Pat Martin

[Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act, February 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I asked a question recently of the Minister of Human Resources Development regarding EI and the changes to EI that have had such an impact on the riding I represent. I was not at all satisfied with the answer. In fact I do not really know where the comments of the minister came from.

The minister maintained that it was our party which has been calling for a reduction in premiums. Clearly our party has been fairly constant in our position that we want the eligibility to be increased and the levels of benefits to be increased, but we certainly do not want the premiums to be lowered. That certainly was not our prime motivation.

The New Democratic Party has been looking at the impact of the cuts to EI for quite some time. In fact our EI critic, the member for Acadie—Bathurst, has toured the country recently, going to virtually every community, getting input from working people and asking them about the impact the cuts have had on their working lives. Certainly the feeling has been that the current system has had an impact greater than I think the government even realized when it introduced the recent changes to EI.

My riding of Winnipeg Centre has seen a cutback or a withdrawal of funding of $20.8 million. One can imagine the impact it would have on any community to pull out that kind of capital.

Looking at the inverse, if a business were to come to Winnipeg with an annual payroll of $20.8 million, one could imagine that any level of government would pave the streets with gold to try to attract that type of business to the riding.

Certainly this has had a devastating effect. The riding I represent has two of the poorest postal code zones in the country. Already an awful lot of people are living very close to the poverty line. It is a very marginal area. To pull $20.8 million out of that community meant that many more people were pushed over the fine line from living marginally close to the poverty line to living in abject poverty. It has had a huge impact.

We believe the changes necessary go far beyond what is being hinted at or alluded to.

We believe there have to be dramatic changes in the eligibility. We want at least 70% of all unemployed people to be eligible for benefits. They should be getting benefits in the neighbourhood of 60% of their working earnings. They certainly should not be penalized the way they are now in terms of clawbacks, where if their income is over a certain level they have their benefits clawed back.

One of the harshest rules that has come into effect recently which has caused the biggest inconvenience is the divisor rule, where the benefit is calculated using all of the 26 weeks preceding the date on which one files, including the dead weeks that one may not have worked. Obviously rolling those weeks where one has no income into the average will bring down one's monthly benefit.

Again, I do not believe the government realized how sweeping this would be. Cases came before the public hearings held by our critic. People came forward who had previously received in the neighbourhood of $350 per week. Their weekly cheques are now $38 per week. Surely this was not the intention of the government. We are hoping that substantial changes will be put into effect in the next budget.

[Canada Post, February 8th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the mandate of Canada Post is to provide the best possible service at the least possible cost. Now postal rates are going up. Service is going down. Yet last year Canada Post paid the federal government $200 million plus $12 million more in dividends.

I ask the minister responsible for Canada Post, where in the act does it say that Canada Post has to be some cash cow for the government? By what authority does Canada Post pay dividends at the expense of service to Canadians?

[Competition Act, February 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, we were talking about Bill C-20, although that seems like a long time ago after what we have just been through.

Bill C-20, in a nutshell, is about two things that we need to deal with today. The whistleblowing aspect for telemarketing fraud is first and foremost. Second is an issue we have not heard talked about much today, the prenotification of mergers process, the attempts to strengthen and simplify this process.

The reason I raise this is that it is a matter of record. The NDP did not vote in favour of Bill C-20 when it came up last spring and that was our reservation about the bill.

We applauded the effort to clean up telemarketing fraud and to implement whistleblower protection for employees. That certainly is in keeping with our policy. We are very pleased to see any reference to whistleblowing raised.

We could not vote in favour of Bill C-20 due to this other aspect, the prenotification of mergers process with which we simply were not comfortable. The reason we are dealing with Bill C-20 today is that it went through third reading. It went to the Senate and came back to us with amendments, the key amendment being the elimination of any reference to whistleblowing.

This is a great disappointment to us. We are very much of the mind that it is time to recognize whistleblowing protection in our public service and in the private sector. We believe good managers would welcome whistleblowing because it helps to alert them to wrongdoing of any sort throughout the enterprise over which they might have jurisdiction.

Certainly in the public sector our managers could use an improved level of whistleblowing to alter them to, for instance, the misuse of funds within their own government agencies.

Whistleblowing is an issue we have been hearing a great deal about in labour circles. The trade union movement has recognized for a great deal of time the need for whistleblowing protection because actually in common law the obligation of loyalty to the employer is paramount.

If an employee blows the whistle on some sort of wrongdoing and causes some inconvenience for the employer, discipline is actually justified in that case, especially if the employee is mistaken, even if they turned in the circumstances without any malice and with the best of intentions.

If the employee was wrong without any saving clauses in legislation to back them up, they could be disciplined and even discharged from their workplace for pointing out these wrongdoings.

Whistleblowing is key and paramount to backing up workers and helping them feel comfortable with alerting the public or their employer about wrongdoing of any kind. Telemarketing fraud, we heard today, a $100 million a year problem, lends itself to this kind of manipulation of employees or intimidation or coercion.

These are often poorly paid employees working in a call centre of some type. If the employer is an employer who would willingly undertake fraudulent enterprises or criminal activity, chances are pretty good they are not a very good employer either. They are the type of employer who would intimidate, coerce, harass the employees for blowing the whistle on them or for even threatening to or for even revealing to the public the true nature of the fraudulent enterprise that is going on.

I believe we need to do everything we can to clean up the telemarketing industry. I think it is actually rife with fraud. Frankly, the direct marketing people welcome any legislation that would help improve the image of that industry.

I do not think there is a lower form of animal than the telemarketing fraud practitioner who would take advantage of often seniors or shut-ins or people who are vulnerable and incapable of making good judgment about the products they have been asked to purchase.

I have a personal experience with this. An elderly relative of mine was in her late nineties when she started being harassed by unscrupulous telemarketing companies which by the way seem to share lists.

Once one gets its hooks into a senior citizen, the others seem to come in like vultures. It seems a whole series of sales people have started to harass this elderly relative of mine and have taken her for most of her life savings. For instance, absolutely fraudulent work has been done to her home. One salesman told her on the phone that her chimney looked like it was pulling away from her house. Being in her late nineties she was not able to go outside to see whether or not it was true. They sold her a $5,000 fix-it job to reattach the chimney to her house.

Being in the building trades, when I went to visit her next and learned of this I went outside to look at the chimney and found that it had never been leaning away from the house and had never been fixed. It is absolute, blatant fraud. They realized that they had a live one on the wire because she was a single woman in her late nineties living alone and with only home care.

We have an obligation to do everything in our power to try to stop that kind of activity. I compliment aspects of Bill C-20 if there is anything we can do to limit this type of activity.

I said this was the lowest form of animal in my mind, the person who would deliberately defraud vulnerable people or shut-ins. Frankly I have more respect for somebody who would mug than somebody who would cheat in this fashion. I have more admiration for somebody who sticks someone up and steals a wallet. At least they can see it coming; the person is being forthright about it. However this kind of stealth is a reprehensible problem.

We would stop more of these people if we had this whistleblower protection and employees who have been engaged, and often against their will, in sucking these people would feel comfortable in blowing the whistle. If there were some wrongdoing going on we would be able to stop more of them.

It is a coincidence that today I plan on handing down to the journals branch my own whistleblowing legislation in the form of a private member's bill. It is very thorough and comprehensive. It deals with the Public Service Staff Relations Act. I am hoping that other members of parliament will see fit to support it. As I say, good managers welcome whistleblowing because it points to all kinds of opportunities for savings or efficiencies within the system.

Bill C-20, as we expect, will go through. The NDP is pleased to say that we can support the motion made by the Minister of Industry today. I listened to the minister's remarks and I found that I could associate myself with them quite easily. It is quite honourable that we are trying to do something about the fraud that exists in that industry.

One of the biggest issues is the reporting of price fixing. This is one aspect the minister pointed out. We believe the Direct Marketing Association, as I mentioned, is eager to have the reputation of its industry improved, and it will be done through this regulation. I should point out that it is not a heavy-handed regulation. It is not interference in the free market by any stretch of the imagination. This is regulation for consumer protection and for the well-being of this rapidly growing industry.

I am pleased to say that the NDP will be voting in favour of the motion. I am also pleased that there will at least be some reference, even without the kind of penalties that we would like, in Bill C-20 to whistleblower protection.

[Competition Act, February 5th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Calgary West spoke at great length about the Senate and very little about Bill C-20. I guess there is obviously a relationship because the amendments made to Bill C-20 came from the Senate and some people would find that objectionable, that an unelected body would have any legislative power or ability to influence bills.

My question gets back to Reform's idea about the elected Senate and the need for Senate reform. I have often found it a sort of an irony when many of us worked so hard to get the Charlottetown accord put through, the constitutional amendments, which actually would have given what the Reform Party has been asking for, elected senators, Senate reform along the lines the hon. member seems to feel are necessary. Our party, as the hon. member suggested, believes the Senate should be abolished, not reformed to be elected. He is accurate in that.

I would be interested in hearing the hon. member's views about how the Reform Party justified working so hard to sink the Charlottetown accord, the constitutional amendments, when it is actually the position of the Reform Party that it wants the elected Senate which it would have had if the Charlottetown accord had gone through.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, February 3rd, 1999]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to represent our caucus in the debate at second reading of Bill C-63. I will be splitting my time with the member from Kamloops. I am relatively new to the critic area of citizenship and immigration, but I am getting well versed.

The issue is certainly not new to me given the area of Winnipeg in which I live. Citizenship is probably one of the key issues and concerns that we have in the community.

I am pleased to see that the minister has chosen to remain in the House to listen to the input of the opposition. I have not seen that in the past from any minister during second reading. Ministers usually read their piece and then carry on out the door. It is a very nice gesture and I am glad the minister is interested in what we have to say.

In my riding of Winnipeg Centre citizenship is a critical issue. We recently took a survey to get an idea of how many new Canadians are living within our borders. I knew there were high numbers of certain groups, but I was very surprised that there were 7,800 people of Filipino background just within Winnipeg Centre, and certainly my riding does not represent the majority of Filipinos in Manitoba or Winnipeg.

The only group that came close in numbers in terms of minority groups was the aboriginal population, with 6,500. There are over 2,000 Portuguese, over 1,800 Vietnamese, over 2,000 Chinese, Laotian, Cambodian, Eritrean, Chilean and Guatemalan people. I was overwhelmed by all the various subgroups. It was a real eye opener to see the number of new Canadians that have settled in the riding of Winnipeg Centre.

I would like to add that we would like to see many more. We would hope that any amendments to the Citizenship Act or Immigration Act would send a very welcoming message to the world that we recognize immigration as an engine of economic growth. In our riding it is critical in revitalizing an inner city that has more than its share of problems as a core area of a major Canadian city.

As a case in point, during the election campaign, going door to door in the worst part of my riding, it was revealing to see the housing stock. We would go past shack after shack with boarded windows or a house used by gangs, and then there would be a lovely little cottage, just recently renovated, with a painted fence, a new roof, curtains in the window and flowers planted along the sidewalk. Without even knocking on the door I knew that was the home of a new Canadian. I knew that would be a Filipino family or a Vietnamese family so proud of their home. The selling price of these houses is $15,000 to $17,000. A person can buy a good home in the inner city of Winnipeg for under $20,000. By anybody else's standards this would not be the kind of property that we would go to a great length to beautify, but the new Canadians who come to Winnipeg do just that. It is a real pleasure to see.

It is also a pleasure that the area is being repopulated. There has been a mass exodus out of the inner city. As people manage to get some means together they seem to move out to the suburbs, leaving this donut-shaped city and vacant houses. There have been 65 arsons since October in a 12 block area. It is almost like the Watts riots in the southern states at the height of the civil rights movement. It is burn baby burn. They are trying to level the inner city in many ways just out of sheer frustration at all things that poverty brings.

However, new Canadians are turning that around by buying these houses. They are also keeping the schools viable because there are more children in the neighbourhood.

Having said that, I am disappointed because I do not believe that this piece of legislation is going to move us any closer to the goal of welcoming new Canadians to the country or sending the message internationally that the door is open to Canada.

Without getting too technical I would like to go through some of the points that we have reservations about and what leads us to say that at this point, without amendment, our caucus will not be voting for Bill C-63.

First I would like to speak about the physical presence requirement in clauses 6(1)(b) and 2(2)(c). While I understand the concern over what many people feel was a loophole in the law, I feel that the proposed requirement for a full three years of physical presence in Canada is extreme. I also object to the loss of the current provision whereby one-half of the time spent in Canada prior to becoming a landed immigrant would be counted toward residency for citizenship.

The issue that we find the most fault with would be the language requirement, that the test has to be done in one of the two official languages. The minister in her introduction said that Bill C-63 was the result of extensive consultation around the country. I agree. I went to the consultations in Winnipeg. However, overwhelming I believe what the minister heard during those consultations was that Canadians did not want this rigidity. The language issue was a real sore point, a real hot button for a lot of the groups who made representations. Even the Filipino Association of Manitoba, the largest ethnic group in my riding, made a very spirited representation to that committee. It was very capably argued by the son of the chair of the committee on citizenship and immigration, who is a very bright and well respected lawyer in the city of Winnipeg. He spoke passionately against this particular clause. I am sure it was not the only group. I heard many groups making that representation.

I will quote the organization that deals with English as a second language in downtown Toronto, COSTI. Mr. Mario Calla felt very strongly about it. He said “A lot of people will forfeit the opportunity to gain Canadian citizenship as a result of this change and that is very unfortunate”.

There is great nervousness and unrest in the advocacy groups and in the social agencies that deal with English as a second language.

When we break it down to its barest core, how can we judge the value or the merits of an individual by virtue of what language they speak? Why must they be proficient enough to take a test in one of those two languages? I do not see how that has anything to do with whether they will be useful to us as productive Canadian citizens.

Many people who live here for three to five years, as Mr. Calla pointed out, are too busy to get good enough in one of the official languages to take a written test. When a person comes here and works at a minimum wage job, or maybe two or three minimum wage jobs, and maybe juggling child care, they might learn enough English or French to get by, like many people do.

We do not want more barriers. This really does send the message that Canada is not welcoming people with open arms because we are going to put all these roadblocks in the way.

There are many other obvious roadblocks. The hated head tax, of course, we are not going to talk about under the citizenship rules. I hope we get a chance to debate the head tax again under immigration.

Things like landing fees really set the tone to people in other countries who might be looking to Canada. They feel that it is not an open door; it is a door that has a series of hurdles in front of it meant to trip people up and keep them out.

My first wish would be for 5,000 new Canadians in downtown Winnipeg tomorrow. However, I do not see anything in these rules that will help us achieve that goal or even help with the message that Canada welcomes new Canadians to help rebuild this country.

[Petitions, February 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the third petition is from Winnipegers regarding the abolition of nuclear weapons and a non-proliferation treaty. They feel strongly that there is no place for nuclear weapons in today's world.

[Petitions, February 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the second petition is with regard to pay equity.

They ask that there be no more delay, just pay. They want the federal government to make good on its pay equity obligations.

[Petitions, February 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to introduce three petitions.

The first is on the abolition of the Senate. The many petitioners from all over Manitoba feel strongly that they are not after a triple-E Senate, they are after a triple-A Senate, to abolish the Senate.

[Energy Efficiency Strategy, December 8th, 1998]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should invest in a comprehensive energy efficiency strategy, thus: (a) exploiting the considerable job creation potential of energy efficiency; (b) encouraging the development of high tech expertise and export opportunities; and (c) increasing the number of federally owned buildings (of which there are 50,000) retrofitted for energy efficiency through the Federal Buildings Initiative.

Mr. Speaker, I welcome the opportunity to speak to this motion. I have been quite anxious to introduce and to encourage this concept of job creation through energy conservation for quite some time.

I start by saying thank you to the committee for ruling that this motion be deemed votable. I appreciate that very much. I understand that this is the only motion of the current batch of motions in Private Members' Business that was deemed votable in this round.

The concept is job creation through energy conservation. Although the motion could be worded better, I look forward to the opportunity to try to explain what that means.

We believe that the situation does not have to be jobs versus the environment as is so often the case. I would like to demonstrate how the situation can be jobs and the environment. In other words I point to, focus and showcase the enormous job creation opportunities involved in the energy retrofitting of our publicly owned buildings.

As a carpenter by trade I spent much of my working life building megaprojects. I built energy generating stations. For many years of my career it would be heresy to actually advocate harvesting units of energy out of the existing system rather than building new generating systems, whether they were nuclear power plants or hydroelectric dams. Obviously that was the kind of work that we looked forward to as tradespeople. Like many others, I would drive across the country to try to get on one of those megaprojects.

The original research paper on this subject was done in 1993. This idea came to fruition because the province of Ontario cancelled a huge energy purchase from my province of Manitoba. Thus the Conawapa hydro generating station which was about to be started had to be cancelled.

Many tradespeople were anxiously and eagerly awaiting Conawapa. This was something we were looking forward to. Five years of work for skilled tradespeople was nothing to be sneezed at. When the province of Ontario cancelled this project we were devastated.

At that time I was representing the carpenters union in the province of Manitoba. We had 1,200 members who were anxiously waiting to build Conawapa. It was something we wanted to do. When it was cancelled these people literally did not know which way to turn.

That led us to investigate other ideas. How would we put these people to work? We commissioned a study on the idea of job creation through energy conservation. We wanted to find out what kind of job opportunities there would be in harvesting units of energy from the existing system through demand side management techniques rather than building new generating stations.

We were happy to find out that there were as many as seven times the number of jobs per $1 million invested, or per $1 invested, in the demand side management of our energy resources than there were in building new generating stations. This came as a huge relief. We could now advocate a green environment by being good environmental stewards without shooting ourselves in the foot. It would have been heresy not too many years ago for a carpenter to openly promote this demand side management rather than build new generating stations.

This is what led us to this conclusion. For many years we have been pushing this idea. We have been training our people in anticipation of this idea catching on.

In this motion I point to the federal government owning 50,000 buildings. In its literature it is actually 68,000 building that the federal government owns and operates. It does have some measures under way. Nobody is trying to say that the federal government is doing nothing in this regard. There is the federal building initiative program. Its goal is to try and conserve energy within publicly owned buildings.

Of those 68,000 buildings the government owns and operates, the federal building initiative has only done about 100. With my motion, we are hoping to make the argument that we could do as many as a couple of thousand per year and put a whole industry back to work in this new and laudable concept of demand side management.

I do not believe that we are taking full advantage of this opportunity if we are only doing a couple of projects a year. The federal government's web page is almost a brag sheet about the federal building initiative. The savings are unbelievable.

One example I pulled off the web site shows that Public Works and Government Services Canada upgraded a 500,000 square foot building in Calgary. I believe it was the Harry Hays building. It resulted in an energy saving of $300,000 per year. That is for one building. We created a lot of jobs. Obviously the manufacturing sector benefited as well because there was the installation of new lighting fixtures, HVAC systems and smart boilers, et cetera. And we saved $300,000.

We spend over $800 million in energy costs per year to heat, light and cool all those 68,000 buildings.

In the document “A Brighter Future: Job Creation and Energy Efficiency in Manitoba”, research shows that we can achieve an energy savings of as much as 40% by introducing many of the high tech systems that are currently available. Many of the buildings the government owns and operates are old and outdated. They were built in a time when energy was not an issue, when energy was cheap and plentiful.

I remember the time when Ontario Hydro and Manitoba Hydro ran ads on TV advocating more use of energy. They wanted us to do everything electrically, to turn on the lights. We cannot do that any more.

There is another upside to what I am trying to introduce here. First is the job creation aspect. As carpenters, that was our first motivation and the reason we got into this. The second is the cost saving for the owners of the public buildings of up to 40% of that $800 million a year. The third very good argument is that we could help to meet our commitments made at Kyoto and Rio de Janiero to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions.

The federal building initiatives web page lists not only how much money it is saving by doing these buildings, it also lists how many millions of kilos of harmful greenhouse gas emissions it is saving per year. Some of these buildings are belching out unbelievable amounts of pollution. If we are going to be examples to private sector businesses in asking them to clean up their act and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions, surely we have to start with our own buildings. Surely we can demonstrate to the private sector that not only is it a good idea and good environmental stewardship to reduce energy consumption and eliminate waste, but they can also save a fortune by doing it.

This is why I believe that the federal building initiative, the program which is already in place and which I am not critical of at all, should be expanded tenfold. If 100 buildings have been done so far and there are 68,000 buildings to go, what are we waiting for? We could put a whole generation of tradespeople back to work. We could finally get some young people coming into the skilled trades, which is a real problem.

In the trade that I represent, the average age of a tradesman is 48 years. These guys are looking for a way out by the time they hit 50. Their knees and backs are gone. Young people are not choosing the skilled trades as a career option because the work is so spotty. This project could be a decade long program to get our buildings up to world class standards.

Besides job creation, obvious cost savings and environmental stewardship, the fourth benefit is the research and development that goes into this new high tech field. We could show the world. We could be the centre of excellence for environmental stewardship in terms of living in a harsh northern winter climate and show that it is still possible not to be wasteful in our energy use. We could export the engineering and research that we do.

We are already leaders in many aspects. There is the window industry, for instance. I do not think anybody in the world makes better windows than our own companies, such as Loewen windows in Manitoba. They export all over the world. They are leaders.

There are other aspects of energy retrofitting. We embrace this concept but one caution I have is there is a real temptation when one gets involved in energy retrofitting to pick the low hanging fruit, the easy stuff.

For instance, anybody can change the light fixtures to more energy efficient ballasts. That is okay. It is all very well and good and one might get a very quick payback on one's investment. But when one goes to do the building envelope, the much more expensive things, insulation, windows and doors, the payback might take eight years or so. Average the two together and there might be a three or four year payback on one's investment. Most property owners will tolerate that. But if one picks the low hanging fruit and only does the easy stuff and does not do a comprehensive energy retrofit, it renders the other details less economical.

The real clinger here, the real thing I hope to excite people with is that everything I have talked about so far can be done at absolutely no cost to the taxpayer. Free. Revenue neutral. Not a penny. Private sector investors are standing by ready, willing and able to finance all of these retrofits. As many as we can throw at them, they are happy to underwrite, to pay for and to be paid back slowly out of the energy savings.

It is called the ESCO industry, energy services contracting. Many private financial institutions are involved. It is a very high tech field. Some of the best engineering firms in the world are doing the energy audits first of all.

All the federal government would have to do is to let us use its buildings to create jobs, reduce its operating costs and reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions. What are we waiting for? Instead of doing 100 of these projects over the five years that the federal building initiative has been in place, why are we not doing 10,000 of them? And why are we not doing outreach to show those in the private sector how it can be done and that they should be doing it too?

The whole idea of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions has been viewed in a very negative light. Here we can point to a very positive side of it and we can save a fortune.

The province of Manitoba spends $3.2 billion a year on energy. Every dollar that is not spent on energy can be spent elsewhere in the economy.

The whole concept of demand side management and energy retrofit is almost too good to be true. It is such a win-win situation. Any unit of energy that we harvest from the existing system by demand side management measures is exactly the same as one produced in a generating station, except for a couple of important things. For one thing it is available at one-third the cost. One-third the cost. The American research shows this. It is on line immediately. At the same instant one introduces demand side management measures in a building, the energy is on line immediately instead of waiting five to 10 years for a generating station to be built and to get on line. No additional infrastructure is needed in terms of distribution. And it creates seven times the number of jobs. One would think that would be really smart.

Frankly the Americans are way ahead of us on this. The Bonneville hydro authority has precluded the need to build seven nuclear power plants just by its demand side management program. Seven nuclear power plants at $10 billion each. That means it does not have to borrow that money on the open market. It does not have to pollute the environment with seven more power plants, although it is arguable whether they pollute or not. The hydro authority saw the sense in this and really embraced it wholeheartedly. The Tennessee Valley hydro authority has similar statistics.

I do not know why we are so slow on this. We live in a harsh winter climate where energy costs are a huge issue. Why are we not showing them how it is done instead of the other way around? I believe this is possible.

People ask what the motivation is behind this. Frankly I sound like a broken record. I came to Ottawa in 1993 to pitch this at an energy efficiency conference at the minister's request. I was given the energy innovator's award by the then minister of natural resources. Everybody said that it was fabulous and great, that it was a public-private partnership.

One source of venture capital for this was union pension funds. We pulled together a pool of union pension funds dedicated to this project, $150 million of dedicated capital ready to go. We said “We have H.H. Angus, one of the best engineering companies in the world to do the auditing. We have the financiers in place. Just let us use your buildings”. Nothing. Frankly, it did not really go very far.

Other financiers are in place and are underwriting the 100 projects done by the FBI but at a much greater mark-up. They want a much greater rate of return on their investment. Pension fund investors are happy to have a slow, steady, guaranteed rate of return, which is what makes it such a good investment for them.

The study we did called A Brighter Future is in its fourth printing now. Groups as diverse as the James Bay Cree have been asking for copies of it because they have a vested interest in reducing the number of hydro projects given the impact they have on northern communities. In Manitoba we are still dealing with the flooding of South Indian Lake.

Building a hydro project on a river is radical intervention in an ecosystem. We cannot enter into that kind of project lightly. It is irresponsible not to do everything in our power to look elsewhere for our energy. Building another generating station should only be a last resort. Certainly we will build more generating stations someday, but until we harvest every unit of energy we can out of the existing system it would be crazy to borrow $10 billion to build another dam. It is just irresponsible.

There are many measures in energy retrofitting. Rather than getting into the complicated technical side of things, I would like people to think of their own homes. We have known for years that an energy saving shower head that is worth about $15 can save $75 a year, but how many of us have actually gone down to Canadian Tire, paid the fifteen bucks and screwed the shower head on at home? We are stupid if we do not. We can save $75 a year for a $15 investment. That is how painfully obvious the measures are. The measures that need to be taken in buildings like the Wellington Building are that obvious to engineers. Why do people not do that?

Now we have taken the last obstacle away. What if one does not have the $15 to buy the shower head. We can do it free of charge, at no cost to the government, zippo, free, gratis. There would be hundreds of thousands of jobs with no charge to the taxpayer. We could reduce greenhouse gas emissions and save 40% of the $800 million per year that we currently spend on energy to heat and light 68,000 federal government buildings. What are we waiting for?

The whole industry is anxiously waiting to get started. The carpenters union in partnership with contractors across the country are running courses on energy retrofit construction, new vapour barrier and insulation systems. They are eagerly awaiting and anticipating this volume of work. The sheet metal workers union is specializing in various HVAC systems, the heat exchangers, the balancing, et cetera. Electricians are one of the groups that has offered to use some of its union pension funds because it will create jobs for its members. It is an ethical investment and it is good work.

There is another advantage to having the work in demand side management measures rather than in the construction of new generating stations. When a hydro dam is built all the jobs are concentrated in some isolated bush camp in the middle of nowhere. With demand side management measures jobs are spread evenly throughout every community in the country. Everywhere there is a publicly owned building is where the jobs will be. There may be 30 jobs to renovate a post office or 30 jobs to renovate a building on a military base. Those jobs will be more evenly distributed. It would be a far more equitable type of project.

We could view it as a megaproject but it is spread over the country. It would put an industry back to work. It would help us to embrace the idea of public-private partnerships in a very positive light.

Let the industry pay for it. It just wants to use the government buildings. It wants to help the government meet its Kyoto targets and bring down greenhouse gas emissions. Job creation for energy conservation is an idea whose time has come. It is long overdue. I welcome the support of other members in this regard.

[Division No. 298, December 3rd, 1998]

Madam Speaker, I am happy to have this opportunity to speak to Bill C-43.

I represent quite a few employees of Revenue Canada in the riding of Winnipeg Centre. The city of Winnipeg is the location of a huge Revenue Canada operation with 5,000 employees. Many of these employees who live in my riding have come to me with a great deal of apprehension and a great deal of fear about what this new superagency really means for them.

No one we have talked to can point to any compelling reasons that we are making this move toward a superagency. If anything, reason and logic do not seem to enter into this at all.

The biggest fear that has been articulated is that it is really being driven by ideology rather than by any good reason, any good logical business plan or expectation of savings. The real opportunities for savings within Revenue Canada will not come from the creation of some superagency. The real opportunity for revenue will come from having an adequate number of auditors to collect the taxes that are owing.

A group of auditors made representations to our caucus just a week ago pleading this very case. Billions of dollars of taxes are left uncollected each year because there simply are not enough auditors in the field doing the job and getting these revenues for the government to use. In other words, people are getting away with murder in terms of taxation because they are not being audited properly. Taxes are not being collected properly. This is the case which was made to us by senior auditors with Revenue Canada in their appeal to us to do everything we can to oppose Bill C-43.

The auditors expect that the situation will only get worse after the creation of the new superagency. The auditors feel, and I think quite justifiably, that the whole move toward a superagency is like a Trojan horse. They think it is wrapped up in a package which would be palatable to the public but in actual fact it contains a lot of surprises waiting to be sprung on us, not the least of which is a move toward further privatization of services.

The road toward ASD, alternative service delivery, superagencies, whatever we want to call it, is the road toward privatization and dismantling the public sector even in areas we know should be managed and controlled strictly through the public sector, like something as sensitive as the collection of our taxes. Other ASD examples have been absolutely disastrous for working people. They are always the last ones to be consulted.

I am thinking specifically of the privatization at Goose Bay. All the non-military personnel were laid off and services were contracted out to an out of country company, Serco, to provide the same services that Canadians used to provide in good unionized well paying jobs. These same people were hired back at half the wages and are now working for a foreign corporation to provide services on our military base. It is absolutely perverse when we think about it.

It is that kind of background and that sort of recent experience that has made Canadians apprehensive about Bill C-43 and the creation of this superagency.

It is not just the NDP and the labour groups that are directly impacted by this who are apprehensive about it. Yvon Cyrenne of Raymond Chabot Martin Paré said in the chartered accountant magazine of March 1998: “The creation of the customs and revenue agency would, for all intents and purposes, be an abdication of political power”. I would add that it would be an abdication of political responsibility in that it would be that much more removed from elected officials having any purview over this collection. It would be strictly in the hands of this freestanding, arm's length superagency.

About 5,000 employees of Revenue Canada work in Transcona and in Winnipeg. Many of them live in my riding and many worked on my campaign. Some of them were actually politicized for the first time in their lives because of what was about to happen to them. They were reaching out for some kind of political support from anybody who would articulate or voice their concerns. I am glad to have the opportunity to that today.

They have good reason to be apprehensive. Nobody really knows what this is going to end up looking like. Will it look like the Canada Post Corporation? Will it be a stand alone agency like Canada Post? I do not think so, although that comparison has been made. If it were, then the workers should fall under the Canada Labour Code, not the Public Service Staff Relations Act.

That in itself is a huge issue for the unionized workers who work for Revenue Canada. Where will the industrial relations be when all of the dust settles? Can anybody answer that? What is going to happen to their terms and conditions of employment? Are they still bargaining with the same employer? Is the employer that much different after they are removed from the public sector in that sense?

There are hundreds of questions that are left unanswered. Many were brought to our attention, as I said, when the employees of Revenue Canada came to our caucus just a week ago and articulated these fears. Representatives from the Public Service Alliance of Canada, the Union of Taxation Employees and one other labour group were justifiably apprehensive about this.

The term Trojan horse has been used. I have heard the term mega taxman. It does not matter what we want to call this new superagency, it is going to be something that Canadians will not recognize and will not be comfortable with. Will it look like the IRS in the United States, a boondoggle like the IRS that answers to nobody?

This is what we are saying. When we get that kind of independence, there is room for abuse. It is something that can grow out of control, beyond what it was initially designed for.

There seems to be a sense in the public sector, certainly within the federal government, of a belief in this right wing ideology that all things in the public sector are bad and all things privately run are good. There is a belief that some inherent streamlining comes into play when things go into the private sector, as if there is no waste in the private sector. This is an absolute myth.

It is a cruel myth in that this bashing of the public sector goes on. This atmosphere of contempt has been allowed to flourish across the country. Public sector employees are knocking themselves out to do their best, often with limited resources and limited compensation. Abuse is heaped on them. Every time there is a deficit or a cost overrun they say “Oh, it is that bloated public sector. If we could only shed some jobs out of the public sector”. There is this myth perpetrating that we can shrink our way to prosperity.

Even the private sector went through its decade of lean and mean, shedding employees and casting people off. Many of them now realize they have gone too far. They have cut all the fat and have cut into the flesh, the muscle tissue to where they cannot function any more.

That is what is happening to our military. This compulsion, this drive to cut, hack, slash and throw Canadians out into the street has left us with a human resources emergency in the military. The people who are being cut are the highly skilled, middle band of trained workers, the people who actually had administrative capacities, et cetera. We still have the foot soldiers, the grunts. We still have plenty of generals. It is that middle band of competent people who can actually do things which is disappearing. The restoration of funding overnight is not going to bring that middle band back. Those people are gone. They are gone to the point where the whole organization is at risk.

Similar streamlining efficiencies, if we want to call them that, are taking place every time we see this idea of offloading to alternative service delivery. That is really what the superagency is. It is ASD. It is getting the same job done in a different way.

We would argue it is a step backward in terms of service to the Canadian public. We are buying into an unknown commodity for one thing. The reservations brought to us by the UTE, the Union of Taxation Employees, are real, valid and justified concerns. They are vehemently opposed to this.

The government has failed to prove to anybody's satisfaction that this is a good thing to do. All we have heard is complaint after complaint that we are going into uncharted waters, that danger lurks in these uncharted waters. It will probably be the working people who will end up feeling the brunt of it.

The government should also be forewarned that we are going to lose valuable opportunities to collect revenues to the best of our ability. If we listen to the people at the front lines who really know what they are talking about, they say we need 500 more auditors in the field tomorrow, not cutbacks and reductions.