Scott Armstrong

[Justice, April 18th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians are concerned about crime, which is why our government has passed over 30 measures cracking down on violent crime and—

[Rita MacNeil, April 17th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker,

It's a working man I am
And I've been down under ground.
And I swear to God if I ever see the sun
Or for any length of time
I can hold it in my mind
I never again will go down under ground.

Yesterday, Canada lost of its finest musical voices, country and folk singer-songwriter Rita MacNeil.

After much hardship in her early years, her breakthrough came in 1987's crossover hit, Flying on Your Own. By 1990, she was a bestselling country artist in Canada. Through it all, Cape Breton's first lady of song remained down to earth and served as a patron for many emerging and struggling artists. A proud native of Big Pond, Cape Breton, she paid eloquent tribute to her home's cultural and industrial roots through songs like Working Man.

We all express our sincere condolences to Rita MacNeil's family, her friends and her colleagues.

[Health, April 16th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has been clear that supporting Canadian families is a priority for our government. Today the Minister of Health met with families and community groups to outline actions that we are taking to support Canadian families in terms of food, drugs and consumer safety products.

Can the Minister of Health please inform this House of the steps our government is taking to protect the health and safety of Canadian families?

[Business of Supply, April 16th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I do not profess to know what is going on in the cabs in Toronto, being from a rural part of Atlantic Canada. My region needs the foreign worker program to support many businesses. Businesses have had to shut down because they cannot find available employees. We need to have a program that steps in and fills that gap. However, what we really need is to support education, training and the development of skills so that Canadians can fill available jobs. It works as a combination of our immigration system, our education system and our post-secondary education system to make sure that Canadians are trained for available jobs, whether they be in the agricultural industry or in the skilled trades in downtown cities like Toronto.

[Business of Supply, April 16th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Malpeque talks about contradictions in one statement or another. One of his colleagues, referring to the temporary foreign workers program, said that temporary foreign workers were an important part of our economy and some of the best workers are temporary foreign workers. Then the same member said at a later date that the temporary foreign worker program had been consistently abused as a vehicle to replace Canadian workers with foreign workers.

If anyone is making contradictory statements, it is not the members of our party. It is the members of my opposition colleague's party.

As far as bringing in agricultural workers, in my riding we have a huge agricultural base and many farmers are using temporary foreign workers. There are no changes that we will make to make lives more difficult for those farmers. What we really need is to ensure we have the skills training and the job training necessary so Canadians who can fulfill those jobs.

I envisage a time in Canada where we do not need the foreign worker program because we will have more Canadians trained for the skills and jobs that are available.

[Business of Supply, April 16th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Mississauga—Streetsville today.

I am pleased to be here to speak to the motion on temporary foreign workers.

First, let me echo the comments of my colleagues that we are concerned about some of the recent matters highlighted in the media as of late. It is unequivocally unacceptable for Canadian companies to be laying off Canadians to replace them with foreign workers. I think that is something with which all members of the House would agree. As the minister has made clear in her statement on this matter, HRSDC officials are reviewing the matter.

In budget 2013, we committed as a government to make several changes to strengthen the temporary foreign worker program. Canadians must always have the first crack at any available job. We have been consistent on that position with the program.

Our government's focus from day one of this mandate has been on jobs, economic growth and long-term prosperity. Connecting Canadians with available jobs has been our mission. Through the expanded job alerts program, unprecedented funding for work sharing and skills training during the recession and targeting supports for older workers through the targeted initiative for older workers, our government has consistently put Canadians first.

Among the largest industrialized countries in the world, such as the U.S., Germany and Japan, Canada has the strongest record of growth and job creation throughout this economic recovery. Since the depth of the global economic recession, the Canadian economy has created over 900,000 net new jobs. Overwhelmingly, these are full-time, well-paying jobs in the private sector. We are doing well, but we cannot afford to become complacent.

The global economy remains fragile and the United States, our largest trading partner, continues to struggle with massive debt and modest economic growth.

Canadians may legitimately ask how, in a country with 7% unemployment, there could be a shortage of qualified applicants in any job. Yet, skills and labour shortages are a reality and they are affecting the ability of Canadian businesses to grow and compete. We have a mismatch on our hands between the skills that workers have and what employers need to hire to keep their businesses running smoothly and successfully.

The Prime Minister, the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Manufacturers & Exporters and many others have called it one of the most difficult challenges Canada faces today.

Here are some more sobering statistics. When all professions are considered, it is estimated that by 2016 there will be 1.5 million skilled job vacancies in Canada. By 2021, that number will increase to 2.6 million skilled job vacancies. If we cannot find ways to fill our skills and labour gaps, we will lose ground significantly and all Canadians will suffer.

As someone from the Maritimes, I am all too familiar with those facts. In the Maritimes we now have the shipbuilding contracts coming to Halifax. We have the lower Muskrat Falls hydro project almost under way. There are going to be unprecedented opportunities for the skilled trades in my region. However, there will not be enough workers in the region to support this demand that will be there over the next decades. We need to invest now in training our workforce so people across the region can take advantage of this economic opportunity.

Our government is working hard to make this happen. We have made skills and training a central pillar of economic action plan 2013. With 18 years as a professional educator, it is the first budget in my memory that has education as its centrepiece. We are ramping up our efforts to give Canadians better labour market information so they can be better prepared for the jobs that are out there. We are encouraging employers to tap into demographic groups that they may have overlooked before, such as young people, aboriginal people, people with disabilities and workers over 55. We want as many Canadians as possible working.

Recent news stories about the use of the temporary foreign workers program have once again led to confusion and concern among Canadians. These stories have revived the persistent myth that our government's temporary foreign worker program is designed to undercut Canadian workers by giving employers access to cheap foreign labour.

There is a lot at stake here, so I want to tackle the myth of cheap labour head on.

The temporary foreign worker program has never been intended to save money for businesses by allowing them to ignore qualified Canadian applicants for jobs in favour of foreigners who would work for less money. The program has always been about filling vacancies where there are no qualified Canadian applicants. This is the most basic principle of the program. That is why we are reviewing and reforming the program to make it work better to ensure that Canadians always have first opportunity at available jobs.

As we have said many times, employers are required to do everything reasonable to find Canadian candidates for their job openings. Only when they cannot find a qualified Canadian are they allowed to hire from outside the country.

When companies are able to get foreign workers, it actually benefits Canadian workers, because when businesses expand, there is a ripple effect and more jobs are created.

The moment temporary foreign workers arrive in Canada, they have the same rights on the job as Canadians, including the right to be paid a fair wage. It is unfortunate that there is so much information out there, with big unions telling Canadians that temporary foreign workers are paid less than Canadians. Every employer must pay a temporary foreign worker the same wage it is paying its Canadian workers for doing the same job in the same location.

As I have said before, our government is aware of the concerns Canadians have with the temporary foreign worker program. The review we have undertaken would address these concerns.

Budget 2013 announced several initiatives we are pursuing in the coming months. We will require employers to increase the intensity of their efforts to hire Canadians before we judge them eligible to get temporary foreign workers imported into the country. We will, for example, expect them to advertise over a longer period, to a wider audience, when they have jobs available.

We will help employers which currently rely on temporary foreign workers to plan for transition to an all-Canadian workforce. We are proposing to introduce a fee for employers requesting temporary foreign workers so the Canadian taxpayer will not have to pay for these processing costs.

Our government will never stray from our commitment to strengthen the economy for all Canadians. We are going to do what it takes to ensure Canadians always have first opportunity at any available job. However, we do not need several more months of talking on the subject.

Budget 2013 has laid out concrete proposals for fixing the program. For that reason, I am asking the opposition to quit playing politics and work with us on positive solutions.

Therefore, I will not be voting for the motion. I urge all members of the House to join me in standing up for real action by voting against the motion.

[The Budget, March 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, on that issue, the minister in charge of education in Nova Scotia is interested in working with the federal government on the jobs grant program. She says that this an interesting program. She is going to negotiate and collaborate. This is an NDP minister in Nova Scotia. Therefore, I think there is more of this across the country with the provinces, which all realize we need to focus on jobs and skills.

In Nova Scotia alone we have a $25 billion shipbuilding program. We are going to need thousands of skilled tradespeople to fill those jobs in the maritime provinces. This jobs grant is going to meet that need. We are going to collaborate and work with the provinces to deliver on that goal.

[The Budget, March 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I find it laughable that a member of the Liberal Party is criticizing the support this government has provided to the aerospace industry after the decade of darkness the Liberals delivered to Canada's military. When we took over government from the Liberals, we had helicopters that would not go up and submarines that would not go down. It was a decade a darkness, as General Hillier said in his book. The damage that did to our aerospace industry was devastating. We are only beginning to recover.

Canadians can count on this government to continue to work with our aerospace partners. The aerospace industry supports this budget. We are going to continue to support those jobs because those are important manufacturing jobs, not only in my riding but across the country.

[The Budget, March 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the opposition often criticizes our government for failing to consult and for not listening. As part of this budget, we are going to start consulting with the provinces on skills training. Why is this important? It is important because last year alone there were over 250,000 highly skilled jobs available, but employers could not find people to do the jobs. We also had this large amount of people who could not find work.

We have a disconnect between available jobs and people with the skills needed to fill those jobs. We need to work together across the country with our provincial partners to put processes in place so we can match people who have the skills needed with the jobs that are available today. This plan is about that. There will be consultations with the provinces. The people who are worried about how this will affect their programs should not worry very much.

I have 18 years as a professional educator. This is the first budget I can remember that has education and training as a centrepiece. As an educator, I am pleased to see that in the budget.

[The Budget, March 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of economic action plan 2013, a budget focused on jobs, growth and long-term prosperity for all Canadians.

When we ran in the election of 2011, we asked the Canadian people for a mandate, which included balancing the budget within the term of that mandate, by 2015. This budget presented by the Minister of Finance with the support of the Prime Minister of Canada would keep us on track to having that budget balanced by 2015.

As we move toward a balanced budget, there are three paths we could take.

The first path is to raise taxes, and many governments across Canada have taken the challenge to balance their budgets by raising taxes. However, that is not the path this Minister of Finance took. That is not the path of this government. We will not balance the budget by raising taxes on the people of Canada.

In fact, since we were elected in 2006, we have cut taxes for the average Canadian family by $3,200, and we are still going to balance the budget by 2015. By lowering the tax burden on the people of Canada, we are increasing the jobs, growth and productivity of our country. Low taxes mean more jobs. More jobs means more productivity. That is the path we are taking.

The second path we could have chosen was to cut the transfers to the provinces, as we saw the Liberal Party do the 1990s. Those transfers are valuable to provinces as they try to deliver on the priorities of Canadians in terms of education and health care. We saw billions of dollars taken back from the provinces in terms of those transfer payments in the 1990s, which saw hospitals close, nurses laid off, teachers laid off and Rae days in Ontario. We do not want to go back to that path. We will not support that.

This budget does not cut any transfers to the provinces. In fact, since we took office in 2006, the federal government has increased transfers each and every year. The transfer for health care, the social transfer and transfers for equalization have all been increased each and every year, which is more support for the provinces. Even though we are increasing that support for the provinces, we are still on the path to balance the budget.

In fact, since 2006 when we took office, we have increased those transfers from the federal government to the provinces by more than $20 billion to a record high in 2013-14 of $62 billion. This is an incredible amount of money that our provinces can use to support health care; to support education; to pay doctors, nurses and teachers; and to support other social programs in their provinces. That is an incredible commitment the federal government has made to the provinces, and we are keeping that promise.

My own province of Nova Scotia has seen the transfers from the federal government increase in 2006 from $2.2 billion to almost $3 billion, which is an increase of almost $700 million. That $700 million is a lot of nurses, teachers and support for the priorities of Nova Scotians, and that is contained in this budget.

The third path is the one we chose to balance the budget. It is the path that looks first into government spending to make sure we focus government spending in a pragmatic and prudent way, focusing on the priorities of Canadians. That is what we see in this budget. The budget supports my constituents in a large rural riding on the east coast because it focuses on the same priorities: jobs, growth and prosperity. It supports industries that are needed in my riding that hire the vast majority of the constituents I represent here in Ottawa.

For example, this budget supports infrastructure. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities asked this government to support infrastructure: waste water treatment plants, roads, bridges and all the infrastructure needed to attract business to rural parts of Canada. This is infrastructure that is needed both in urban and rural Canada. This budget focuses on that.

The build Canada plan, which sunsets next year, put in billions of dollars and worked with municipal leaders across Canada to support infrastructure development. However, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities asked the government to do a longer-term deal in this budget, which we have done.

It is a 10-year deal for the new building Canada plan, adding $53 billion for infrastructure from coast to coast to coast, for roads, bridges, recreational centres and waste water treatment plants. These are the projects that this fund will help, which will help build the economy in rural and urban parts of the country.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities also asked the government to support it again with the gas tax. We all know that in previous budgets we made the gas tax allowance permanent. That was asked for and delivered. In this budget, we are indexing the gas tax allowance to protect the municipalities from inflation so they can count on that money. It will be continued at an indexed rate so they know they will not be hurt by inflation. That was asked for by the Federation of Canadian Municipalities made and something we delivered on.

Does it support the budget? Absolutely. It stated:

Today's budget delivers significant gains for Canada's cities and communities. We applaud the government for choosing to continue moving our communities forward even as it meets its immediate fiscal challenges....This is also a budget that delivers real gains for Canadians...it will spur growth and job creation while laying the foundation for a more competitive economy.

This budget, the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister have delivered for municipal leaders across Canada and in my riding.

In Cumberland—Colchester—Musquodoboit Valley, there is a large forestry industry. Does this budget support the forestry industry? These are the guys who go out in the woods and cut the trees down. Not only does it support them, but the truckers who transport the logs to the sawmills. It supports the sawmill workers who turn the logs into lumber. It supports the manufacturers who turn the lumber into products which we export not only domestically but worldwide. This is a strong budget in support of the forestry industry.

The Forest Products Association of Canada supports this budget. It stated:

—(FPAC) welcomes the additional support for innovation and market development unveiled in today’s budget and also applauds the government’s focus on skills training....We applaud the government for its continuing support for the forest products sector even at a time when tough measures are needed to reduce the deficit. This is a strategic future-oriented decision that demonstrates ongoing commitment to the transformation of the industry.

We have support from the forestry industry for this budget.

In my riding, agriculture is a heartbeat. It employs literally thousands of my constituents. There are blueberry producers, dairy farmers, beef farmers and poultry farmers. There are agriculture producers who have created innovative products. There are fruit producers in the riding. This government and this budget supports the agriculture sector. It is expanding our markets internationally. It is investing in research and innovation so agriculture producers can develop new products and sell them in new markets. This is a strong budget in support of research, innovation and agriculture and supports, in particular, the extension of international trade so we can produce and export our agriculture products to new markets.

What does the agriculture community say about this budget? The Canadian Cattlemen's Association stated:

The CCA welcomes Budget 2013 and appreciates the Federal Government’s continued commitment to innovation, competitiveness, market development, regulatory cooperation, and addressing labour shortages. These are the top priorities for our industry and for the CCA.

That is strong support for this budget by the agriculture community and the industries that are important in my riding.

Also in my riding there is manufacturing, which is centred around the aerospace industry. There is an IMP plant in Amherst, which employs 400 people. There is an IMP plant in the Halifax airport region, which employs over 1,200 people. There are 1,600 of my constituents who are directly employed in the aerospace industry. I know there are many thousands in the Quebec aerospace industry who put dinner on the table for their families due to direct employment by the aerospace industry.

What does the aerospace industry say about this budget? It stated:

—(AIAC) is very pleased with measures announced in the Economic Action Plan 2013...The measures announced in [this budget] constitute an excellent short-term response to the Aerospace Review report...

Therefore, there is support for this budget by that industry.

This budget supports my riding, the agriculture community, the forestry industry, the municipalities, infrastructure and the aerospace industry. Many of my constituents will benefit very much from the implementation of this budget. I ask all my colleagues in the House to stand and support economic action plan 2013.