of ID to prove who they are. The NDP thinks that people should be able to vote without any ID. That is an extreme position and one that is widely rejected by Canadians. We will require ID so that we know who is voting.

[Alexandrine Latendresse, NDP, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Mr. Speaker, even with its amendments, the government still refuses to budge on giving more powers to elections investigators. The former commissioner of Canada elections, William Corbett, was very clear in committee. He said that there was nothing in Bill C-23 that will enhance the ability of the commissioner to investigate alleged cases of fraud.

Why is the minister content to have a commissioner of Canada Elections whose hands are tied behind his back? Why is he more concerned about protecting fraudsters than protecting the integrity of the election process?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Minister of State (Democratic Reform)]

Mr. Speaker, I said it in French; I will say it in English. The Commissioner of Canada Elections has all the same investigative powers of a police force.

Furthermore, we are increasing his power by making him independent. He will be independent from Elections Canada and housed in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions.

However, the real objection of the NDP members is that they believe people should be allowed to vote without any ID whatsoever. We reject that. The fair elections act would require people to show ID demonstrating who they are, or they will not be able to vote.

Employment

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal tradition of bringing in temporary foreign workers lives on under the Conservative employment minister. Under the Liberals, more than 600 exotic dancers were allowed into Canada on the pretext that there was a shortage of qualified workers. Then, the Conservatives allowed some banks and McDonald's restaurants to replace Canadian employees with temporary foreign workers. Every time a new flaw in the program comes to light, the government promises in vain to remedy the situation. When will the Conservatives admit that an independent assessment is necessary?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for her question, particularly because she reminded the House that, under the Liberals, a temporary foreign worker program existed specifically to bring in exotic dancers. The Liberals issued 600 work permits for exotic dancers.

Our government shut down that program. We protected foreign women and we are going to continue to safeguard the integrity of the immigration system. We did away with the Liberals' exotic dancer program.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the NDP has never lobbied for McDonald's restaurants or strip clubs.

The number of temporary foreign workers has doubled under the Conservatives. The program, which was supposed to be used as a last resort, has become a way of driving wages down.

The Conservatives have constantly made the rules more flexible by opening the program to unskilled workers and allowing employers to pay those workers less than Canadians. The C.D. Howe Institute has indicated that the program is partially responsible for the hike in the unemployment rate.

When will the government launch an independent investigation?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, we reviewed this policy and have already made changes to it, which has resulted in a drop in the number of temporary foreign worker applications.

Perhaps the NDP should investigate their own policies since there is quite a bit of hypocrisy coming from the other side of the House. It is the NDP that requested labour market opinion exemptions for musicians and opposed the position of the Canadian musicians' union. It is the NDP that wanted to speed up the elimination of the program's checks and balances for the computer industry.

The NDP's policies in this regard are not at all consistent.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is Conservative mismanagement that is taking away Canadians' jobs, not the opposition.

In response to a written question asking for basic information on temporary foreign workers, the government refused even to say who applied for labour market opinions, who got them, or where. It claimed it would be too much work. No wonder this program is failing. Given the minister's failure to fix the program, will he now agree to do the right thing and launch an independent audit?

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, of course the Auditor General can audit whatever he deems appropriate.

The reason why those names were not released is a small detail. It is called the Privacy Act. I know the New Democrats do not have any regard for the Privacy Act when it is inconvenient for them. They may want to suggest amendments to the Privacy Act to exempt the immigration act from it.

This is an opportunity for me to recall that one of the many reforms this government has made to that program was shutting down the Liberal stripper program that issued hundreds of visas specifically and purposefully to exotic dancers from abroad who faced degradation in Canada. We ended—