Bill C-50 (Historical)

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget

Part 1 enacts a number of income tax measures proposed in the February 26, 2008 Budget. In particular, it
(a) introduces the new Tax-Free Savings Account, effective for the 2009 and subsequent taxation years;
(b) extends by 10 years the maximum number of years during which a Registered Education Savings Plan may be open and accept contributions and provides a six-month grace period for making educational assistance payments, generally effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(c) increases the amount of the Northern Residents Deduction, effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(d) extends the application of the Medical Expense Tax Credit to certain devices and expenses and better targets the requirement that eligible medications must require a prescription by an eligible medical practitioner, generally effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(e) amends the provisions relating to Registered Disability Savings Plans so that the rule forcing the mandatory collapse of a plan be invoked only where the beneficiary’s condition has factually improved to the extent that the beneficiary no longer qualifies for the disability tax credit, effective for the 2008 and subsequent taxation years;
(f) extends by one year the Mineral Exploration Tax Credit;
(g) extends the capital gains tax exemption for certain gifts of listed securities to also apply in respect of certain exchangeable shares and partnership interests, effective for gifts made on or after February 26, 2008;
(h) adjusts the rate of the Dividend Tax Credit to reflect corporate income tax rate reductions, beginning in 2010;
(i) increases the benefits available under the Scientific Research and Experimental Development Program, generally effective for taxation years that end on or after February 26, 2008;
(j) amends the penalty for failures to remit source deductions when due in order to better reflect the degree to which the remittances are late, and excuses early remittances from the mandatory financial institution remittance rules, effective for remittances due on or after February 26, 2008;
(k) reduces the paper burden associated with dispositions by non-residents of certain treaty-protected property, effective for dispositions that occur after 2008;
(l) ensures that the enhanced tax incentive for Donations of Medicines is properly targeted, effective for gifts made after June, 2008; and
(m) modifies the provincial component of the SIFT tax to better reflect actual provincial tax rates, effective for the 2009 and subsequent taxation years.
Part 1 also implements income tax measures to preserve the fiscal plan as set out in the February 26, 2008 Budget.
Part 2 amends the Excise Act, the Excise Act, 2001 and the Customs Tariff to implement measures aimed at improving tobacco tax enforcement and compliance, adjusting excise duties on tobacco sticks and on tobacco for duty-free markets and equalizing the excise treatment of imitation spirits and other spirits.
Part 3 implements goods and services tax and harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed or referenced in the February 26, 2008 Budget. It amends the Excise Tax Act to expand the list of zero-rated medical and assistive devices and to ensure that all supplies of drugs sold to final consumers under prescription are zero-rated. It also amends that Act to exempt all nursing services rendered within a nurse-patient relationship, prescribed health care services ordered by an authorized registered nurse and, if certain conditions are met, a service of training that is specially designed to assist individuals in coping with the effects of their disorder or disability. It further amends that Act to ensure that a variety of professional health services maintain their GST/HST exempt status if those services are rendered by a health professional through a corporation. Additional amendments to that Act clarify the GST/HST treatment of long-term residential care facilities. Those amendments are intended to ensure that the GST New Residential Rental Property Rebate is available, and the GST/HST exempt treatment for residential leases and sales of used residential rental buildings applies, to long-term residential care facilities on a prospective basis and on past transactions if certain circumstances exist. This Part also makes amendments to relieve the GST/HST on most lease payments for land on which wind or solar power equipment used to generate electricity is situated.
Part 4 dissolves the Canada Millennium Scholarship Foundation, provides for the Foundation to fulfill certain obligations and deposit its remaining assets in the Consolidated Revenue Fund, and repeals Part 1 of the Budget Implementation Act, 1998. It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 5 amends the Canada Student Financial Assistance Act and the Canada Student Loans Act to implement measures concerning financial assistance for students, including the following:
(a) authorizing the establishment and operation, by regulation, of electronic systems to allow on-line services to be offered to students;
(b) providing for the establishment and operation, by regulation, of a program to provide for the repayment of student loans for classes of borrowers who are encountering financial difficulties;
(c) allowing part-time students to defer their student loan payments for as long as they continue to be students, and providing, by regulation, for other circumstances in which student loan payments may be deferred; and
(d) allowing the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to take remedial action if any error is made in the administration of the two Acts and in certain cases, to waive requirements imposed on students to avoid undue hardship to them.
Part 6 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to give instructions with respect to the processing of certain applications and requests in order to support the attainment of the immigration goals established by the Government of Canada.
Part 7 enacts the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board Act. The mandate of the Board is to set the Employment Insurance premium rate and to manage a financial reserve. That Part also amends the Employment Insurance Act and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Part 8 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund for the recruitment of front line police officers, capital investment in public transit infrastructure and carbon capture and storage. It also authorizes Canada Social Transfer transition protection payments.
Part 9 authorizes payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to Genome Canada, the Mental Health Commission of Canada, The Gairdner Foundation and the University of Calgary.
Part 10 amends various Acts.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, as reported (without amendment) from the committee.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

There are 20 motions in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-50. The motions will be grouped for debate as follows.

Group No. 1 includes Motions Nos. 1 to 5.

Group No. 2 includes Motions Nos. 6 to 20.

The voting patterns for the motions within each group are available at the table. The Chair will remind the House of each pattern at the time of voting.

I shall now propose Motions Nos. 1 to 5 in Group No. 1 to the House.

Motions in Amendment

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

moved:

Motion No. 1

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 116.

Motion No. 2

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 117.

Motion No. 3

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 118.

Motion No. 4

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 119.

Motion No. 5

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 120.

He said—Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to the bill before us and the amendments I made to that bill.

First of all, I must apologize if my voice is a bit hoarse today. I am so shocked at the provisions in part 6 of Bill C-50 that I can hardly speak, which explains why I am having some trouble today.

But seriously, since this is a serious matter, part 6 of this budget implementation bill deals with immigration and will cause a major change in Canada's immigration system. We condemn the fact that this part has been included in a budget implementation bill when its clauses have nothing to do with financial considerations.

This is just a government trick to limit the debate on this major reform of immigration by burying these changes in a sort of omnibus bill that pertains to a number of completely different subjects. From a parliamentary point of view, we could see the absurdity of this manoeuvre by the government and how the work had to be done in committee. Since Bill C-50 is a budget implementation bill, obviously the Standing Committee on Finance was analyzing its content. But that committee did not have the necessary expertise, knowledge or time to study the immigration clauses.

We received a letter asking the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration to study that part of the bill. We hastily looked at part 6 of the bill, but in the end, we had only a week to hear witnesses and make recommendations. We then had to forward everything to the Standing Committee on Finance, which did not take our recommendations into account because the Liberals abstained once again.

This shows that there was no debate across Quebec and Canada. When the witnesses appeared before the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, what we heard most commonly and systematically was criticism of making such a major reform without taking the time to properly debate or look at the consequences this could have on the immigration system and on Canada's image abroad.

The committee concluded that part 6, the entire part on immigration, should be removed from the bill. That is the focus of the amendments I am proposing this morning in this House. It is the recommendation of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. I hope that all the parties will agree with this recommendation, especially since the committee stated in its report that it was available to sit down with the government and the minister to examine the issue and work with them to develop a real document. A consensus might even be found if we took the time to work together.

The committee did this with Bill C-37, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act, which had to do with Canadians who had lost their Canadian citizenship. There were talks and debates. Everyone worked together, a unanimous report was written, and then came the bill. It was passed very quickly in Parliament and everything went smoothly. I do not see why we could not do the same thing for such an important immigration reform. Obviously, the short term solution is to remove this part of the bill. The proposed measures will be detrimental to our system.

Basically, the bill provides that the minister may decide of his or her own accord and with the consent of cabinet, to change the order in which immigration applications are processed. The minister may even decide which categories of applications will be processed and which will not. Currently, although there are a number of priorities, the general principle—which is about to disappear—is first come, first served.

Under our existing immigration system, those who apply can be sure that their applications will be processed eventually. Valid applications will be accepted. Even though wait times are too long because not enough money is being invested in case processing, the system is predictable. Applicants know that they will eventually get an answer. Under the new system, people will submit applications that may never be processed though they wait their entire lives.

Naturally, that is unacceptable. The minister says that the new system was created to prioritize certain categories of workers in fields in which Canada has trouble finding workers.

On the one hand, the current points system for applications takes into account post-secondary study, master's degrees, and doctorates—which are all worth extra points—but does not put enough emphasis on the technical skills and trades where more workers are needed now. Even though the department processes these cases, people can be no more certain than before that they will be accepted.

On the other hand, there are already so many priorities in the system that nothing will really be a priority after this. I have compiled a little list, which I would like to share with you. With respect to vertical priorities, we have inadmissibility, application of the law, refugees, visitors, students, work visas, spouses, children, and the provincial nominee program. Now we are going to have another priority. Clearly, this system is not working. When everything is a priority, nothing is a priority in the end. We need something much better than this to fix the system.

Another provision in this bill is extremely problematic and involves people applying for permanent resident status on humanitarian grounds. Under the current legislation, the department absolutely must review those applications and if the person is eligible, he or she can obtain that status. If they are not eligible, they will be refused, obviously.

The bill is intended to change the word “shall” to “may”. In other words, the department “may”, if it feels like it, if it is interested, review an application on humanitarian grounds. It is hard to understand how a right could become conditional on the will of the department. A right is a right and if, under the law, one is eligible for such an application on humanitarian grounds, one should have the right to have one's file reviewed.

If not, if the right is subject to the arbitrary decision of immigration officers, then it is not really a right. What is more, a permanent resident application on humanitarian grounds is often used by a refugee status claimant whose case has been dismissed with no chance of appeal before the refugee appeal division—since neither the Liberal nor the Conservative governments have ever implemented it.

The Bloc Québécois has introduced a bill to that effect in order to correct the situation. The bill is currently before the Senate. We hope the Conservatives will stop obstructing it. They always complain about the Liberal senators obstructing work in the Senate; now they are doing it.

Nonetheless, I hope this bill will pass quickly in order to correct this shortcoming. In the meantime, people have been using this process to protect their lives, to be welcomed into Canada on humanitarian grounds, but the government is in the process of closing another door in their faces.

In closing, I hope at least that the parties who supported the report in committee will be logical and consistent and vote in favour of these amendments. Obviously I am counting on the support of the NDP, but more specifically of the Liberals who have been utterly inconsistent on this. They supported withdrawing this reform in the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, but in the Standing Committee on Finance, they kept mum on the matter.

I hope they will have the courage to stand up and vote in this House.

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the government, I am pleased to rise to speak in absolute and sincere opposition to the proposed amendments to Bill C-50, amendments that would seek to effectively delete the government's proposed improvements, and I emphasize improvements, to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which are contained in part 6 of Bill C-50.

I note that the amendments originate with my colleagues in the Bloc Québécois, but they are supported by my colleagues down the way in the NDP. Sadly, this is yet another occasion where the NDP, despite its rhetoric, will vote against crucial measures proposed by this Conservative government to help immigrants.

The NDP's track record on immigration is a sorry one at best. In this Parliament alone, the NDP has voted against $1.3 billion for settlement funding, after a funding freeze of 10 years under the previous government. The NDP also voted against the establishment of a foreign credentials referral office. It voted against cutting the immigrant head tax, which our government cut in half, despite the NDP.

The NDP has even voted against providing increased protections for vulnerable foreign workers. Its continued opposition to Bill C-17 is preventing vulnerable foreign workers, who could be subject to abuse and exploitation, from getting protection that they need and deserve.

Despite their talk, the New Democrats do not step up to help newcomers to Canada. This Conservative government, however, does and continues to do so with our immigration changes proposed in Bill C-50.

Our proposed amendments in part 6 of the budget implementation act addressed the legislative roots of Canada's broken and overloaded immigration system. Neither Canadians nor prospective newcomers to our country benefit from an immigration system that, due to its systemic deficiencies, forces prospective immigrants to wait for up to six years before their applications are looked at, let alone processed.

The current system is especially problematic, since by 2012 fully 100% of our net labour growth will come from immigration. The systemic flaws in the current immigration system continue to hinder our country's ability to meet the needs of newcomers and the social and economic needs of our country. Urgent action is required. That is why changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act were included in budget 2008.

“Advantage Canada” 2006 identified that Canada needed the most flexible workforce in the world, an issue that is critical to Canada's future. Without our proposed legislative changes, the uncontrolled growth of the immigration backlog will continue, the backlog we inherited, by the way, from the previous Liberal government, which currently stands at over 900,000 people waiting in line to come to Canada.

This backlog is unacceptable. Urgent action must be taken so the backlog can be reduced. A new and more efficient processing system is desperately needed, a system that is both responsive to the needs of the newcomers and the needs of Canada.

To move toward accomplishing these goals, the legislative changes contained in part 6 of Bill C-50 are absolutely essential. The fact is Canada faces serious international competition in attracting people with the talents and the skills we need to ensure our country's continued growth and prosperity.

Compared to the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, we are the only country that does not use some kind of occupational filter to screen, code or prioritize skilled worker applications. Compared to other countries, Canada's system is simply not flexible enough. While Australia and New Zealand are processing applications in six to twelve months, if nothing is done, processing times in Canada will reach ten years by 2012. As more people submit applications and our current obligation to process every application to completion remains, the backlog continues to grow and Canada's labour shortages worsen.

If we do nothing to address the problem, we risk having families wait even longer to be reunited with their loved ones and we risk losing the people our country needs from other countries. Because those countries are in fierce competition with us for the skills and talents that newcomers bring, our government believes that without this legislative intervention the system is destined to collapse under its own weight.

It is important to note that the legislative changes contained within Bill C-50 are but one aspect of the government's approach to addressing the backlog problem. These legislative changes would prevent the backlog from growing, but let me be crystal clear on two key points about these proposals.

Contrary to the misinformation that is out there, we will not be placing any limits on the number of applicants that we will accept. Canada remains open to immigration and anyone can still apply.

However, under the proposed legislative changes, we will not have to process every application. Those applications not processed in a given year can be held for future consideration or returned to the applicant with a refund of their application fee. Individuals in this category would be welcome to reapply. The result would be that the backlog will stop growing and actually start to come down.

This flexibility in managing the backlog would accomplish three things. It would help reduce the backlog and ensure that immigrants have the jobs they need to succeed and allow our country to continue to grow and prosper.

Once these changes are implemented, the immigration backlog will stop growing and will begin to decrease the long lineup waiting news on entry to Canada through other important measures our government is taking.

Among other things we have committed over $109 million over five years to bring down the backlog.

Other steps that would be taken include: organizing visa officer “SWAT teams” to speed up processing in parts of the world where wait times are the longest; providing additional resources to these busy missions; helping build capacity to meet future levels and increasing demand; and coding applications in the existing backlog with the appropriate national occupational classification code and destination province where they are requesting to reside, so applicants with the skills we need can be referred to provinces for possible selection by provincial nominee programs.

Part 6 of Bill C-50, when combined with these non-legislative measures funded in budget 2008 and beyond, would act to control and reduce the backlog and speed up processing. Because immigration is so important to Canada's future, we need a modern and renewed vision for immigration.

These proposed changes are part of a vision that involves creating a more responsive immigration system, one that allows us to welcome more immigrants while helping them get the jobs they need and building better lives for themselves and their families, because their success is our success.

Urgent action is required. Part 6 of Bill C-50 and all of budget 2008 would deliver this much needed action.

I end by expressing my gratitude to my colleagues opposite in the Liberal Party who have so graciously helped our Conservative government ensure speedy passage of our budget legislation through the House. I am pleased the Liberal Party supports our proposed immigration measures and budget 2008. I am pleased the Liberal Party recognizes that budget 2008 and Bill C-50 are full of positive measures for all Canadians, those present now and those soon to be here as well.

I encourage all members of the House, especially my colleagues in the Liberal Party, to defeat these detrimental amendments to Bill C-50 and continue to work toward its speedy passage unamended.

[Lloyd St. Amand, Liberal, Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the speech of the member opposite.

I have a fairly blunt question for him. What is his response to the many Canadians who are talking about the new immigration component of the bill and saying that it is tantamount to saying to the world, “You're good enough to work here in Canada, but you're not good enough to live here and your family members are not good enough to live here?” Canadians interpret this provision as essentially an overemphasis on inviting workers, arguably whom we need, and de-emphasizing our responsibility to keep our doors open to family members.

Simply put, what does the member opposite say with respect to, “You're good enough to work here, but you're not good enough to live here and your family members are not good enough to live here?”

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately the member's question does nothing but emphasize some of the false statements that have been made in and outside the House.

I have spoken to many people who sincerely want to come to this country, people who recognize that the system is broken and that these improvements, through this legislation, would help reunify families.

In fact, I was in Cairo just last weekend. On Sunday morning I drove by the Canadian embassy. There was a huge lineup of Egyptians who wanted to come to Canada. This is just one example. Nobody was standing at the front door, but we have a special immigration door. That is how seriously people want to come to Canada. They recognize the strength of our country. They recognize the opportunities in our country.

However, what have we done to them in the past? We have stuck them at the end of a line of almost a billion people long, I should say a million. When I listen to the opposition suggestions of what the carbon tax is going to cost Canadians, that is where my billions come from.

Many people want to come to Canada. The legislation before us would actually break the back of a broken system and bring us to a system that would help.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the parliamentary secretary's response demonstrates why this component should not be included in the bill. Despite his good intentions, he is not informed about this file and says whatever comes to mind.

Family reunification applications are obviously treated separately from the regular immigration applications that these provisions would apply to. Family reunifications would not be affected, quite the opposite. If we bring the people who were at the back of the line to the front, that will only slow down the process for the others at the back of the line.

It was clear in committee. Official government representatives even came to explain to us that taking someone from the back of the line and putting them at the front would not shorten the line.

Is the minister at least conscious of the fact that these provisions will not affect the back of the line?

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Mr. Speaker, these provisions look to the future of how we can improve the system. We have put in measures. We are increasing the number of people in the field who can process the backlog. It is very unfortunate that our government inherited such an incredibly large backlog of almost a million.

The improvements that we would make will process for new applications to help us give time to focus on the backlog that the Liberals left with us.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Vancouver East. We have less than a minute for both the question and the answer.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, if these changes are so important, why are they buried in a budget bill? It is quite scandalous that when Bill C-50, the budget bill, came in, we suddenly found there were—

[Ted Menzies, Conservative, Macleod, AB]

Mr. Speaker. the hon. member used the term “scandalous”. I referred to the scandalous voting record of the members of the NDP, how they have voted against anything that this Conservative government has wanted to put in place to help immigrants, to welcome them to our country. We put funding in place to bring them—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Markham—Unionville.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the report stage debate on Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget.

What concerns me a great deal about the budget is its forecast. As recently as two days ago, the finance minister stood in this House and told us that he stood by the government's forecast for GDP growth this year of 1.7%. Never mind that exports are falling and manufacturing jobs are disappearing daily and never mind that the Bank of Canada revised, dramatically downwards, its own forecast. The finance minister is just going to bury his head in the sand and pretend the economy is doing just fine.

The finance minister is no Pierre Trudeau but he does have one thing in common with Pierre Trudeau. In 1972 some members may remember that Pierre Trudeau ran an election campaign on the theme “The Land is Strong” but he did not do that well. Now, the finance minister, in a similar vein, is saying that we should not worry because the economy is sound and the fundamentals are sound.

That does not surprise me because the finance minister is a person who is out of touch with Canadians. I imagine he could attend a news conference about a factory closure, puff up his chest and say that the Canadian economy is strong without batting an eye.

The problem is that while the finance minister can repeat that the economy is strong a thousand times, it just does not make it true.

Do members know what happened this morning? Statistics Canada released a growth estimate for the first quarter of 2008 which shows that the Canadian economy shrank by 0.3%. This is the first time we have had a quarter of negative growth in Canada since, I believe, five years ago during the SARS crisis.

We have the finance minister saying that the economy is strong and that we should not worry, but we get numbers showing that for the first time in five years, in the first quarter of this year, the Canadian economy shrank.

Do members know what else is interesting about that? The U.S. economy, in the first quarter, grew. The Canadian economy shrank by 0.3%, while the U.S. economy expanded by 0.9%. What does that do to the finance minister's story that his policies are so wonderful and his stewardship is so great that Canada is doing so much better than the United States? It is simply not true according to the numbers we saw this morning.

Indeed, Canada ought to be doing better and, in some respects, Canada is doing better. We have a large resource sector and oil prices are very high. We have people who are somewhat less risk-taking in the financial sector than down south. We do not have the subprime mortgage crisis. We should be doing better, and we are, in some respects, doing better, and yet the news this morning that the Canadian economy has shrank while the U.S. economy has expanded, sends a message to the finance minister--

[David Sweet, Conservative, Ancaster—Dundas—Flamborough—Westdale, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe the debate at the present time is on the amendments and I think it would be good if the hon. member made his comments based on what is germane to the debate.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I am sure the hon. member for Markham—Unionville appreciates that advice and he now has the floor.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that advice. I will not necessarily follow it but I will come to the subject of immigration shortly.

Since the news of the morning is so timely, I thought the House might wish to know some of the headlines from this morning's Statistics Canada report: “Exports fall”, “Business investment slows”, “Personal spending moderates”, “Housing investment declines”, “Prices move upward”. Those are the things that real Canadians are dealing with right now. The last thing they want to hear is the finance minister telling them that they have never had it so good.

What they do want is an explanation from the government as to how it squandered the $13 billion surplus that it inherited just over two years ago and how it has taken this country to the brink of deficit. The fiscal cupboard is bare right now. Some experts are saying that we are already in deficit. It would not be the first time the finance minister hit a deficit and pretended he was in surplus.

Whether we are in deficit or just a SARS crisis away from deficit, the fact is that the government overspent when times were good, leaving nothing in the cupboard, as the Statistics Canada report this morning suggests, for when times are bad. A prudent finance minister would have spent less when times were good, leaving more money available right now when times are bad with which to support the economy.

The finance minister's stewardship has been so bad that at this moment, when the Canadian economy needs support, he has no money unless he wants to go back into deficit. I would not be terribly surprised if he did go back into deficit. That is what the Ontario government did when he was a senior minister. Indeed, the Ontario government pretended it had a balanced budget and ran an election on a balanced budget. However, when the Conservatives lost that election in 2003 and Dalton McGuinty called in the auditors, lo and behold, the auditors discovered that there was in fact a $5.6 billion deficit.

Since the government acknowledges that it is right on the brink of deficit, I wonder whether the experience of Ontario might be repeated and, indeed, we might already be in deficit but a deficit hidden by the government.

On the question of immigration, the parliamentary secretary is entirely wrong when he says that the Liberal Party supports the government amendments on immigration. As my colleague pointed out recently, the government is changing the picture of an immigrant from a person to a commodity. The fact is that if substantial new resources are not put into immigration, which the government is not doing, that implies that if one group is fast-tracked, by definition another group is slow-tracked.

The parliamentary secretary can talk all he likes about people lining up in Egypt to come to Canada but fewer of those people will be able to come to Canada under the government's rules than would have been able to come to Canada under the previous rules. It is fast-tracking economic immigrants and, given that the resources are pretty well constant or at a very modest increase, that implies that it is slow-tracking family reunification.

I believe it is important that we choose immigrants who are needed in the economy but I do not believe that should be at the expense of family reunification, which is precisely the price the government is imposing on family reunification by its proposals.

Indeed, we do not even know where these proposals will lead because they provide enormous additional powers to the immigration minister. The government is asking Canadians to trust it but it will tell them what it is going to do. Why should Canadians trust the government in light of all of the unfolding scandals that we have been experiencing in recent months?

Whether it is the security problems associated with the former foreign affairs minister, whether it is the in and out Elections Canada scandal, whether it is the emerging new scandal on NAFTA-gate, or whether it is broken promises on anything from income trusts to the Atlantic accord, Canadians have no reason to trust the government.

Therefore, when the government asks Canadians to trust it to do the right thing on the immigration provisions, I do not think Canadians will accept the government's proposition.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my first thought is, God help us if the Liberals were in government at this time when this country is facing some economic challenges from outside the country and throughout the global marketplace.

The member for Markham—Unionville flipped-flopped, not once but at least three times during his speech. The Liberals are being dishonest with the House and with the Canadian people. They criticized our budget and yet voted for it. That is dishonest.

That member, among all the members of the Liberal party, should know that there is a direct correlation between a low tax regime and a buoyant economy and a direct correlation between a high tax regime and a struggling economy.

Our Minister of Finance knows that giving taxes back to families, back to small business, back to low income people and back to seniors is a good formula for making it through times of external challenges to our economy. That is what that member's party did not do. God help us if the Liberals were in power now.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not detect a question in that spew of nonsense coming from my hon. colleague but I will try to respond to what might have been a question.

In terms of competent management of the economy, I would remind the gentleman across the aisle that it is we, the Liberals, who inherited a $42 billion Conservative deficit, and it is we, who within a few years, fixed that deficit, turned it in to a surplus and for 10 years in a row paid down debt.

It is that party that inherited a magnificent $13 billion surplus from the previous Liberal government and proceeded, in the space of just over two years, to spend like crazy when times were good, thereby shrinking that $13 billion surplus to $1 billion or $2 billion, far less than the contingency reserve that Liberals maintained.

To spend like crazy when times are good is incompetent economic management in the extreme. It leaves nothing available to support the economy when times become bad, as we saw in the Statistics Canada report just this morning.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed the speech by my colleague across the way. He may have touched, in some ways, on why the Conservatives included the immigration business in the budget.

The budget seems to deal dishonestly with figures. It also deals dishonestly with the figures when it talks about the impact on immigration that it will achieve with this particular set of amendments.

Does the hon. member not agree that we need decisive action to reduce the wait list, not this reconfiguration of the rules to change the basic nature of our immigration system?

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not detect a question in those comments.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very simple question. At the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, the Liberals voted against these changes to immigration; at the Standing Committee on Finance, they abstained.

Will they have the courage to stand in this House and vote in favour of my amendments, or will they pathetically stay seated during the vote?

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Markham—Unionville has 30 seconds to respond.

[John McCallum, Liberal, Markham—Unionville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, 30 seconds is not enough time to respond to such an important question.

All I can do in these next 30 seconds is repeat that, in our opinion, the government's immigration policy is not at all acceptable for the reasons that I have outlined during—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Vancouver East.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to rise in the House today to speak to the report stage amendments of Bill C-50. I thank my colleague from the Bloc for bringing some of them forward because the NDP also supports these motions that would delete clauses 116 to 120 from Bill C-50.

The first point that I want to make is that it is really quite outrageous that here we are debating a budget bill, which of course is a core of any government's agenda, and within that government bill, that budget bill, there are significant changes to our immigration system.

There is no question that the Conservative government tried to quietly slip these major changes through the back door in a budget bill. I think they have been probably quite astounded by the reaction of Canadians and communities across Canada.

In fact, the Conservatives are so worried about the backlash that these proposed changes contain that they have now gone to the extreme of running advertisements in ethnic papers across the country even before this bill has been approved. That is something that is quite unheard of, to put out propaganda and information about a bill that has not even yet been approved.

I think it is very good evidence of the concern that the Conservatives have that the message that they hoped they were getting out there, that they were somehow fixing the immigration system, is very far from the truth. In fact, what we are dealing with in this budget bill are significant changes to the immigration system which will undermine the kind of process that we have had in this country for dealing with immigration and refugees.

One of the deletions that has been put forward for the bill today deals with clause 116. Under the current provision of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, subsection 11(1) currently says:

The visa or document shall be issued if, following an examination, the officer is satisfied that the foreign national is not inadmissible and meets the requirements of this Act.

With the changes in this bill, which we are now hoping to delete, it would now say that the officer “may” issue a visa even if the applicant has met all of the criteria as set out in the immigration regulations.

The same is true for clause 117, where under the existing process in regard to humanitarian and compassionate applications, it says that the minister “shall” examine these applications. Under the proposed changes it would say that the minister “may” examine these applications.

These are only two of many changes that are included in this bill. We think they are very substantive and we think it is quite shocking that these immigration changes would be contained within a budget bill. It should be part of a stand alone bill. It should have gone to the immigration committee. There should have been hearings through the immigration process so that people could comment on it, but none of that has happened because the government, by stealth, is trying to put these changes through in a budget bill.

I must say that I listened with some surprise to the Liberal member for Markham—Unionville when he spoke so vociferously against the budget bill and against these changes, and yet we know the Liberals are going to support it. How does one reconcile this?

The Liberals get out there and they hammer the bill and say how bad it is, and in committee when there is a chance to vote they vote with the government. Here in the House when the Liberals have a chance to vote against the government, they either sit on their hands or they do not show up and they do not bother to vote.

The same will now be true with these immigration changes. Is it any wonder that people feel so disillusioned about the official opposition members as they are about the government? Here they are hand in glove working together to get through these significant changes.

I am very proud that in the NDP we have taken a strong position, not only against the budget bill on the provisions as a budget bill but also because of these immigration changes that are included.

One of the things that we are most concerned about is that in Bill C-50 there is a shift in emphasis from family reunification, from bringing people to Canada on the legitimate process of a point system, to in effect a dramatic increase in the temporary foreign worker program.

We have seen more than a 100% increase in the number of applications and people being processed through this system. We have seen people brought to this country, who come here as temporary foreign workers. They are working in the tar sands. They are working in the agricultural industry. They have been working on the Canada Line in Vancouver.

These are workers who come here and often end up in terribly exploited situations. They have no rights. In some situations we have had cases where workers were being paid less than the minimum wage for the work that they were doing. It is only because of the advocacy within the labour movement that some of these cases have been taken up and brought forward before the B.C. Labour Relations Board.

Therefore, we are very worried that the changes in Bill C-50, including the immigration changes, are basically giving a signal of this very dramatic change in the way immigration will work in Canada.

Historically, we have seen an emphasis on family reunification. In fact, on the Government of Canada immigration website it was always listed as one of the key goals for our immigration policy. Somehow that has disappeared. It is not even on the website anymore, so this should be sending off alarm bells for people.

We know that organizations like the Canadian Bar Association are concerned. Stephen Green of the Canadian Bar Association said:

Bill C-50 would return Canada to a time when visas were given out on a discretionary basis, without sufficient objective criteria.

The YWCA in Toronto has called on the government to not proceed with these dramatic changes for immigration under Bill C-50.

I know in my own community of East Vancouver we have many people who are recent newcomers to Canada. They came through the immigration system. We have many organizations that work as advocates and help people with their processing for immigration. In a forum that we held just a few weeks ago people were very concerned about what these changes will mean and the fact that it will give so much discretion to a single person, and that single person being the minister.

Why would we want to have a system that allows that kind of power to be conferred on one person? This is something that we should be very opposed to and that is why we are standing in the House today making it very clear that we are opposed to these changes.

We have heard from the government today that this bill and the immigration changes will allow more people to come to Canada and it will be a responsive bill, as I think this is what the parliamentary secretary said. We are also told that somehow these changes will deal with the backlog of 900,000 people who are waiting to come to Canada.

However, the fact is the changes that are before us will only affect applications that are submitted after February 27, 2008. Therefore, in actual fact they will have no impact whatsoever on the backlog that the government claims it is trying to deal with.

We agree that the backlog is there and certainly the lack of support and resources for our immigration system and processing in the previous government created that backlog. That is not an issue. What is at issue is that these proposed changes will not deal with that backlog and will give enormous discretion to the minister which we think is patently undemocratic and unfair.

That is why we are supporting these motions today to delete these clauses in the bill. We will have other deletions as well later on today. We hope that the bill will be defeated. I would implore Liberal members across the way to rethink their position. They cannot go out and tell people they are opposed to these changes, they are opposed to the budget, and then come back to the House and vote for it, and give the Conservative government a majority in that regard. This is something that is quite unconscionable, so perhaps they need to rethink their position.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to the member as she spoke about what she claimed was propaganda. I have not heard as much propaganda in as short an amount of time as I have heard from her.

Let me tell members about propaganda. She says the government, by stealth, is bringing in Bill C-50. But just before that she said that we were advertising in newspapers some of the changes we want to bring in. How could we be acting by stealth and advertising in newspapers? I guess that is NDP propaganda.

Also, this member and her party voted against every single budget this government has brought in: budgets that have helped seniors; budgets that have helped homeless people; and budgets that are helping veterans today. She and her party voted against low income Canadians. More than 600,000 low income Canadians have been taken off the federal government tax rolls. Yet, she and her party claim to be for the working class.

Yesterday, we were discussing her leader's bill. I believe it is Bill C-377. People working in the auto industry and people trying to earn a livelihood who work in the auto parts industry in my riding, including the CAW, are fearful of that bill.

We heard from witnesses from that industry at the environment committee who said that bill that her leader is trying to bring in is going to kill their industry, an industry that is already in trouble in our province. It is one of the hugest income generators in our province.

How can she say some of the things she is saying when in some parts of her statements she is arguing against herself? There are words for that, but they are unparliamentary. I would like her to respond.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would be delighted to respond.

Let us just look at what happened. The fact is that this government brought in a budget bill and tried to sneak through significant immigration changes in that bill. For decades, immigration changes would have taken place through an immigration bill.

So, the Conservatives tried to get it through the back door. When the word got out there, people were outraged about what was taking place. If the member has not read the press releases, the letters, the emails and heard the phone calls that have come in, then I would ask him to do a bit of a reality check.

When the information came back in and people understood what was going on, the government then had to react and began its own propaganda advertising campaign. That is the sequence of events that took place. So, my comments are not contradictory at all.

What is contradictory is the fact that this government is trying to make significant changes to our immigration system in a budget bill. That is fundamentally wrong and that should not be allowed.

I would ask the member, why is he supporting such a measure and not allowing a proper examination of changes to our immigration system which should go to the immigration committee?

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Mr. Speaker, earlier, I asked my hon. Liberal colleague if his party was going to follow the recommendations of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration and vote against part 6 of this bill. I know the NDP has already said it will be voting against it.

Does she know how the Liberals intend to vote? What would she recommend to them?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, far be it for me to try to advise these guys how they should be getting themselves in line. They have been, now, contradicting themselves so many times by standing and saying that they oppose the budget, opposing the immigration changes, not coming into the House to vote, and not voting in committee. I think they have to get their own act in order and reconcile with the community where it is that they really stand.

We know where we stand on this bill. We know why this bill should be defeated. I think my colleague in the Bloc knows too and his members will vote that way as well.

However, as far as the Liberals, they are just lining up with the Conservative members and allowing this bill to go through, and that is going to be bad for the people of Canada.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, as reported without amendment from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The member for Laval, who has been so patient.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for that lovely compliment. It is rare to receive compliments in the House. I very humbly accept it.

It is my great pleasure to rise to speak to Bill C-50, particularly part 6, which would introduce immigration measures that I find somewhat unusual because they would give significant additional powers to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

The government is trying to bring in these measures as part of a budget bill. If we agreed with the bill, we could let it go through, no problem. However, we do not agree with it, because it does not meet our fellow citizens' needs. As everyone knows, the people asked us to request a number of things for Quebec, and we submitted those requests.

What is even more unacceptable is that the government is trying to include these measures in bills that are not intended to change procedures within various departments. That is what part 6 of Bill C-50 attempts to do: change the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act significantly. This bill would give the minister the power to give some people priority over others. The minister would also have the power to refuse entry to some people without having to justify his or her decision.

This is troubling, particularly since we have a government that is known for breaking its promises to people. It broke its promise to women on equity and equality; it broke its promise to seniors on the guaranteed income supplement; and it broke its promise to veterans. Spouses and widows of veterans do not all have access to various programs offered by Veterans Affairs Canada to returning war veterans. All in all, this government was elected because of promises it made on major issues—promises that, for the most part, it has not kept.

We have to wonder what would happen if these measures in Bill C-50 were passed. Imagine for a moment that the ousted minister of foreign affairs became the minister of citizenship and immigration. Who would he give priority to? Who would he deny entry to? Many worries come to mind, even more so given that the minister would not have to answer any questions or provide any justification.

Conservative Party members have also made disconcerting statements about immigrants of certain ethnicities. What would happen if one of these members were appointed minister of citizenship and immigration? I would be worried about giving a minister the sweeping power to decide the validity of an application from someone who wanted to immigrate to Quebec or Canada. I find that very serious.

I even find it a bit immoral that these measures were introduced as part of a budget bill, and I wonder how many others feel this way. At the very least, we know that all of the organizations involved with newcomers, be they refugees or immigrants, are opposed to these measures, and with good reason, I might add.

We know that the committee has also made its views known. It is important to remember that the committee is not necessarily against amending the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

But if amendments are to be made, they must be done properly, through the usual channels. This means introducing bills, having them examined in committee, and hearing witnesses in committee to explain different parts of the bill. This did not happen here.

This amendment to the Immigration Act was sneakily included in Bill C-50, in the same way that a censorship measure was included in Bill C-10 without anyone noticing. We can see the effect that one has had, and the shock waves it has sent through the film community, in terms of copyrights and so on. Members must remember all of that and be very careful before passing Bill C-50 if it contains part 6. Giving a single person the authority and power to determine who will have the right to enter the country is inconceivable. The same thing happened with the Minister of Health with respect to public safety and quarantines. The government did not even keep its promises to those suffering from Hepatitis C. People are dying every day without receiving a cent from the government. This is a right-wing government if ever there was one.

That scares me. When a government that is so far to the right wants to introduce such measures in a bill, I believe that there is more to it than meets the eye. I do not want to have any part of it and I do not accept it. My party does not want to say yes to that. We will definitely vote against the bill. We cannot allow ourselves to give such rights to a party that has already shown its bad faith and ill will.

That was the case for Insite, in Vancouver. They prefer to let people die rather than helping them to obtain services in a place where they felt safe, where they could make important contacts and get help. They would rather let people die. And now they would like us to believe that it would be a good thing to give the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration the power to decide who can enter Canada. They should not take Canadians or Quebeckers for fools. We see the government's game plan very clearly. We know that the only reason this government wants to introduce this amendment to the Immigration Act is to have even more power and to decide what kind of immigrants will build Canada.

Some 900,000 men and women have been waiting for years to become Canadian citizens. They have been waiting patiently. They have gone through all the steps. They are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect by a government that follows the rules, not a government that changes the rules to suit its ideology and philosophy or to please voters of the same bent.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Laval because I know she holds the same views that we do on this bill, which is that it should be defeated. I know she speaks with compassion. I thank her for using the example of Insite as another example of how callous the Conservative government is toward people.

One of the disturbing things in Bill C-50 are the immigration changes and the way it escalates the use of temporary foreign workers.

Working with the labour movement, we in the NDP have been very concerned with the rate of exploitation that is taking place. People should be coming to Canada as permanent residents. A proper process should be in place.

The idea that the government is trying to deal with the backlog is not correct. What it is doing is shifting the system from the reunification of families and is creating a whole new class of temporary foreign workers, which makes it open season on exploitation.

I would like the member's views on that. I think it is something we need to monitor carefully. We know there are workers who have had a serious loss of rights and some workers who are being paid less than the minimum wage. We also know that some workers are being exploited by their employers and some workers have died because they are not aware of health and safety provisions.

This is a very serious situation that is taking place. It started with the former government and it is escalating with the current government. It is an indication of what is taking place in our immigration system.

[Nicole Demers, Bloc, Laval, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for her question.

As the member is fully aware, we have been fighting for some time on behalf of women who come from the Philippines and work as live-in caregivers. Women who work in this field are often faced with many problems and difficulties, and we have been trying to help them for many years. The government, however, does not seem to want to listen to reason. Of course it changed a few of the rules, but that is not enough to give these women what they need.

One thing is sure, as my colleague from Jeanne-Le Ber so aptly put it: any legislation concerning immigration must be debated in committee. That is why I think his position is the soundest and the fairest.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the New Democratic Party has very serious concerns about Bill C-50 and in the way it is being brought through the House.

The issue of an immigration policy and how we will move forward as a country is a crucial debate and discussion that needs to happen with all parties working together. It is not the kind of issue that can be slipped in through a confidence bill, in a budget bill, to basically stare down other members of Parliament, to try to sneak through, without proper scrutiny, and then to use the issue of the budget as a way to attack parties like the New Democratic Party, which is saying that this is an issue that needs clear and informed debate.

My family comes from the mining regions of northern Ontario and we were the multicultural society long before the urban centres were called multicultural. In those days, if a person was an immigrant, the person was brought over to Canada on short term work contracts to work the mines and to work the lumber camps.

It was well-known in the early days when my grandparents came from Scotland that they did not want to hire Canadian workers to work in the mines because of the accident rates and the pressures. They were having a 75% turnover at any given time in any of the hard rock mining communities, whether it was Kirkland Lake, Rouyn Noranda or Timmins.

During those times, short term work contracts were given to the Ukrainians, the Bulgarians, the Italians and the Croatians. These men were brought over separate from their wives. If they complained about conditions, they were deported. If they were sick because of their work in the mine, they were sent back to their countries to possibly die there.

The historic records in the north are heartbreaking stories of families, of men. The average life expectancy for a Ukrainian or Croatian man working in Timmins, Ontario up to the 1950s was 41 years of age. These men worked hard and they died.

At certain points in the history of the north, the immigration policies allowed some of the families to come over. We all understand that the immigrants who built this country played an important role, but it was their families who made Canada. It was the women coming over who actually built communities.

We have so many great people in our region. The immigrant women who came over could not speak English. Their kids went to school not speaking English or French, if they were in the Rouyn Noranda mining camp. However, they came here and learned the language. They became part of the community and they built the identity, the wonderful identity that we have in northern Ontario.

We have a long memory in northern Ontario of the exploitation that these families suffered. Anybody in Timmins will tell us about the mining widows, the women who were left basically destitute on the streets when their young husbands died in accidents. They were immigrants and could not speak the language. My grandmother, who was a mining widow, raised me and told me the stories of what they went through.

We are very concerned when we see a dramatic change to immigration policy in Canada that says we need to fast-track these temporary workers into Canada and get them into lower paid jobs so we can basically hyper-fuel an economy without a long term plan.

We all know that the government is here for one reason and one reason only. It is here to ensure that the Athabasca tar sands expands as fast as possible, as destructively as possible and with as much profit for the Texas oil companies as possible.

We are looking now at a shift where we are not talking about bringing in families and building immigrant communities that will actually develop the Canada of the 21st century. We are talking about the short term gain for the long term pain that our country will suffer and these immigrant families will also suffer.

We have a backlog of some 900,000 people who have followed the rules and who have gone through the process to prove they can be proud citizens like anyone else. These people will all be shunted to the side so that we can start to fast-track the workers coming into this country.

As an example, in my region, we are still very dependent on mining, forestry and long haul trucking. A trucker called me and told me that the federal government was bringing in foreign truckers, because with the rates they were being paid nobody could feed their family. Therefore, the government decides to create a special program and starts bringing in immigrant workers to undermine the long haul truckers in our country.

This is not the way we build an economy. It is certainly not the way we build community. That is how we undermine community.

We have seen the government use the threat of non-confidence again and again to bully its friends in the Liberal Party into submission, although I do not think it had to bully too hard. However, we will not bend on the issue of immigration. We will not simply roll over and play dead because the government huffs and puffs and tells us to.

There are so many fundamentally wrong things in the budget beyond this attempt to sneak the immigration bill through. For example, in my region I have two communities where there are no schools. We have a government that says “too bad”, that it does not have money to build first nations schools. This is a government that can buy helicopters to ship to Afghanistan. This is a government that can send money all over the world any time it wants. This is a government that when any of its friends ask for help, the help is there. Yet children of so many communities, whether it is Kashechewan, or Fort Severn, or Attawapiskat, or North Spirit Lake or Cat Lake, are going to schools that are held in former maintenance sheds.

Whenever I raise in the House, I always hear the chuckle of smug satisfaction from the Conservative members. They think it is absolutely absurd that this issue is raised, as though how dare we raise the issue of children in our country who are denied the most basic education rights.

Education is a fundamental human right. When I say it is a fundamental human right, it is not an airy-fairy concept. As defined by the United Nations, a country has to have a plan for education. Even third world countries have plans for education. Yet we see the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development's absolute disinterest in the issue of building schools. He cannot point to a school he has built. He has taken the money from the budget, a very underfunded budget for Indian Affairs, and spent it elsewhere. He tells 13 year old children that some communities are worse off than them, and that is supposed to be some kind of response.

That is not a response. A response is to say that there are 20, to 30, to 40 communities without schools and that we need a plan. That is what a leader does. A leader says how do we address this and a plan will be set up to do so, but not the government.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order, which is on relevance. The member has strayed dramatically from the amendments to the budget. Not only that, his misrepresentations of what he is talking about currently are even further away from the amendments.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I thank the hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George. I think the point he was making had more to do with debate than with a point of order.

In any event, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay has two minutes left. I am sure he will stay close to the point.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate you recognizing that the issue of how we allocate funding is what we are talking about. This is an amendment to a larger budget bill that is dramatically wrong for Canadians.

In response to my colleague, when it comes to misrepresentations, let us talk about misrepresentations. We have documents that were given to the communities of northern Ontario, which were signed under the office of the previous Indian affairs minister who said that the plans to build a school in Attawapiskat would go ahead. These were documents signed by the Conservative government, yet the present Indian affairs minister said that the government never made any promises, that it did not have any money. Not only that, it does not plan on having any money nor having a timeline.

Any government that has that much systemic disregard for children is a government does not deserve to have the confidence of the Canadian people. Therefore, we do not have confidence in the government. We do not have confidence in its underhanded attempts to rewrite the immigration act through threat and bluster.

We, as New Democrats, will vote against the bill and we will vote against it very proudly.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I suppose one could determine that no matter what the member or any of his colleagues say, the fact that they will never form the government of our country kind of makes their statements pretty much unaccountable because they will never have to fulfill any promises they make. They do that very effectively, make promises which they know they will never have to live up to.

The member talked about fast tracking and allowing people to get in to Canada to perform certain duties. I understand he is from northern Ontario. He will know that all across the northern and rural part of our country there is a dramatic shortage of doctors, nurses and medical specialists who are critical to health care in that part of the country.

The member knows that on a regular basis doctors, nurses and medical specialists are allowed to come in to Canada to fill critical demands in health care, which not only apply to the northern part of my province but also to his.

Is he suggesting that we take away all of the fast track privileges and have people in rural and northern Canada go short on much needed health care? Is that what he is trying to say, or is he just, once again, trying to mix words to support whatever ideological straitjacket the NDP happens to be tied to at this time?

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am glad my colleague asked that question. Everybody back home will see the smug sense of entitlement coming from a government that has been in power for an embarrassingly long 18 months.

He says that we in the NDP have no right to ask him questions because we might never form government. We are elected by the people of our region. They have a right to have a voice, but he might not like to hear it. If he does not want to hear it, then he should go home. Maybe he should sit on a blog site with his other right wing friends and chat each other up.

I am here to represent the people of Timmins—James Bay. Whether I and my party ever form government makes no difference to me. I am proud to represent my communities. I will not sit for a moment in a House like this, when children on the James Bay coast are being denied basic services, and listen to the guff of someone who tells me I have no business speaking, or the 307 members of the House have no business speaking unless the Prime Minister tells them how to speak. The day we accept that principle, parliamentary democracy will be at an end.

In response to his question, the present rules make it possible to move forward when we need to bring in specialists. That is not a problem. I would invite the member to go to Toronto, ride in cab and talk some of the doctors who cannot even get their certifications through. We should start dealing with that issue.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the member is a very strong advocate for his constituency. In a poll of all the members in the House this year, he was recognized as the best constituency MP the House has to offer. That is a wonderful achievement on his part and it speaks volumes about what he tries to do in the House for his constituents.

I too am taken aback by the continued attack by the Conservatives and Liberals toward the membership of the New Democratic Party on the basis of our ability to achieve. Our ability to achieve is large in the House. I have been here for two years and I am been most impressed with the record of the New Democratic Party in making a difference for Canadians. Every day we try to do that.

How should we have handled the bill? How would that have given a better—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Timmins—James Bay has 20 seconds to respond.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the simple way of handling this is not to make it a confidence motion. Let us debate this. We need to deal with immigration. We need to deal with bringing skilled workers in to all regions of the country. We need to have a long term plan for not just a strong economy but a strong community. We need to build a sense of citizenship in all Canadians, whether they are new or have been here for many generations.

This is a very important debate and that is why we will—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I must interrupt the hon. member but his colleague, the hon. member for Ottawa Centre, has the floor.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Timmins—James Bay spoke well and forcefully on some of the concerns he has about the budget and how it will affect his region and Canadians in general.

With our amendments to the implementation of Bill C-50, we have tried to put in front of Canadians exactly what is in the bill. It is important to recall that initially when the budget was put forward, Canadians found it was a bit thin, in terms of content, and that was remarked in the media certainly. This particularly had to do with the fact that the government had announced in its fall fiscal update over $50 billion in corporate tax cuts scheduled over the next couple of years. I think the government will regret that in the future, particularly when we look at the tight times in the economy. By the time it got to budget, there was not a lot of material to work with because it had essentially stripped the cupboard bare.

When the budget was introduced, people were looking at little finesses in it. Much to the people's surprise they found, I think, on page 106, of a document consisting of approximately 134 pages, the changes to the immigration act. Talk about non sequitur. The government has taken something that is absolutely critical, something that is the foundation of the future of Canada, and that is important facets of our immigration system, and has hidden them in the budget. We have been proud as Canadians to have had a fairly progressive immigration system.

What is so distressing about this is the government either is trying to be strategic to get this thing through and hope that no one will notice or it honestly does not understand how to make policy and where policy belongs in its formation.

If it were a case of trying to pull a fast one, the government clearly did not get away with it. If it were a case of the government wanting to take immigration changes and put them into the framework of the Department of Finance, hopefully it learned the lesson that it was not appropriate.

I will give the example of what happened when I brought forward the proposed changes to my community.

Soon after the budget was announced and it was discovered that the government was trying to pull a fast one, or maybe make policy through the Department of Finance, and either way we look at it, it is the wrong direction, in my opinion, I brought forward the proposed changes to members of my community. I called all the people who worked with immigrant communities, the Catholic immigration service in Ottawa, the OCISO, a wonderful group that deals with issues of resettlement, language training and foreign credential recognition, et cetera, the Jewish family services, which does an excellent job with integration and supporting newcomers, as well as other groups and individuals. I explained to them the proposed changes. The first question was, “Why didn't the government consult us?” I did not have an answer for them because the government did not consult anyone on the bill.

It was more than passing strange that the government would bring in such aggressive changes to the immigration act without consulting anyone. In fact, all it did was come up with this idea, its own brain trust, and popped it into the budget bill, the details of which I will get into in a minute.

However, let us stop right there and consider this. The government brings in these very aggressive changes to the immigration act without consulting the people who work day in and day out to ensure the people who are affected by issues of immigration and settlement will be represented. Many of them are volunteers and they do it because they care about immigration and settlement and want to ensure it is done right and done responsibly. It is more than bizarre. It begs the question, what is it the government is trying to achieve?

If we look at the provisions within the immigration changes that are in Bill C-50 and why we are proposing these amendments, we will find the direction of the government on immigration. The government wants to ensure the ability of the government to bring in temporary workers so that they can be used, and I use that word deliberately, for a short period of time and then get them out of the country.

We only have to hear the stories of people presently working in the tar sands, people who are working in agriculture in British Columbia and other places, people who are working in mining, to know that these jobs are extremely dangerous. They are ones that require robust health and safety provisions. They should have fair wages. What the government has been able to do is meet the needs, not of new Canadians, but of fairly substantive economic interests in this country that will benefit from cheap labour. They will benefit from the fact that the government will bring in people quickly, use them up and then not have them stay around much longer.

What is so distressing is that the government wants to make these changes, just after the government did what I believe is the right thing. We on this side of the House applauded the government when it actually made amends and apologized for the Chinese head tax. I remember well the speeches by members on both sides of the House, by the leaders and the Prime Minister. It was a good day for Canada. I remember going to the Yangtze restaurant in Ottawa's Chinatown. We had a great celebration party. I believe you attended that, Mr. Speaker, and I think you spoke in Cantonese. It was a great day.

It saddens me and it saddens the community in general that soon after that acknowledgement and apology, the government is replicating in the 21st century what was done in the 18th century, which is to bring in temporary workers simply to use them, and when it is finished with them to send them back. That is the problem with Bill C-50.

We have to consider what we could have done. Everyone would argue that we should deal with the backlog in the immigration system. People who work in immigration settlement will tell us to put more resources overseas to make sure that when people apply for landed immigrant status and go through the points system, they know exactly what the situation is going to be when they come to Canada. They will tell us to make sure that rather than having just websites, there be actual human resources deployed overseas to help people with the process. They will tell us to ensure that when people are applying for landed immigrant status, they have all of their background documents in place and to support them in doing that. That would shorten the time period. On the other side of the equation, we have to make sure that here in Canada we have the requisite resources to ensure that we can streamline the system.

As an aside, it is interesting that when the Minister of Immigration brought forward these proposals, strangely enough in Bill C-50, as this is the budget bill, she said that the government had made great progress in streamlining the application process. She said that the department was able to process 40% more of the applications. She said that on the one hand, but on the other hand, she said that the system is so bungled up and has such weight on it that extreme changes have to be made.

It does not balance to say on one hand that her department is making this great progress, lauding herself and her ministry, and on the other hand that things are so grave and awful that we have to make these extreme changes to centralize power in the minister's office. When we look at Bill C-50 and we look at this kind of doublespeak of the government, one has to look at what the government is trying to achieve here. It seems that the government is trying to achieve a fast one, as I said before.

In the end, these amendments we have put forward should be passed so we can make sure we have a fair system for all.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, certainly we have a very unified position in this party about this bill and about the need to remove these onerous provisions from it.

I want to speak about the backlog of applicants. Is it the reality that there is no backlog for student visas, temporary resident visas and temporary foreign workers visas In Canada? Will Bill C-50 take away the rights of these applicants to be given a visa even when they meet all the qualifications?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, if we look at the backlog that the government claims the bill will deal with and we look at these provisions in the budget and Bill C-50, it will not help anyone who is presently here. In fact, the government has admitted that.

The government says there is a backlog of 925,000. Earlier today it was calculated at close to a billion, but I understand that was corrected. We are talking about a backlog of close to 925,000 people. The government says that is the case and we will take the government at its word on that. The legislative changes will only affect applications submitted after February 27, 2008. It will have absolutely no effect, zero effect, on the backlog of 925,000.

Not only does this bill not help the people it purports to help, but the government has a problem with acknowledging there is a backlog and it is bringing in these changes to streamline the system. The government should have consulted with the people who know about the system and who work in the system every day. The government would have found that there are other ways of dealing with the backlog that would be less onerous and would actually open up the system and get the people we need to the places where they should be going.

As an example, there is a challenge here in Ottawa to find a family physician. We also know there are 500 foreign trained doctors right here in Ottawa. That study was put together more than a year ago.

The other rationale the government puts forward is that we need to bring in skilled labour, medical professionals, et cetera. Tell that to the people who are driving taxis here in Ottawa, who have their foreign credentials to practise medicine, but sadly they cannot because the government has not figured out how to streamline the system.

My point is that if the government is making the argument that it needs to streamline the system for the backlog, it is not going to work for that, and if it is for skilled workers, we already have the skilled workers here. What is going to change with the system for them? The government simply says it will get more of them in. What happens when they get here?

Until the government deals with that reality, this bill has no place in this place and it has not been thought out. Those provisions need to be removed. That is why these amendments have been put forward.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, does my colleague believe that the government's significant mismanagement of the economy by eviscerating the financial and economic capabilities of Ottawa is somehow in keeping with its ideology? The Conservative government believes that its ideology is good for Canada. Some of us believe it is significantly damaging to Canada. The fact is the government leadership believes that we are simply the sum of our parts, whereas many of us believe that we are greater than the sum of our parts.

Does the member believe that a strong Ottawa working with strong provincial leaderships would enable our Canada to achieve its potential?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would always support a strong Ottawa. It is something we should all support.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I am rising to speak to Bill C-50, the budget implementation act, and the amendments we put forward to try to bring some rationale to the situation and the future of immigration in this country.

I come from a part of the country which in the past may not have been the prime destination for immigrants to Canada, but over the last number of years that has changed quite dramatically. Immigrants are coming to communities throughout the Northwest Territories. In many cases they face completely different living and climatic conditions. They work really hard to integrate themselves into Canada and into the burgeoning economy in the Northwest Territories. We are grateful that people are coming to contribute to our economy, to live in the north, to work and to support the development of our territory. That is a great thing. In Yellowknife right now there are 27 different ethnic groups. Clearly this is a result of this immigration movement.

It is difficult for people as they have to fight their way through the process to get into the country. We seem to have created a system in which immigrants have to spend much of their time and energy on paperwork, rather than focusing on their goals as immigrants and accomplishing things, like reuniting their families in this country.

My constituency office handles many cases every year. Many of those cases reference the particular hardships that individuals have experienced in establishing their lives in Canada because they cannot get through the system. They cannot accomplish their goals within the system in a reasonable time. The bureaucratic structures are not adequate to give them the support they need to make proper representations in the immigration system. In many cases that leads them to the member of Parliament's office for assistance.

In the Northwest Territories there is only one immigration officer and that person has other duties to fulfill in terms of enforcing other parts of the act. That person cannot act only as a guide to the immigrants within the country who are trying to move forward with their lives. We suffer from a huge shortage of manpower required to make the system work better. That is the case in my riding where we have a total of 43,000 people. Community groups do their best to help out with the situation. We have a structure which I think in some ways is more amenable to supporting individuals, but the fact that this is the situation in my riding suggests to me that it is even more of a problem elsewhere in the country.

Therefore, when we want to propose changes to the Immigration Act, I think it is incumbent upon everyone to get all the evidence. This process that the Conservative Party has foisted on the House to deal with immigration is simply not correct or appropriate for making that happen. It is a back door approach to making changes.

It was outed very early once the bill came forward because of course these things are scrutinized fairly closely. It did not work quite the way the Conservatives wanted, but the opportunities to then work on this legislation were sorely limited because it was handled in this particular fashion.

The changes to the act that in many cases we find most repugnant as Canadians are that we are taking away the democratic nature of the system as it exists now. We are not trying to improve the efficiency of the system or properly build up the resources needed to make the system work.

As well, we are not dealing with the problems we have in many of our embassies in other countries. Rather than utilizing Canadians who are used to dealing with our system in the same democratic and useful fashion, we find that in many cases we are utilizing nationals from the countries where the embassies are located. In my time as a member of Parliament, that has noticeably impacted on the ability of immigrants to acquire visas and move forward in a smooth fashion through the many hoops and stumbling blocks that exist for people who are applying for a visa or trying to be reunited with their families.

These problems are not going to be solved by this bill, because it is going in the wrong direction. At the same time, when we stand to ask for these issues to be removed from this bill, we are by no means suggesting that there is nothing wrong with the Immigration Act. It is just that what is being proposed here does not fit the Canadian model. It does not address the resource issues that are quite clearly dominating many of the problems and leading to these huge backlogs in the system.

The Conservatives, in their few years here, have not been able to even make a dent in that backlog. In fact, the backlog has gotten larger.

Their solution, especially the idea that there will be yearly quotas and at the end of the year all the applications that are not part of the quota will be rejected, is a really bad thing. It will discourage people from coming to this country. It will discourage people from making applications. There will be constant intrigue in the department in regard to trying to find out where these different classifications or directions are going to go.

All of this is going to lead to a complete breakdown in the system and take us away from the values that Canadians have so much pride in. In fact, idealistically, we send our armed forces around the world to try to uphold those values in other countries.

What this bill is doing is creating an arbitrary, authoritarian potential within the department, although it does not necessarily have to be that way. We could argue that the minister could be a most altruistic and wonderful individual who would not use the difference between “may” and “shall” in many of these points to discriminate against applicants. However, human nature being what it is, I think we have found in Canada that the best way to avoid discrimination and maintain a democratic system is to have rules that match up to that.

It is a phenomenon that I see so much in Canada: we do not jump queues in this country. We take our time. We fill the time we have available to us--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I am sorry, but the hon. member is taking somebody else's time, so we will have questions and comments. The first question comes from the hon. member for Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my NDP colleague in regard to getting back to the economics of our country. This is so central to the ability of Canadians to have the life they want in order to provide for their families and to us as a Parliament and a government to have the assets to serve our citizens.

Does the hon. member think the Conservative government has made serious errors in what it has done to eviscerate the financial capabilities of the federal government by putting the finances of the Canadian government on the brink of a deficit situation?

Does he think the dropping of two percentage points on the GST was an abysmal mistake? Would it have been preferable to put moneys directly, through a non-refundable tax credit, to the poor and the middle class? Would that have been a much more preferable way of getting money into the hands of those of modest means in our country, those who need it most?

That would be much more preferable than the blanket drop in the GST, which actually preferentially helps those who are most affluent, because the more we spend, the more we can benefit from a drop in the GST. As well, we know that those who are least fortunate in our country are spending money on rent and food. In other words, they are spending their money on items that are GST exempt.

Does he agree that the government has taken quite an immoral position and has been quite cavalier and damaging to our country by affecting the finances of our nation in such a negative way?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, we spoke endlessly in the fall on our feelings about the changes in the tax system that were initiated in that mini budget in November. We are not in favour of them, especially the corporate tax cuts that were made. They were wrong-headed and wrongly directed, because 50% of the corporate profits in this country are made either by the banks or by the oil companies. We saw a huge infusion to that group.

What has happened in the last three months in this country is quite serious. Now that the figures have come out, we see that we have a 0.3% drop in the GDP, but at the same time we have seen a huge increase in the price of resources in the resource industries. We know that our gross domestic product has been inflated by the very high prices of oil and gas, fertilizer and all manner of resources. At the same time, we are seeing a drop in the total gross domestic product.

I would say that the situation is even more severe on that point. The only expansion in our economy is in areas where the resources are being exploited. In the areas where they are not, we are obviously underachieving.

The tax breaks have not interested a lot of people in the manufacturing sector because that is not what they need. They need strategic investment. They need incentives to do the right things. They need money to retool. Those are the sorts of things that industry really requires and that it did not get from the Conservative government.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Questions and comments. This will be a 30-second question.

[Keith Martin, Liberal, Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca, BC]

Mr. Speaker, a quick question is this one. Does the member think the Prime Minister's penchant for controlling his ministers and his government through the Prime Minister's Office is an entirely undemocratic and completely ineffective way to run the Government of Canada and this country, and that what he ought to be doing is living up to democratic principles and giving his ministers the ability to do their jobs?

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Western Arctic will give a 30-second answer.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I would say the fault lies with the whole Conservative caucus in not standing up for their democratic rights in forming government. They are allowing this situation to continue, whether or not it is through their leadership. We have a mass of MPs here who could be speaking out on it and they do not, so it is their problem, not just the Prime Minister's problem.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Prince Edward—Hastings is rising.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I very seldom get up just to offer a comment until I hear something that really does go against the grain of some personal values, principles and beliefs.

I heard the member for Western Arctic state that we are told as individual members and members of a caucus that we have to do exactly what we are told. I am on record here in this House right now as stating that I have never been told what to do or how to do it, by anyone, in the House, in this caucus or in this party.

I do believe that should be on the record to set it straight. To suggest anything else is just simply propaganda that those members wish to formulate for their own particular purpose.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Prince Edward—Hastings was not speaking on questions and comments but on resuming debate and now he is subject to questions and comments.

Is the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre rising on questions and comments?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

No, Mr. Speaker.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Is the hon. member for Western Arctic rising on questions and comments?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, this seems to be a rather odd way of conducting business here, but I really do want to respond.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

You have the floor.

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

I want to ask the member a question on his speech. Rather than dealing with budget issues, most of his speech was a sort of attack on what he perceived I said. You can check the record, Mr. Speaker. I think Hansard will show that the question was asked of me about the nature of the Conservative government's control from the top down. I said that if that is the problem, then the solution should lie with all of the Conservative caucus. To me, that is part of the democratic process.

The conduct of a particular political party is not simply on the basis of the leadership. It is on the basis of every individual member within it. If the hon. member speaks up on these issues, then that is commendable. Perhaps the hon. member wants to speak up now on what he thinks about the nature of democracy in Parliament.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am actually very proud and pleased and, quite honestly, humbled to be a member of Parliament. I have talked to many people, and I have not only an obligation but a responsibility. I can recall a mentor that I talked to many years ago. He told me that he personally viewed a member of Parliament as having a position of privilege. Although some people might consider that privilege in the persona of perks, he said that was not actually so, that the privilege is in privilege and genuine area of responsibility. As such, I take my responsibilities very seriously, as do most colleagues in the House, I know, when they are not caught up in partisan games. I commend those from all parties who do that.

When I listen to bafflegab in the House that deviates from the normal level of commitment to one's party, one's country, and one's self, and when statements are made for partisan purposes, I find it rather disturbing, but of course that is a reality some people seem to accept as the norm these days. I do not. I leave my statement at that.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the government member, who has just spoken, a question about Bill C-50. Within Bill C-50 there are very comprehensive and dramatic changes to Canada's immigration laws.

In my community, which is a community of many different cultures now, people are coming from all over the world to live in the lower mainland of British Columbia. We presented the changes that are proposed by his government and they shared with us their concerns from a variety of communities, from the Chinese Canadian community, the Korean Canadian community, the Somalian community, all of whom have sizeable communities in New Westminster—Coquitlam.

They are very concerned about these changes. However, without getting into the detail of the changes that the government is proposing within the budget implementation bill, I want to ask the member this. He made some comments about performing in the House of Commons, doing things in the traditional way. It is not tradition to put massive immigration changes into a budget implementation bill.

Why would you be doing that and not allowing the immigration committee to have an opportunity to study and make recommendations for changes--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for New Westminster--Coquitlam meant to say why would “he” be doing that, not why would “you” want to be doing that.

In any event the hon. member for Prince Edward—Hastings has 20 seconds to respond.

[Daryl Kramp, Conservative, Prince Edward—Hastings, ON]

Mr. Speaker, quite frankly, some people talk about issues, other people get the job done. Under the previous government, we started off with 30,000 or so people on the waiting list, then it jumped to 900,000. That is not acceptable. People have been waiting five and six--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I will take what few minutes are left. I understand I will probably be the last speaker of the day on this particular subject, so I think I should preface my remarks by speaking to Canadians who may be tuned in and watching, and try to explain why it is that the House of Commons today is seized with the issue of debating the budget implementation bill.

Yet, virtually all of the speakers have been rising to speak about immigration and how Canada's immigration act is being altered by this bill. It does warrant some explanation. I have to apologize to Canadians because I, for the life of me, cannot give a plausible explanation as to why the government would have slipped in a bunch of serious amendments to the immigration act into the budget implementation bill.

It is beyond me. It is beyond most people. It is underhanded. It is a back-door approach. It undermines democracy, in a sense, because the people who have been assigned to reviewing Canada's immigration laws from all parties at the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration are being denied the opportunity to have their fair say. In fact, the House of Commons is being denied the ability to have a fulsome debate on the subject of immigration reform.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

And so are the Canadian people.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

As my colleagues says, and the Canadian people are missing any opportunity for input. If that Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration were dealing with these issues, we might be touring the country, going from coast to coast, to get input from Canadians as to whether they would approve of this massive fundamental overhaul, this huge policy shift in how we welcome newcomers to this country.

The only thing that I can think of is, and I have talked with my colleagues, it reminds us of the further indication of the Americanization of Canadian politics. This is very much an American phenomena that we see in the American Congress. Its budget bills, its appropriation bills, are often stuffed full of a hundred other little bits and pieces that an individual senator or congressman might want in, in exchange for passing that piece of legislation. It looks like the Manhattan phone book by the time its budget bills get passed.

This is sort of what the Conservatives have done here. They have taken a budget implementation bill that has to be passed by the time we recess Parliament. It would give the spending authority for the government to go through with its fiscal plan. It is completely inappropriate and unfair to slip this heavy piece of immigration legislation into the budget implementation bill.

Let me tell members what we should be debating right now, just as an aside. I was hoping that in this federal budget this Conservative government would undertake some of the things it promised to do, such as plug some of the outrageous tax haven loopholes that still exist today.

I remember when the Conservatives were in opposition. I used to sit with them on this side of the House, berating the Liberal finance minister, saying, “Why do you allow people like the former prime minister to put all of their holdings offshore as tax fugitives to avoid paying their fair share of taxes?”, and the Conservatives used to agree with us. That used to meet the old nod test.

Now that the Conservatives have had three budgets and one fiscal economic update, which we could call a third mini budget, they have not chosen to plug those loopholes. One of their own right-wing columnists, actually, Diane Francis, who calls herself a practising Conservative, has written five articles in a row in the last month in the Financial Post, slamming corporate Canada for shielding its money offshore.

She calls it economic treason, I believe that is the term she used, when Canadians willingly avoid paying taxes in the country that allowed them to profit and become healthy, wealthy and wise. Yet, this government repeatedly refuses to address that fiscal concern that could have been an element of this budget that we could be debating here today.

Another thing she pointed out is there is a tax haven option for family trust funds where Canadians can expatriate all of their family trust holdings and allow their kids to live as trust fund kids in Canada, never paying a penny of income tax. Because once they expatriate that money, it is tax free; they pay a one-time 25% exit tax. They set it up in a tax fugitive country where we have a tax treaty and their kids and their kids's kids, generations of Canadians, can be living off of that trust fund never paying any taxes in this country.

She says it is quite frequent and that is appalling. Why we willingly forgo that amount of tax revenue should be debated in the House of Commons. Canadians, I find, do not mind paying their fair share of taxes as long as everyone is paying their fair share of taxes.

Those things should be debated today. Instead, we are put in the awkward position of having to debate immigration policy during a budget implementation bill.

On that line, I come from the building trades. I used to be the head of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters & Joiners of America and we used to deal with this issue of temporary foreign workers all the time. I can tell members that this is an issue of our immigration laws that we have to have a look at because there is a tendency to rely more and more on temporary foreign workers.

Let me just say right from the start that it is not a human resources labour market strategy to bring in foreign workers to fill job vacancies. That is not a strategy at all. There is no future in that and it undermines local wage scales. It causes social unrest and social problems in the community where these influxes of foreign workers come in. Often the foreign workers do not receive the same benefits and rights that local workers do.

Let me give one example in the province of British Columbia that was a disastrous thing because the applicants for foreign workers are often disingenuous in their applications.

The Gold River pulp mill in Tahsis shut down. The whole town was out of work. Eighty millwrights were required to tear the old plant down to sell it to China, where it was going to be rebuilt. There were 80 unemployed millwrights in town who built that mill. The millwrights in Gold River knew every nut and bolt in that pulp mill because they were the ones who put it together, but when the company official that bought the mill wanted foreign workers to come in, he filled out all the necessary forms and where it said, “Did you try to find Canadian workers to do this job?”, he ticked off, “Yes”. On the question, “What was the reason you did not use Canadian workers?”, he put down, and we have a copy of this, “The cost was too high”.

This foreign owner who scooped up the pulp and paper mill to move it offshore would not hire Canadian workers to even dismantle the plant because the cost was too high, so he brought in a bunch of South Asian workers from India, sleeping 12 to a hotel room, to tear down the plant, while the unemployed men and women in Tahsis, B.C. were on the other side of the gate looking in while somebody else was eating their lunch. That is a recent example of the temporary foreign worker phenomenon that is sweeping the country. The company got away with doing that.

In another example on the other coast, the Halifax Chronicle-Herald was building a new printing press, a very high tech precision operation. It is a machine that is twice as long as this room and it has to be levelled off to one-one-thousandths of an inch, to the micron, so the paper rollers are running accurately. The Swiss company that manufactures the mill said it could not find any qualified Canadian workers to do it, so the Government of Canada let it bring in its own workers to install it.

We are talking a couple of years worth of highly skilled work for Canadian workers. Guess what? There were 800 unemployed Canadian millwrights in the Atlantic region alone. I know because they were members of my union on the job board, on the dispatch board, from St. John's, Newfoundland and Halifax, Nova Scotia, and Saint John, New Brunswick. They were all sitting there unemployed while somebody else was allowed in to eat their lunch because the Government of Canada accepted the word of these applicants that would say they could not find any skilled Canadians, that it was far too complex for the Canadian workers.

One guy actually pulled a hair out of his head when he was arguing this to the government, saying, “We have to set these machines thinner than the thickness of this hair”. What does he think Canadian workers do every day of the week? What does he think skilled millwrights do in this country? If they have any hair on their head, they are measuring the tolerances of paper mills right across the country, because we build printing presses in every city in Canada, and we could have built the one in Halifax, Nova Scotia too if the Government of Canada would have just said no and let Canadian workers have those jobs. What is this zeal we have for giving away Canadian jobs?

I will say one last thing on the subject. If there are labour market shortages in the skilled trades, some of the aboriginal communities have chronic unemployment situations. We have--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for New Westminster—Coquitlam.

[Dawn Black, NDP, New Westminster—Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great attention to my colleague from Winnipeg during his presentation. I know he talked about the whole issue of the changes in the budget implementation act as it relates to immigration.

I have a paper put out by the Canadian Bar Association that asks very pertinent questions. On behalf of the Bar and other Canadians, I want to ask the member a question. The Canadian Bar Association calls these changes to the immigration policy a major step backward in the evolution of Canadian immigration law. Does the member from Winnipeg agree with that statement?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, yes, the Canadian Bar Association did not pull any punches whatsoever in expressing its displeasure and dissatisfaction with the government's initiatives regarding immigration today.

I should point out that I have a letter from the YWCA. Civil society, generally, is taken aback that the government would try to implement these changes without the usual prerequisite consultation. For a social policy change of this significance, it is unprecedented that the government would try to slam it through and give further discretionary powers to the minister and not go through the ordinary channels of consultation.

We also have a letter here from one of the largest--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It is with regret that I must interrupt the hon. member but it being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

When we return to the study of Bill C-50 there will be three minutes left under questions and comments for the hon. member for Winnipeg Centre.

(The House resumed at 12:02 p.m.)

The House resumed from May 30 consideration of Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to engage in the debate on Bill C-50. I will look particularly at the issue as it pertains to Part 6, which deals with changes to the Immigration Refugee Protection Act.

I will preface that by saying immigration has been the lifeblood, continues to be the lifeblood and will be the lifeblood of our country. We know in the next five years 100% of our net labour growth will be met by new immigrants. This is where we will have to look for growth. It is important for us to be cognizant of the demographic challenge we face as a nation.

I will go back a bit in the historical perspective, because there are a lot of things that are wrong with the bill.

First, the very fact that such huge, major changes to the Immigration Act are in a budget implementation bill is totally wrong. We heard in the House and across the country that it was not the way to deal with the legislation, to the extent the finance committee referred that section of the bill to the citizenship and immigration committee.

The committee unanimously passed a motion saying that part 6 pertaining to immigration should be struck from the bill because the changes contemplated would be major and would really determine, in a very real sense, the future of our country, the future population make-up of the country.

I said I wanted to go back and talk a bit about history. I remember when we changed the Immigration Act back in 2001. The changes proposed and ultimately adopted were ones that the citizenship and immigration committee itself opposed at the time. The reason we did that was we ended up with a very elitist point system. It essentially meant that many of the people the economy actually needed would not get into the country because of our immigration policies in terms of people applying to our country as economic class immigrants.

I want to underline that those changes were driven by the bureaucracy. I suppose it made their jobs easier, but it did not address the needs of our immigration system. One of the real disconcerting things about that, and as I said the bill was driven by the bureaucracy, was that we developed an elitist point system, which focused on education and abilities to speak the language.

By education. I mean university degrees or the ability to speak French or English. Those were the primary drivers of that point system. Under that point system, people like Frank Stronach of Magna International would never have come to Canada. Frank Hasenfratz, chairman of Linamar, who employs well over 10,000 people, would never have come to Canada. John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of the our country would not have come to Canada, nor would Tommy Douglas. Wayne Gretzky's ancestors would not have come to Canada. Mike Lazaridis, the gentleman who invented the BlackBerry, which all members of the House like to use, would not have come to Canada because the system was too elitist.

When the committee tried to deal with the issues, when we tried to deal with the backlog, when we tried to deal with applying the new point system to ensure did not apply to people already in the queue, we were misinformed by the bureaucracy. This should be a real concern. It was not until the Dragan v. Canada case in the Federal Court, which dealt specifically with the issue, did we find that only was the committee misled by the bureaucracy, but governor in council was misled as well.

There is a basic problem with the way we make decisions around immigration issues. I have been on the citizenship and immigration committee since 1998, and during that time there have been seven immigration ministers. With seven ministers, the committee really did not have an opportunity to learn the file. The decision was, for the most part, and this has been my experience, driven by the bureaucracy.

The proposal in the legislation is not being driven by the present minister because she is a brand new minister. Her record of achievement includes being the first minister in a decade to miss our immigration targets of 240,000 to 265,000 people. She is also the minister who has created a record backlog in the refugee determination system. She is also the minister who denied the reality of lost Canadians, saying there were hundreds of people involved. Then we found out there were actually hundreds of thousands of lost Canadians, which necessitated the legislation. It is under the present minister that the backlog has grown by huge numbers. There was not a large backlog under the previous government.

The bill would remove certainty from people wishing to come to Canada. It would change dramatically the rules of those who play by the rules and qualify for entry. Instead of saying a visa would be issued to these folks, the legislation would say that a visa may be issued to them.

There are problems in our Immigration Act, but they are all fixable. The way we are proceeding, under a budget implementation act, without the scrutiny it should receive, we will not make the right decision any more now than we did in 2001. We are making the wrong decision now and it will totally destroy some of the good things in our immigration system like transparency and objectivity. Our system underlines a premise that has been copied by Australia, New Zealand and England. The United States is looking at it now.

We have to develop a points system that would mesh with what our economy needs. Under the proposed legislation, carpenters, or electricians or labourers, who we need, would not get in the country. These jobs are available all across Canada.

I travelled with the citizenship and immigration committee three times across Canada in the last five years. One thing that has become clear is the fact that there is a real disconnect between what the economy needs and what individuals we allow to come in under the points system.

It would be impossible for me to outline all the changes that I think should be made. I agree with most of the witnesses who appeared at committee. We can make changes that are transparent. We can make changes that will deal with the needs of the economy. We can do this with certainty.

The system we are devising would make us dependent on thousands of temporary foreign workers, yet the people at the lower end of the skill set would be unable to bring their families with them. This is reminiscent of the time when the Chinese were brought into our country to help build the railway in the late 1800s. When the railway was finished, we tried to get rid of them. We do not want to go down that path again.

We need an immigration system that is realistic. We need an immigration system that not only reflects family reunification, but also reflects what our economy needs. We can also make better use of humanitarian clauses as they relate to refugees.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very high regard for the Liberal member. I know he is an honourable person. When I ask the following question, I hope he treats it as a very direct question from me.

I do not agree with a lot of what he said, and that is fine. This place is about that. It is a place of debate.

What I do not understand is if his colleagues in the rest of his party are of the same mind as himself, what we can expect in terms of a vote from his party? There is all this talk about voting strategically and all these things, and that is fine. However, this place should have something to do with principles.

I know the gentleman is a man of principle, as I like to think of myself as being. Could we anticipate that all the concerns he has expressed and those expressed by other members of his party will be reflected in the way they vote tonight?

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member says that he does not agree with what I said, but what I said was pretty well true as the message relates to the immigration system. I am sure if my colleague across the way heard all I said and if we could be involved in a dialogue, I am sure he would agree with me.

I voted along with my colleagues on the citizenship and immigration committee against Bill C-50. I voted for the report. I expect I will do that again.

My positioning in the House, where I stand and sit, is exactly because I have voted the way I said I would on particular issues.

If some of my colleagues engage in strategic voting, then I guess the determination has been made by my party that they do not want to trigger an election on this issue because they think there is a more appropriate issue on which to trigger an election. I am really mindful and concerned of the political games that the government has been playing with this issue.

As soon as Bill C-50 came down, and I have said it publicly and in the press, I said that the government was looking to do a little immigrant bashing. The Conservatives saw what happened in the province of Quebec in the last provincial election. They saw the position advanced by the ADQ. They also saw the reaction to the reasonable accommodation debate in the province of Quebec. I believe the government made a conscious decision not to deal with legislation on immigration, but to take advantage of those feelings, hoping that it might win it a few more seats.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate that the hon. member has been punished by his Liberal leader for taking principled stands in the House of Commons. In no way should members of the Liberal Party be allowing Bill C-50 to go through. The Liberal Party should be standing with the NDP, as is the Bloc, to block the legislation. It is a question of immigration fairness.

Given that the Liberal Party has said it is opposed to Bill C-50, will the member press his leader to have Liberals in the House vote and stop this bill? If the Liberal Party votes against it, the bill is stopped.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have made representations of those kinds. Whether they succeed or do not succeed will be obvious when we vote on the bill.

Also, the Liberal Party does not have the same kind of luxury as the New Democratic Party or the Bloc have in not being the official opposition. If we vote against the legislation, we know there will be an election and that is a determination for the leader to make.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps no other area is indicative of the kind of incompetence we have seen over the last 20 years as the immigration area.

Essentially, under the former Liberal government and under the current Conservative government, we have seen chronic underfunding in immigration, which has led to huge backlogs developing.

The immigration system is a lot like the health care system. If we underfund it, if beds are not in place and if we do not have doctors and nurses staffing a hospital, then an adequate degree of health care cannot be provided.

That is exactly what we have seen from this chronic obsession with corporate tax cuts that has developed, particularly over the last 15 years.

The Conservatives and Liberals have been falling over each other trying to see who can give the biggest corporate tax cut to the most profitable companies in Canada without any exchange of jobs or any positive economic repercussions, which I will come back to in a moment. We have seen underfunding in immigration that has led to a crisis in the immigration sector.

The member for Kitchener—Waterloo said that this was a recent development, that the hundreds of thousands of people in the backlog in the system is a result of recent Conservative policies.

The Conservatives have mismanaged and botched this file enormously but to be fair to them, 700,000 of the over 900,000 people who are now in backlog in the system come from the former Liberal government. That chronic mismanagement, that underfunding, that inability to adequately staff consular offices and embassies around the world so we can adequately deal with the immigration work the government must be dealing with, started under the Liberals. We have seen mismanagement from the former Liberal government and mismanagement from the current Conservative government, and that has led to this backlog of nearly one million individuals.

What is the solution? The NDP has been saying very clearly what the solution needs to be. We need to invest in the immigration system so that it functions, in the same way we need to invest in the health care system. The government has to stop this appalling obsession with bigger and bigger corporate tax cuts, which has led over the last 20 years to two-thirds of Canadians earning less now than they were in 1989.

That strategy, that one note band that we have seen under the Liberals and the Conservatives, clearly has not functioned. We need to reinvest so that we have a federal government and government institutions that are functioning effectively. Instead of doing that, we have the Conservatives trying to rewrite the rule book. They realize the backlog is too long so under Bill C-50 in the immigration provision they give the minister dictatorial powers to simply delete names from a list.

Does that make any sense whatsoever? If the backlog is a problem, we give the minister power to delete names. That is essentially what the Conservatives are offering.

They have another strategy. They want to turn the immigration system from encouraging family reunification and encouraging building communities. In my community in Burnaby—New Westminster, the bulk of the community has come from immigration over time and those families who have reunited here in Canada have helped to build and underpin the growth of our communities.

Instead of doing that, the Conservatives have decided that they want to import temporary foreign workers at lower wages and not subject to health and safety standards, essentially indentured servants. They will be brought in by companies but if they quit or are fired because of appalling working conditions, they will be sent home.

That is not how Canada was built. I had hoped that we had learned the lessons of the 19th century and the appalling racism that existed then but, no. We see the Conservatives trying to re-enact the kind of indentured servitude that we saw in the past.

The NDP is opposing this legislation because it simply does not make sense. The Conservatives lack managerial capacity. It is obvious from the fact that the Minister of International Trade now holds four ministerial portfolios because there is nobody, outside of himself, who is considered by the Prime Minister to actually have the ministerial competence to handle a ministry.

The Conservatives, obviously, are unable to effectively manage government institutions. We see the net result of that in the government's great strategy. The brain trusts, the rocket scientists in the PMO have solved the problem. They want to give the minister the power to delete names from the list and then we no longer have a waiting list.

We can extend this to other areas as well, such as health care. Why do we not just delete sick patients from the list and then all of a sudden the Canadian population would be much healthier? The Conservative approach to management boggles the mind. When we say “effective Conservative management”, that is an oxymoron.

We have a bad bill. We have a bill that does not deal with the backlog and the chronic underfunding in the Department of Citizenship and Immigration. It simply gives the minister power to delete names and bring in temporary foreign workers. The NDP rises in the House and says that it will fight this bill on behalf of new Canadians from coast to coast to coast because it is bad policy and it is bad for Canada.

The folks who actually caused the immigration backlog, or most of it, the 700,000 names that were on the backlog list until January 2006 under the Liberal watch, they say that that they opposed to the bill but that they will let it go through. Some members will speak against it, and some principled members, like the member from Kitchener, will actually vote against it, but the leader of the Liberal Party will let this bill go through. It is absolutely appalling.

If the Liberals recognize that this is a completely wrong-headed approach to dealing with the crisis of underfunding in the immigration department, then they should have the courage of their convictions to stand in the House of Commons and vote against this bill. They should follow the lead of the NDP and the member for Toronto—Danforth and say that this is bad for Canada and that they will vote against it.

We know that will not happen because we have seen, over the past year, time and time again, the Liberal leader prop up and support the Conservative government on all issues, not just on immigration and on the budget, but on the security and prosperity partnership and a wide range of issues. On the war in Afghanistan, we saw the Liberals as simply an appendage of the Conservative government. That is just not good enough.

Members of Parliament are elected to stand in the House and vote. Members of Parliament are elected to take principled stands when we know a bill is bad for Canada and that it will harm this country and the approach we have had on immigration which has helped to build better communities across this country from coast to coast to coast. When we know a bill is bad it is our job to stand in the House and oppose it. The leader of the Liberal Party, however, will not oppose any Conservative policy that has a confidence vote attached to it. The Conservatives essentially have free rein.

In the few moments I have remaining, I would like to deal with some of the myths and misconceptions that the Conservatives have put out about Bill C-50. One of the things the Conservatives have said is that they have welcomed more people to Canada. That is not true. In fact, the landed immigrant status numbers have gone down.

However, what has happened is an explosion of temporary foreign workers, indentured servants, who are being brought into Canada on a temporary basis if they are on good behaviour with their companies. As we have seen in many cases, people are working 70 or 80 hour weeks with no overtime and are often being paid below minimum wage. They are not subject to health and safety standards. If they speak out about being paid minimum wage or below minimum wage they could get shipped back home. It is simply not true that the numbers have increased.

Bill C-50 contains nothing to deal with the fundamental mismanagement that we saw under the Liberal Party and now under the Conservative Party. It contains nothing to deal with the fundamental truth that neither of those parties are very good managers. It is for those reasons that the NDP will rise in the House and oppose the bill.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in terms of dealing with the numbers, an important concept for us to understand is that we let in about 250,000 immigrants a year. About 300,000 to 400,000 people wishing to come to Canada make application. As long as we have a mismatch between the number of people wishing to come here and the number of people we actually let in, we will have a growing backlog.

Last year the government said that it brought in 430,000 newcomers to Canada. If all those people coming into Canada were immigrants that would have helped to deal with the backlog. However, the problem was that about 190,000 of them were people with temporary status, about two-thirds of them were temporary foreign workers and one-third of them were foreign students. Had we applied the whole 430,000 to deal with the backlog, we would have made a dent. Instead, we have bumped up the numbers by close to 100,000 people in terms of the backlog itself, even though we brought in an extra 190,000 people.

I agree with my colleague across the way. This is really dangerous. Will Canada become a country of temporary foreign workers or will we bring in people who will make an investment and help us build a country? Will we be bringing in temporary foreign workers, the ones on the lower end who are in a virtually indentured situation, a servitude situation where if they step out of line they will get booted out of the country, or will we bring in people who have many skills? For those lower skilled workers, however, the government is proposing to give them temporary permits so they cannot apply for landed status. Does my colleague have a comment on that?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, yes, I do. The bill should be called “Bill C-50, the indentured servant act” because I think that portrays the Conservative Party's intention behind this bill. It wants to bring in indentured servants, to turn the clock back to the 19th century, obviously considered halcyon days for the Conservative Party.

It is more than just underfunding at embassies and consulates around the world. There are other problems that we do not have time to go into. We are talking about chronic underfunding in English language programs to actually allow that transition for landed immigrants or refugees when they come to Canada to actually get into the job market and make their contribution.

We have chronic underfunding in British Columbia. It has been disadvantaged by both the former Liberal government and the current Conservative government in terms of per capita immigration funding. Other provinces get much more support for immigration than British Columbia gets. We feel this acutely in the area of Burnaby—New Westminster where a lot of new Canadians, about half of all refugees into British Columbia, come. There is not sufficient funding for ESL nor for that transition.

We need a reinvestment in our immigration system and we did not see that from the former Liberals nor have we seen it from the current Conservatives.

[Jim Abbott, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary for Canadian Heritage]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot let the member get away with calling this the indentured servant thing. That is just a pile of hooey.

What we have at this particular point is the opportunity for people to come to Canada and work with employers in Canada. All of their protection is in place. For the member to be characterizing it the way he is, is deeply regrettable. The employers of Canada need these workers and the workers want to come to Canada. I wish the member would--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster has 30 seconds for his response.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think the facts prove that the Conservative pretensions around this bill are hooey. We have seen a rapid rise in temporary foreign workers. The hon. parliamentary secretary knows full well that they are not subject to Canadian health and safety regulations nor are they subject to any of the provisions that exist under the Labour Code, which is why we have had controversy--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Don Valley East.

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak on the budget implementation bill, Bill C-50.

In the normal course of parliamentary debate, a budget discussion would ordinarily reflect a thorough examination of the government's fiscal policies and the state of the nation's finances. However, for some strange reason, the Conservatives have chosen to depart from our parliamentary tradition, and it is strange that they have decided to sneak in a major shift in immigration policy through the back door.

Our parliamentary tradition calls upon the government to introduce legislation according to departmental responsibilities, which is to say that a transportation bill would be proposed by the Minister of Transport or a defence bill would be proposed by the Minister of National Defence. Again, under normal circumstances, a proposed act is then debated separately for the simple reason that respective parliamentary committees, such as, for example, the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, or the Standing Committee on National Defence, would have the opportunity to review the proposed legislation according to its area of responsibility.

This is how a parliamentary democracy works. It is really quite straightforward.

My question, then, is this: on what grounds is the government justified in lumping an immigration bill in with the budget implementation act? If the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is so convinced that her proposal is of vital importance to the country, why is she so afraid to introduce a separate bill and face the scrutiny where it is supposed to be faced? Why does the government insist upon making this a confidence motion?

Canadians know that Canada has been and continues to be the first choice for immigrants all across the world. I am an immigrant myself. The consequences of living in countries where the political environment is not conducive, or where citizens are expelled just because of their creed or colour, is a very devastating experience. Hence, we are fortunate to live in country like Canada, which is a pluralistic society that respects diversity. It respects the diversity of its citizens. It does not just tolerate it but respects it.

Therefore, why is the government trying in an underhanded manner to force an election by any means possible?

Canadians are not gullible. Just a few months ago, the Prime Minister attempted to force an election through Canada's participation in an the NATO mission in Afghanistan. When the Canadian public told the Prime Minister to stop playing politics with the lives of our men and women serving in the Canadian armed forces, he beat a hasty retreat back to the dark confines of the PMO in order to devise yet another scheme to force an election.

My constituents have told me and Canadians have repeatedly told us that they do not have a burning desire for an election. We have been elected as members of Parliament so that we can work on behalf of our constituents, not so we can run in series of continuous elections like some hamster on a treadmill. My colleagues in the Liberal caucus are committed to make this Parliament work, so let us take a closer look at the immigration proposal we now have before us.

Bill C-50 proposes a series of amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that, quite frankly, are regressive. Successive Liberal governments had developed a system that would allow immigrant applications to proceed on their own merits in a fair and unbiased process. Everyone knows that for a small country like ours to grow it needs people, so there were certain criteria set up, and we know that we have had a diverse population come in and settle in Canada.

As the system evolved, the ministers relinquished their direct involvement in individual files in order to reduce any backlog, thereby making the process more efficient. Why does this minister want to go back? Why does she want the power to choose which people she wants to come in? Under the bill, the Conservatives are seeking to abandon all sense of transparency and objectivity in the selection process and simply empower the minister with absolute discretion and the ability to cherry-pick applications at will.

A Montreal-based immigration lawyer recently put it this way:

--the [current] selection of immigrants is based purely on objective criteria...everyone who chooses to submit an application to come live in Canada is entitled to be considered fairly. Under the new [immigration act], the Minister of Immigration...would have the discretion to determine not only which applications will be processed quickly and which ones will be held at the visa office until a later date, but also that some applications will be returned without any consideration at all. These are the ones that we should be most concerned about.

In other words, the Conservatives are attempting to toss out objectivity and fairness under the guise of expediency. Yes, there is a current backlog, but not because of the process. Rather, it is because the Conservatives have not made immigration a priority and have held back on new resources for the immigration department.

This bill represents a major change in the way we choose who is to become a Canadian citizen, yet the Conservatives feel it is okay to sneak it into a budget bill and somehow bamboozle the Canadian public. It is not going to work, because we will have to ensure that the House and all members of Parliament give it thoughtful consideration and that we debate it in a manner which is dignified and upholds our constituents and our people, who wish us to do a good job in debating this bill.

It seems that the Conservative members of this House are fixated on forcing an election rather than acting as a responsible government. When an election eventually occurs, I am sure that Canadians will remember this, because the Liberal government, under its Liberal policies, had invested a lot in immigration. If I remember where Vegreville came from, it was not under the Conservative government.

That we need efficiency in the system nobody denies, but we need to ensure that the process is transparent, fair and equitable and that the minister does not use her power of instruction to determine who would come in and who would not.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, could the hon. member who has just spoken speak to the effect on families who have been waiting for a very long time for an expected reunification with their loved ones?

[Yasmin Ratansi, Liberal, Don Valley East, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as does the hon. member for Surrey North, I have a lot of people who question me about how they can have their parents, their siblings or their spouses come to Canada.

The immigration process has different lines and different ways for the application process. The government has decided that it wants temporary workers before it wants family reunification. I do not think that is fair to the people who want family reunification.

We are a country where immigrants helped us build this nation. By the year 2011, statistics show, our labour force will come from immigration. However, we need those immigrants to come in, settle down and be consistent so that we can sustain our economy. Therefore, I think it is important that this bill be looked at thoroughly, without a haphazard method, without forcing an election and without trying to sneak it in under a budget bill.

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to part 6 of Bill C-50 and the changes that are intended ostensibly for the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. Really, however, these are changes that will make a difference in a negative way, I believe, in the lives of people in Canada and in the lives of people who will be encouraged to come to Canada but of course not stay.

This country was built on immigration. If Canada were not a country that believed in immigration, then I do not know who would be sitting here today. I do not believe that in this House today we have anyone whose family did not at some time immigrate to this country from another mother country, not 10 or 20 years ago but 100 or 150 years ago. The history of the very building of this country, from literally the first building built, has been one of people who have immigrated here.

The need for immigration also has been shown over the years. That is only becoming clearer as people have fewer children or choose to not have children. We need immigrants. We need new people coming to Canada in order to have this country be sustainable.

Very often in the current debate and in the debate that I have seen over the last few years, some of this gets driven by fear. So much of what we do and what happens, not just in our country but around the world, is based on fear. People talk about immigrants taking the jobs or immigrants getting ahead of them, as opposed to what immigrants have done for our country. Quite frankly, what immigrants have done for our country is actually to build it.

Before I move on to some specifics, for me this also speaks to an issue of how we manage things in government. I confess to being a first term federal member of Parliament, but I have served in a number of governments and am familiar with management strategies.

The management strategy when we have a long list is to simply decide that we will not serve some of the people on the list, that we will delete them, and it is not a management strategy that I would consider to be either particularly fair or particularly proactive. I ask my colleagues, where does this go next? Do we take a surgical wait list and decide that it is too long, that if a person's name starts with a B, for example, he or she is suddenly not on that list? Is that a management strategy?

There is a management strategy that we often see in government, not just in this government but we do it see here as well, in regard to government putting forth a policy that it thinks many Canadians are going to be unhappy with. This will be familiar to all people who have served in governments. The government will put it out late on Friday afternoon or on the last day of the sitting or try to include it in a much broader bill, where hopefully it will not get the same profile that it would as a stand-alone bill.

As has already been stated, this should have been brought forward as a stand-alone, as a change to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act. If this is a new management strategy, and if old ones of course are used as well, I do not consider it to be very positive management.

We cannot now in this country even manage the professional immigrants who have come and who we have encouraged to come. They cannot practice their professions in Canada. There have been some small steps taken, but there are many physicians, engineers and accountants who are here and cannot get work in their trained professions. They are doing other work. All work is valuable work, but they are not working in the areas in which we so desperately encourage them and in which we so desperately need them.

This part of Bill C-50 went to the immigration committee. The committee looked at it and recommended that it not be included at all. I think the committee's unanimous advice, certainly that of the majority, was not to include this.

There is this interesting thing that happens in government with committees. They do a lot of work, they even pass a report, but there is no obligation after having done all this work for a government to actually act upon it.

In my experience in the community in which I come from, where probably 40% of people certainly are recently from other places other than Canada, it is that they have been waiting for two, three or four years and they are part of that group of 925,000 people waiting for their family members to join them. Sometimes it is grown sons and daughters who have all kinds of skills that they can bring to Canada.

I have seen families that have actually bought a new home that has a room in readiness for the person that they are so certain will at some time get to the top of the list and be allowed to come here. For many of these people, it has been at least five years of hopeful waiting, of counting on having parents, children, whoever that is here. Then they are told, “I am sorry, but those are some of the names that we took off the list. Better luck another time”. It is not fair to change the rules in midstream.

Again in my community, I know that the immigrant community is part of a huge economic driver in Surrey. It makes Surrey a very successful city. We are treating temporary workers as a product. We use them for three months and then dispose of them.

We can talk about how they will be safe and looked after, but there is no history to prove that. We have had workers come before, and we have seen that very recently in Vancouver, they do not make minimum wage. Sometimes they do. They do not get overtime. There is no guarantee of work and safety for them. I think people know that.

We have never had people come and say to them, “You don't have the right if you like being here to come back, to apply to stay here”. That is an abuse of wages. That is an abuse of people by putting them in unsafe working conditions. I thought we were long past having to put canaries down in mines. If these people dare to complain, then they are gone. They take it because that is the only money they will have.

I have been very pleased with what I have heard from the Liberal members. I am sure that as we vote on this, they will all be standing up to oppose it. I will be looking forward to seeing that because I judge people by their actions. All I have heard in the newspapers, in forums and in the House, is how bad Bill C-50 is. Naturally, I know that I can look forward tonight to all those members standing up and opposing the bill.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has a large number of south Asians in her community.

Throughout the last few months, as the immigration part of Bill C-50 has been debated, a large number of people from the community have phoned talk shows like Radio India and asked, how can the minister be above the law? Under the proposed legislation, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration would be able to make decisions on what kinds of immigrants she and her department would like to have come in to the country without going through Parliament.

Many immigrant groups have said that one of the reasons they came to Canada was because of democracy and because Canada believes in the rule of law. They have said that elected representatives in the House of Commons should be making the decisions and those decisions should be given weight and value.

They are also alarmed by the fact that if the bill were to pass, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration would, behind closed doors and without any consultation, make the decisions. Her decisions would then be published in the Canada Gazette.

How many of the member's constituents, especially from the south Asian community, read the Canada Gazette? Does she think they will know what kinds of changes would occur and what kinds of instructions the minister would give if the bill were to pass?

[Penny Priddy, NDP, Surrey North, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think they are going to read the Canada Gazette unless we ensure that everybody has a copy, and naturally we will.

It is not only south Asians who are being vocal about this issue but also people from the Philippines and so on. They are very interested in what is happening and they have been very vocal about it. The member is right, they have been very vocal on talk shows. The last rally was about 24 hours ago. These people came here because they could not do that in the country they came from. They embrace the fact that Canada is a democratic country where things like what they are seeing should not happen.

These people are also very frightened because they do not know who would be eliminated from the list. It could be a friend, a family member, or just someone they know. Believe me, these people have long memories and they will be watching this very carefully.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we have before us deceptive, damaging and dangerous changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act sneaked through the budget implementation bill by the Conservative government and supported by their new friends, the Liberal Party of Canada. The bill is a direct attack on immigrant communities and a real threat to the future of Canada.

The NDP is very proud to stand up in partnership with immigrant communities across Canada. We will not roll over. We will not run away from voting. We will not run away from standing up for the immigrant communities. We will not be kept silent and we will speak out against the bill.

There were hearings through the immigration and citizenship committee and the finance committee. We have noticed that there was a resounding no to the Conservative immigration changes, and they were from the Canadian Bar Association, Canadian Arab Federation, Chinese Canadian National Council, Canadian Ethnocultural Council, Portuguese communities, Asian communities, Hispanic and many other communities. They were all saying no to the Conservative immigration changes.

In a country like ours, where all citizens, except first nations communities, are immigrants, we should be celebrating and embracing our diversity rather than curtailing it.

The infrastructure that created Canada was built by immigrants. The railroad that connected our vast landscape, bringing the east and west coasts together, was constructed, one spike at a time, by immigrants. The bridges, tunnels, roads, schools and buildings that make up our cityscapes, our landscapes, were built by the blood, sweat and tears of immigrants who came here for a better future.

One would imagine that today, in 2008, Canada would be moving toward a more inclusive and open immigration policy that welcomes the skills, innovation and contributions of immigrants rather than a policy that reeks up the dark days of the Chinese Exclusion Act and the Continuous Passage Act, which were designed to keep out immigrant groups.

Canada has made many mistakes in the past, oftentimes because of discriminatory policies based on race, religion or nationality.

In 1939 we refused to allow the ocean liner S.S. St. Louis to dock on our shore, forcing 900 Jewish refugees to return to Germany, and many of the passengers did not survive. During World War II, Canada only accepted 5,000 Jewish refugees, one of the worst records among all refugee-receiving countries.

Let us also not forget that from 1941 to 1945 Canada interned, displaced, dispossessed, and detained 23,000 Japanese Canadians, over half of which were Canadian born. Has the Conservative government not learned anything from the mistakes of our past?

The bill before us is deceptive. Why? It has nothing to do with the tremendous backlog of 925,000 people that are on the wait list. The bill will come into effect after the backlog, and would not have any impact on shortening the wait list for these applicants. That is why it is deceptive, given the minister keeps talking about the backlog.

Mr. Hassan Yussuff, secretary-treasurer of the Canadian Labour Congress, stated:

We think embedding the reform in the budget bill is wrong. There has been a failure to conduct meaningful and inclusive consultations prior to the development of the initiative. Arbitrary powers granted to the minister fail the transparency and accountability test this government has promised.

If we allow these sweeping changes to go through, we will be drawing an irreversible line in the sand. From the moment these dangerous amendments are passed, our immigration system will be radically altered and it will be irreversible. Do not let any other party say that perhaps afterward it can be fixed. By that time, it will be too late.

Why is this change damaging? The Conservative vision of Canada is about treating immigrants as economic units, as foreign workers. There will be winners and losers. The losers will be the family members who are trying to reunite with their loved ones in Canada. Instead, the workers are the ones who will have priority.

Debbie Douglas, the executive director of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, states that the government is heading in the wrong direction by expanding the temporary foreign workers program at the expense of nation building and citizenship. She said:

Immigration should not be just about bringing people to work in Canada. You cannot just treat immigrants as an economic unit and not care about developing citizenship, a sense of commitment, belonging and ownership among the people we bring into this country.

With the Conservative government at the helm, democracy, transparency and accountability in our immigration policy will be replaced by arbitrary discriminatory policies and power grabbing. We must not forget that these immigration changes are being pushed through as part of the budget implementation act, all the more to prove that immigrants are seen as commodities, to be imported as cheap and exploitable economic units. That is not the way we should be treating immigrants.

These amendments are not in the best interests of our country. They are shortsighted and are intended to benefit the needs of big businesses at the expense of ordinary Canadians.

I also said it is dangerous. Why? Because these sweeping changes give incredible power to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

Mr. Stephen Green, treasurer of the Canadian Bar Association, states that these changes will affect our family, economic, temporary and humanitarian classes of immigrants. The Canadian Bar Association, which was not consulted in the process of drafting these amendments, stated in its submission to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration:

Quite candidly, we have instructions being issued with no oversight.

Mr. Green added:

It is our submission that if this legislation passes it will result in Canada's going back to the dark ages of immigration selection and processing. It would allow the minister to operate in an unfettered manner, opening the back door to many interest groups.

He warned:

It's a danger because the minister would be allowed to close the door any time he or she chooses. Any government could do that when they come in. There's no predictability. There's no rule of law. Families applying to come could be told they are not allowed, that they're not the flavour of the time.

Janet Dench, of the Canadian Council for Refugees, warned that intentions are not law. She urges us as parliamentarians to ask ourselves how the law might be used in the future, not just how the current government proposes to use the new powers. She said that expressions of current intentions are no protection against future uses of the powers in very different ways.

Speaking about family reunification on humanitarian and compassionate grounds, Ms. Dench added that the government has suggested it would continue to examine all family related humanitarian and compassionate applications. She said that this is only an expression of intention, and if the bill is passed in its present form, a future government could issue instructions leading to family related applications not being examined.

Finally, the Canadian Arab Federation asked why no one had bothered to consult with immigrant groups. The federation is extremely worried that the minister might decide that Canada does not want Arabs and Muslims in this country. He asked who would prevent her if she gave herself this ultimate power.

I urge my fellow members of Parliament across party lines to take a principled stand and to stand with the members of the New Democrats against the Conservatives' damaging, deceptive and dangerous immigration amendments. Together we can stop the Conservative government from turning back our immigration policy and repeating mistakes of the past.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, when one looks at the record of the current Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, she is the first one in a decade to have missed her numbers. She came in with less than 237,000 landed people versus what the Conservatives said they were going to land. Under her watch, the backlog in refugee cases has spiralled out of control. Before the Conservatives came into office the backlog was under 20,000, but now it is at 45,000 and is projected to go over 60,000 by year end.

Would the member agree with me that the minister's record does not bode well for any changes she might propose in terms of getting more powers into her hands?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the hon. member that the minister's record does not bode well. The Immigration and Refugee Board has a huge backlog partially because there are a lot of vacancies on the board. The whole system is not working. Even though Parliament has said to implement the law and establish a refugee appeal division so that refugees would have an appeal process, she has not done so.

In terms of numbers, permanent landed immigrants to Canada dropped by 10,587. The number went from 262,000 in 2005 to 251,000 in 2006. The numbers for 2007 are just coming out. The problem is that while the number of permanent residents is falling, the number of temporary foreign workers coming to this country is rising.

In Alberta alone there is an increase of somewhere close to 300% in temporary foreign workers. A lot of the immigrants who are coming in now are coming in not as immigrants but as migrants. They have no future in Canada. They are most likely not able to stay in Canada. They cannot bring their family members to Canada. That is really unfortunate.

The backlog under the Liberal government and now the Conservative government has increased dramatically to 925,000. That is very unacceptable. Furthermore, speaking about things not being in order, we found out today that there are empty visa forms--

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Winnipeg North.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for Trinity—Spadina about the significance of these changes. We have heard many speeches today about how the government will have the ability to pick and choose immigrants and cause possible permanent damage to our system.

I would like to know what my colleague's assessment is of the significance of these changes and whether or not this is so serious that it warrants Liberal members of Parliament to consider the wisdom of allowing this budget implementation bill to pass with these changes intact. Would it not be wise for Liberal members to consider whatever the consequences are of standing up for their principles, because they have spoken out so vehemently against these changes on the immigration front, and to let the chips fall where they may knowing at least they were true to their consciences, policies and philosophies?

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, by changing a word, “shall” to “may”, in the act, applicants could meet all the immigration requirements, receive sufficient points, but still be rejected.

That is perhaps one of the reasons the Liberal leader attacked this bill every day for two weeks in the House of Commons during question period. I read the newsletters going to constituents about how terrible these changes to the immigration act are and yet the Liberals run, hide and do not speak at the finance committee or in this House. Now, without the House of Commons even approving this bill, the Liberal dominated Senate is beginning to fast-track Bill C-50 through the Senate.

The Liberals are saying one thing to their communities, but acting completely different from that here in the House.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by acknowledging all the work the member for Trinity—Spadina has done on this aspect of Bill C-50. I know many other members of the New Democratic Party have risen in the House to raise concerns around the immigration aspect of Bill C-50, and I will add my voice to those other voices who have spoken out against what many would allege as a potential abuse of power by the immigration minister.

One of the things we know from the throne speech, the budget speech and now the budget implementation bill is there are some very serious issues that face our country with which the bill is simply failing to deal, whether it is forestry communities like mine where we have lost hundreds and hundreds of jobs over the last six months and now many forestry workers have run out of employment insurance because of the way the unemployment rate in our area is determined and there is no remedy for these forestry, or the fact that first nations, Métis and Inuit across the country still suffer from a lack of good, safe, quality housing, or first nations children cannot access the same quality of schools that other Canadian children can expect, or that many communities simply do not have access to clean, safe drinking water, or where many families are unable to access quality affordable publicly funded child care.

Once again, the bill was an opportunity to take a look at some of these very pressing and urgent matters facing workers and their families across the country.

However, we are talking specifically about immigration, and I will turn my attention to it.

In preparation for speaking in the House today, I asked my office to take a look at a variety of the immigration and refugee cases they dealt with as case work. The government alleges that this legislation would deal with the backlog. Yet we hear from people, fairly consistently, that this will simply shuffle the priorities around without dealing with the substantial numbers of people who want to come to Canada and make it their home.

There are a myriad of problems with which my office deals, so this is a quick look at some of the things we face in our office in Nanaimo—Cowichan.

One of the problems is the length of time it takes to process applications. It is difficult to see how resetting different priorities would deal with the length of time of applications. It will certainly fast track some people. It will certainly make some people get to Canada more quickly. However, when we are dealing with the 900,000 plus who are currently in the system, I fail to see how, without substantially more resources, juggling people around will deal with that substantial backlog.

The second is the arbitrary decisions of immigration and visa officers and the lack of appeal venues. Many times we have seen the applications of people turned down. The supporting documentation by the person who applies to come to the country seems to be all there, yet the reasons of the denial do not seem to match up with the information on file. Sometimes the lack of clear and effective communication between applicants and immigration staff is problematic. People do not exactly know why they have been turned down. What we have seen in many cases is applicants will be requested to provide a particular information. The applicants provide that piece of information and then the staff will come back and say that they now need another piece of information. Therefore, applicants provide that information, and this goes on month after month.

In another case a fairly prominent member of the community was getting married. This person wanted to bring in her mother and sister to Canada. All the appropriate forms were filled out and the office abroad said that the sponsoring person in my riding of Nanaimo—Cowichan had to make a decision. Either her mother or her sister could come to the wedding, but not both. This was not an application for immigration. It was simply a visitor's visa. However, the legislation will not address all of those problems in the system,

I know member for Trinity—Spadina and others have called for stand-alone legislation that would go in front of the immigration committee, where there would be an opportunity to fully review the legislation, to call witnesses, to talk about how the legislation would impact people's lives and to potentially amend it so it would be more reflective of what Canadians wanted to see in immigration legislation.

Unless we are one of the original peoples, each and every one of us in the House came from immigrant stock at one point. My mother is a first generation Canadian, I am very proud to say. My daughter-in-law is an immigrant. My grandson is a first generation Canadian on the mother's side.

Each and every one of us, at some point, are ancestors, unless we were one of the original peoples. We are immigrants. We know that immigrants have contributed to the richness and the diversity of ours country. We want an immigration system that reflects what we often have valued as Canadians, and that is fairness and transparency, equality of access, timely processing, which, sadly, is not the case right now.

A number of groups across Canada have spoken out and raised serious concerns about the legislation, including the bar association. It has said, “The Canadian Bar Association is urging Parliament to remove and not pass amendments”, calling them “a major step backwards in the evolution of Canadian immigration law.

Bill C-50 would return Canada “to a time when visas were given out on a discretionary basis, without sufficient objective criteria” said Stephen Green. He said, “the amendments are not necessary to meet Canada’s immigration goals”. He went on to say that the amendments were not necessary to meet Canada's immigrations goals. The changes would fast-track highly coveted immigrants, such as doctors and other skilled labourers, while others would be forced to wait in a queue. They would allow governments to set annual limits on a number of applications process.

Part of the argument around the legislation as well is that it would help us address critical skills shortages in Canada. Any of us who had been paying attention over the last 15 or 20 years knew quite well there would be some very serious critical skills shortages in a number of areas and called on the federal and provincial governments to jointly develop a human resource strategy that would address some of those critical skills shortages, whether it was in trades apprenticeships, or physicians, nurses, medical technologists, the list goes on and on. We have had 15 to 20 years. The baby boom was no surprise. We knew it was coming. We knew there would be a massive wave of retirements. Anybody could predict that Canada would be in some periods of economic growth, which would require a skilled labour force to meet those needs.

Instead, we have had successive federal governments simply sit on their hands instead of turning their energy into developing a human resource strategy that would address these critical skills shortages.

The Vancouver Olympics is a really good case in point. The Vancouver Olympics, once it was awarded, was an opportunity to train apprentices in Canada. Many first nations and Métis in British Columbia would have made highly qualified tradespeople, with some effort and attention. Instead, we are meeting much of the needs of the Olympics with temporary foreign workers. It was an opportunity to train first nations and Métis in the construction trades that would have left a legacy in their own communities once the Olympics was over. That would have been a true legacy left by the Olympics.

However, again, the federal government failed to move in that direction. Working closely with the provincial governments, it had an opportunity to do that and it failed. We now have workers coming in, building the buildings, the roads, all the structures that go into place to support the Olympics. Then they will leave and we will still have first nations and Métis who could have been quite successful tradespeople. It was a lost opportunity.

Many others have spoken up, including the UFCW, about the fact that the bill is a back door way to give the minister unfettered powers. Regulations will be put into place that we will have no oversight over because they are not part of the legislation.

I would argue that the House should not support Bill C-50 as a total because of the immigration changes inherent in the bill.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know the hon. member has a large number of layoffs in her area, especially in the forestry industry.

In British Columbia, the immigration department, under the minister in both the current government and the government before, has allowed a large number of foreign workers to come into Canada, instead of retraining workers who are unemployed, whether they are from the forestry industry or the manufacturing sector.

What seems to be happening is it is bringing in foreign workers. As a result, the wages are lowered because many of these workers have very few rights. If they complain about their working conditions, or lost wages or the kind of treatment they are receiving, they will be fired. If they cannot find another job, they will be deported.

Is this having the impact of driving down the living wages in her community?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I have a letter from a constituent, Laura Bohun. She talks about her husband who has worked in the forestry industry all of his life. I will quote a bit of it. She says:

After 26 years of employment at the Ladysmith Western Forest Products Mill (formerly known at Doman) he was given a one week notice (on April 17, 2008) and told the mill was shutting its doors indefinitely, at least one year minimum. Since January of that same year, my husband only worked every other week on an on call basis. Never enough time off to apply for EI benefits until the mill shuts down on May 5.

This is only one person out of hundreds of workers in my riding. They have worked in forestry, their fathers worked in forestry and their grandfathers worked in forestry. It has been the livelihoods of their families for generations, and now these workers are being shown the door.

This was an opportunity to look at diversifying in the forestry sector itself. A reinvestment in forestry is a really important part of what should happen in British Columbia, to retrain these workers to take those new jobs within forestry. Where forestry jobs were not available, look at retraining outside the forestry sector. However, the first priority should be to reinvest in forestry.

Again, we have things like the Olympics, where foreign workers have been brought in. It was an opportunity to take a look at unemployed forestry workers in the province and see if there were some matches and skills training that could happen, which would ensure workers in British Columbia could maintain a liveable wage.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from British Columbia for her insights and for particularly connecting the dots between what is being proposed and what is happening in our communities. As she has mentioned, this is after all the budget implementation bill, strangely including proposed changes to immigration.

She focused on first nations. Last week we had the National Day of Action from first nations and aboriginal peoples. Could she elaborate a bit more on how we might be able to make that transfer of training and support to having people work in areas where there is a need for labour in places, be it for the Olympics or perhaps in other jurisdictions in the resource industry, or for that matter in the mining or oil sectors?

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for Ottawa Centre for touching on that particular issue.

In Canada, we know that in some provinces, such as Manitoba and Saskatchewan, first nations and Métis are going to be a large part of the workforce in the next 20 years. In Canada, first nations, Métis and Inuit have had significant population growth over the last 15 years.

It could be a very viable part of the future workforce, but what that requires is an investment right from early learning and child care, right from birth, all the way through a person's working career. It is called life long learning.

What we know is that for every dollar that we invest under the age of six, we save $7 in the long-run, whether it is in education, justice, welfare or health care.

Then from K to 12 we know that what we need is culturally appropriate education. We need education that is safe, clean and affordable for families. We need to make sure that there is access to computers, libraries, technical supports, speech therapy and special needs, and in that K to 12 system we know that will set the groundwork for young first nations, Métis and Inuit students to go on and take part in vocational training, apprenticeship training and university with a human resource plan.

I was at a conference last week that talked about a human resource strategy for the future, things such as the AHRDA agreements where first nations do have control over educational dollars and they are investing in human resources strategies that will help meet the labour shortage gaps.

This again is an opportunity for Canada, for the federal government, to take a look at making sure first nations, Métis and Inuit are well positioned to take part in the jobs that are emerging and will continue to emerge over the next 10 or 15 years.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in this debate on the budget implementation bill. We are debating specific amendments to the surprise addition to this legislation pertaining to immigration.

Let me say at the outset for all those watching this debate that this is a matter of fundamental significance for Parliament. We are dealing today with the government's budget and an act to implement the budget. This is an issue of confidence. The government must defend its record and win the support of enough colleagues to see its budget implemented so no election occurs.

By all accounts, if people are watching this debate, they should ask themselves how, if the Liberals are opposed to the budget and if the Bloc and New Democrats are opposed to the budget, is it possible for the government to still stand when there is very little confidence in this chamber and from Canadians across this land for the government's bill?

How can we and Canadians have confidence in the government for its road map for the future at a time when there is no job strategy in place, at a time when there is no industrial strategy in place, and at a time when there is not a shred of mention in the budget pertaining to health care, child care, education, training for the future, aboriginal people, or the environment?

Every issue that is of importance to Canadians today is ignored in the budget. The Conservative government is squandering a golden opportunity to take the surplus it still has and invest it in areas that are important to Canadians.

The government made a very unusual move when it slipped in to the bill a whole new section dealing with immigration. There was nothing in the budget about immigration when it was announced by the Minister of Finance. There was no reference to dealing with this supposed grave situation. Suddenly, in the midst of our debate on the budget, the government decided to throw in the issue of immigration. Why? Either it is indicative of just poor planning and poor collective work around the areas of importance to Canadians, or the government is trying to stick it to the Liberals.

We know this budget is not supported by the Liberals, so the government has thrown one more curve at them. This is a significant issue. It is so significant that it should make the Liberals stand up today and say whatever the consequences they will not support the government. This issue is so important that they should stand up and say they will not support a budget that does not meet the needs of ordinary Canadians. They should stand up and say they will not support a budget that does irreversible damage to Canada's longstanding record and progressive history when it comes to citizenship and immigration.

Bill C-50 must be defeated. The Liberals must have the courage of their convictions, and stand up once and for all and be counted because it matters. It matters that we tell Canadians that we mean what we say, and we do what we say we are going to do. Is it not fundamental to parenting, fundamental to families, and fundamental to communities, that we have integrity, honesty and decency?

How can we send a message to Canadians that this place is worth investing in, that it is important to vote, that it is important to run and get elected, if every time they turn around some politicians from the Liberals or the Conservatives are saying they do not like something but they are not going to do anything about it?

How is it today that Liberals are allowing the Conservatives to rule as if they have a majority? How can the Conservatives get away with these fundamental changes to our immigration system that will have lasting impacts all across this land?

I come from a riding that is one of the most multicultural constituencies in the country--

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

We all do.

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Yes, Mr. Speaker, someone said we all do. And I am proud of it.

People from the Punjab, the Philippines, Germany, Ukraine, Vietnam, Laos, Africa, South America, from every part of the world, are coming to my constituency like they have come to others across the land. They want their needs, concerns and interests represented just as much as longstanding Canadians want their needs, concerns and interests represented.

It is not conducive to encourage new citizens to participate fully and freely in our democratic system if the first thing they see upon their citizenship is a government that says “too bad, so sad, we cannot stand up for you any more, we cannot stand up for the principles that brought you into this country”. What happened to the fundamentals of our immigration system?

They have been thrown out the window with this legislation, potentially, because they give the minister unilateral, arbitrary discretion to pick and choose immigrants as she so chooses, and as members of her government so choose, not on the basis of objective criteria that fit into a plan and a framework, something that has been wanted for years when it comes to immigration and that the Liberals failed to deliver on.

Now, instead of dealing with the problem and fixing the problem, we have a government that is going to play at the edges and tamper with the principles, and apply subjectivity to something as fundamental as citizenship and immigration in this country.

That is wrong and there is an easy way for the government to deal with it. It is to recognize the principles and then fix the problems in accordance with those fundamental issues. One is that, yes, we want to bring in people to help meet the economic requirements of this land. So rather than throw out the whole system, we are bringing in one that is open to total subjectivity on the part of the minister who can say “well, maybe we do not like people from the Philippines and the Punjab”. That would have a devastating effect on my riding. I am not saying she would, but who is to stop her from saying that? Who is to prevent that from happening?

Instead, we need a minister who says we need people in these particular skills and occupational categories just like the Manitoba government does now with respect to the Manitoba provincial nominee program. The minister does not pick and choose. There is a set of criteria that must be followed and individuals must meet the criteria in order to come to this country.

Then, they are not treated as temporary foreign workers, they are allowed to bring their families. They are allowed to stay. They are allowed to settle. They are allowed to be recognized as full participating members of our society, able to access our citizenship system and become voting members and fully participating members in our democracy. So that is one area.

Instead of fixing the problem, what the government is doing is simply making chaos out of an already confused system, the one that the Liberals brought in with Bill C-11 in 2001. Do not forget that we were supposed to deal with this whole area just seven years ago. Instead of revamping our immigration system so that it could stand on its own for centuries to come, the government decided to bring in an economic classification that was impossible for most ordinary people around this world to meet.

That is why we are now dealing with this huge backlog and confusion in the system because we have a lousy system to begin with. We do not have a strong foundation from which to build and attract people to this country.

The first thing would be for the government to open up the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and change the economic classification to ensure that people who work hard, who have skills, and who have a contribution to make are able to come. Not just those who have degrees, who have long service in a particular area, and have two languages. Not just picking the cream of the crop, not cherry-picking, but actually opening the doors as our country did when our forefathers and foremothers came to this country, as my bubba and zayde did when they came in the early 1900s.

They came as peasants, but they came to open up the land, to farm and to give. And they did. They had 13 children, my father being one of them. They gave and gave to this country, and they made a difference. They may have been illiterate when they came, they may not have had any money, they may not have had any education, but they made a difference. That is what we need in this country.

I know my time is almost up, but the second principle is that of family sponsorship. Family is the bedrock of society. This proposal by the government and by the minister has the possibility of throwing out the whole notion of family reunification, making it more difficult for those already in line. We have people waiting to sponsor their mothers and fathers going on four, five, six, even seven years. What is humane and decent about that? No wonder we have backlogs. It is time we balance our economic requirements as a nation with our fundamental belief in family as a bedrock institution of society.

Finally, we must have a system that is grounded in the issues of compassion and humanitarian concerns. In that way, we can put in place a proper system to ensure refugees have access to this country when they deserve it, a system that allows for emergencies that will not deny people visiting relatives when someone has died or getting married and a system that is a golden light for all the world to see and will stand on the principles of fairness, equality, justice and humanity.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives spent $1.1 million of taxpayer money on advertising the immigration changes. One would think that it would be mightily proud of the legislation in front of us but it is curious why they are not here to defend their immigration changes. When we were dealing with the clause by clause changes in the finance committee, there was no defence for these kinds of sweeping changes.

If this is such an incredibly welcomed change, one would think the Conservatives would be proud of them and stand in the House of Commons to debate why they made the changes. Why is there silence? Perhaps they are afraid of the responses they have been hearing from the immigrant communities that no amount of advertising in papers will change.

Does the hon. member think that is the reason for the huge silence in the House right now?

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, nothing about this matter makes any sense whatsoever. The government first chose to sneak in this initiative as part of the budget implementation bill without any mention in the budget. It then proceeded to spurn Parliament by ignoring the democratic process and the concerns of parliamentarians who were elected to serve their people right across this country from the wide diversity that we are as a nation.

Instead, it put all its money and time into advertisements to create this illusion of action and fairness, all the while clouding the issue at hand, rather than fixing the serious problems with the immigration system. It is serious when there is that kind of a backlog, when there were cutbacks by the Liberals back in 1995 that have never been restored, when we have an immigration bill that ignores all the fundamentals and when a country is dying for responsible decision making to ensure economic occupations and needs are addressed and to ensure that family reunification is at the heart of it.

None of this makes sense other than to believe, which is all we have left to believe, that the government is shrouding a real agenda of trying to close the door, restrict immigration, go back on humanitarian and compassionate traditions in this country and is prepared to advance its own agenda of playing on the fears of Canadians about where the jobs will be and how they will be able to provide for their families. Instead of being up front, honest and courageous about the problems at hand, the government is sneaky, subversive and not exactly transparent and open, although this was the great mantra that the government ran on in the last election.

It is time to overhaul the Immigration Act but we need to do it properly. We need to do it based on the fundamentals of ensuring economic skills are addressed, families are able to be reunited and humanitarian and compassionate values guide us every step of the way.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for citing the historical framework of our immigration system and the fact that it has been built over many years. She was careful to say that we do not believe the system presently is good enough. That is important to underline.

One does not take the measures the government has taken to address the present system and the concerns we all have with it because it undermines all the good things in the system and does not deal with the concerns that have been raised. I note that the government mentioned the backlog of 900,000 people. It will also acknowledge, very quietly, that this bill would not address the backlog, while, on the other hand, saying that it has to bring in these measures to address the backlog.

I would like my colleague's comments and thoughts about the fact that, on the one hand, the government is saying that the changes will do one thing, but on the other hand they are saying that they cannot do it. What are we to make of this?

[Judy Wasylycia-Leis, NDP, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Ottawa Centre is absolutely right. There is very little in this initiative to give hope to Canadians that the problems in our immigration and citizenship program will be fixed.

We knew we had a problem back in 2001 when the Liberals brought in their legislation, which was recognized by hundreds of presenters and witnesses right across this country as weak and flawed. We tried to convince the Liberals to change their minds. We introduced 81 amendments to fix Bill C-11, to make it a more understandable document and one that was grounded in principles that could withstand the test of time.

The Liberals chose to ignore every one of those amendments to the point where, today, we now have the Conservatives taking advantage of the negligence of the Liberals and, for example, denying families who have been accepted here under the Manitoba nominee program because one of their children has a disability.

That is the kind of legacy left by the Liberals, rather than a system based on fairness.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

The member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to take a few minutes to express my views on the amendments to Bill C-50 we are discussing.

First of all Bill C-50, in parliamentary terms, is intended to “implement” the budget, that is enact it, put into effect the announcements made, heard and clearly understood when the throne speech was delivered.

If that is the objective of this bill, then why has the Conservative government deliberately chosen to devote an entire part to immigration reform? And yet, a meagre $22 million over two years is allocated to this reform. Naturally, more monies are promised in future but they are not attached to anything at all.

There is something rather odd in the government's official documents. For example, on page 9 of the Budget in Brief, which discusses the reorganization—or modernization, to quote precisely—of the immigration system, one of the key phrases states that the goal is to make the immigration system more competitive.

When I read that, once again it made me think that it all part of the ideology espoused by the Conservative Party. Most of the time it considers the government to be a private corporation.

Why is this section on immigration included? I wonder.

Could it be an attempt to mislead parliamentarians? If not, could it be an attempt to humiliate the Liberals by introducing, in a confidence bill, a measure they would quite likely find unacceptable? The Liberals would find it unacceptable, but if they act as they have been acting for a number of weeks now, they will do anything but vote to bring down this government.

On the one hand, there are principles and convictions; on the other, there is the way these Liberals will choose to act in this House, because they are all legitimately elected members.

I see that my friend from Hull—Aylmer does not agree with what I am saying. He can ask me questions about it.

As members and representatives of their constituents, the 305 members currently in this House have an obligation to vote with integrity, on behalf of the people they represent. I would add that, as a general rule, we should avoid abstaining. This is just my opinion, but as I am entitled to it, I am sharing it.

The Liberals have said again that Canadians do not want an election. My friend said so earlier this morning in this House. Every time I hear that, I wonder when people ever do want an election. We are not talking about a national sport.

Often, when a crisis or scandal occurs, people's confidence in the government is so badly shaken that they call for an election. But it is not a question of waiting until the public calls for an election; it is a question of whether we in this House should pass bills that make sense and respect the people we represent.

Let us get to the heart of the matter: immigration. People who submit immigration or permanent residence applications often belong to the groups we call the most vulnerable—it saddens me to use that word, but this is true. Much of what we do, we do for these groups.

For the Conservatives to play “petty politics”—and I use the term “politics” loosely—at the expense of these people is truly disgraceful, especially when it seems to me that they are doing so specifically to humiliate the official opposition.

Looking at the provisions of the bill we are now discussing, I noticed the somewhat questionable direction the Conservative government wants to take in processing immigration applications.

The purpose of the change is to give as much latitude as possible to the minister—and therefore the government—in handling applications. This seems obvious to me and this has been said during the debate in this House. A number of my colleagues and I feel that that is the problem.

The goal is to bring in the workers needed most by industry, as quickly as possible, to the detriment of other types of workers. That is most likely why the government used that infamous expression I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, “a more competitive immigration system”, an expression typical of the private sector. Competition is fine, but should it drive our concerns as legislators? We have to wonder about that and debate the issue.

We know that the minister can give instructions on the following: the categories of applications to which the instructions apply; the order in which the applications are processed; the number of applications to be processed each year, by category; and what is done with the applications, including those that are re-submitted.

The instructions she gives will at least be published in the Canada Gazette. But how many MPs in this House, including myself, and how many of those watching us can say that they read the Canada Gazette at least once a year? It is not really a good tool for those affected or those targeted by this.

Obviously, during this time of labour shortage, applications need to be processed more quickly for those who want to come and work here. Nonetheless, the process can be sped up in different ways. More resources could be allocated to accelerate the process.

We all remember what happened at Passport Canada not so long ago, less than a year and a half ago. The number of applications made it impossible to issue passports efficiently, that is, in less than two months. The wait was more like two, three, even five months. The necessary resources were allocated and staff recruited, after which the government and officials were finally able to clear up the horrible backlog and process the applications.

Why has the government not looked into this possibility more closely?

The bill proposes making the rules arbitrary. When we hear the word “arbitrary”, alarm bells should go off, since making something arbitrary is always dangerous, regardless of who is in charge. The bill should have provided for changes to the rules, as I was saying earlier, to find the skilled workers we need, and to allocate money and the necessary resources.

I get the impression that this method could create a number of injustices—and when in doubt, we should be asking ourselves a lot of questions. Immigrants who submit an application for a resident permit on humanitarian grounds will find their claims have been added to the backlog. Furthermore, the bill explicitly gives the immigration officer the discretion to issue visas and other documents required to enter the country. In my opinion, this is a big setback for immigrants. Immigrants whose applications are not processed within the year or within the time set by the minister will probably have their applications returned.

I heard some Conservatives say that this was transparency, because this way people would know that their application had not been processed. But I think that if one of the members opposite were an immigrant, submitted an application and received similar treatment, he would be asking questions.

The Conservative government is choosing the solution that costs nothing, but, I believe, is an injustice, instead of choosing the logical solution, which would be to allocate the necessary funds to speed up the processing of applications, to make the process more predictable and to not restrict access for immigrants submitting an application for resident permits on humanitarian grounds.

These are the points I wanted to make. I am sure my colleagues in this House understand that I will vote in favour of the amendments proposed by the member for Jeanne-Le Ber.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to provide some comment and to pose a question. Like us, the member is very concerned about the changes in Bill C-50, the budget implementation bill, particularly as it affects immigrants in our immigration system.

One of the concerns we have had is that there is a real shift taking place. Instead of focusing on family reunification and bringing people to Canada as permanent residents, there is an increase in the foreign worker program. We see this in the agricultural sector. We see it in large construction projects in British Columbia. We see it certainly in Alberta. There are now more foreign workers being processed than there are new permanent residents going to Alberta. There is a huge shift taking place.

When people come here as temporary workers, they virtually have no labour rights. They are very subservient to their employer because their permit comes from their employer.

I wonder if the member could comment on how the immigration system under this bill has dramatically shifted to this new class of workers and how it paves the way to exploitation. In fact already there are many documented cases of exploitation, of abuse, of people not getting even the minimum wage.

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her comments and question.

First of all, with regard to Quebec, I want to remind my colleague of one thing, even though I am sure that she is well aware of it. I made this speech as a federal member, and I spoke on behalf of all the people I represent. We know that Quebec has its own program. Now back to the matter at hand.

There is cause for concern about the shift that our colleague just spoke of. This shift is a result of a deliberate decision by the Conservative government. I can interpret this only one way—and I tried to stay away from rhetoric in my comments because I never want to use that approach. I believe that behind these changes and supposed modernization hides the desire to eliminate an entire segment of our settlement program.

The focus is now solely on jobs, with no regard for the risks that exist for these workers whose rights are not enshrined or protected. Family reunification and humanitarian considerations no longer seem to be important.

What is important now is being able to respond quickly to the needs of private enterprise. There is a mad rush to respond, at the expense of another whole group of newcomers who have benefited from our hospitality and integration.

And I think that is something very serious. That is also the reason that I will vote in favour of these amendments.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

The question is on Motion No. 1. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

The recorded division on the motion stands deferred. The recorded division will also apply to Motions Nos. 2 to 5.

I will now propose Motions Nos. 6 to 20 in Group No. 2.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

moved:

Motion No. 6

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 121.

Motion No. 7

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 122.

Motion No. 8

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 123.

Motion No. 9

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 124.

Motion No. 10

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 125.

Motion No. 11

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 126.

Motion No. 12

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 127.

Motion No. 13

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 128.

Motion No. 14

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 129.

Motion No. 15

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 130.

Motion No. 16

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 131.

Motion No. 17

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 132.

Motion No. 18

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 133.

Motion No. 19

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 134.

Motion No. 20

That Bill C-50 be amended by deleting Clause 135.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to these amendments at report stage of Bill C-50. My colleague from Acadie—Bathurst is the NDP EI critic, and all of us in the NDP caucus are very concerned and disturbed about what is taking place in Bill C-50, and the significant changes that are taking place to the employment insurance system.

We have previously debated changes that would take place to the immigration system and we had a lot of concerns about that. Certainly, on the amendments that are now before us, which will delete sections from the bill that have to do with setting up the new corporation for crown corporations, we think this is a wrong move by the Conservative government.

When we look back over the last 10 or 15 years, we see how much the employment insurance system has changed. It is very frightening. When workers in this country go to work, their EI deductions are made and employers pay their premiums. It is a system that workers believe in and feel they should be able to have faith that the system will work for them, that it will be there to help them through difficult times of being laid off or unemployed, particuclarly if they are seasonal workers.

That system previously worked. That system is paid for by employers and workers. There is not a penny of public funds or a penny from the government coffers in that system. It is a system designed to protect the interests of workers.

We know that today only about four in every ten male unemployed workers are collecting EI benefits at any given time. That is down from 80% in the 1990s. It is now down to 40%. It is even worse for women. Only one in three unemployed women are collecting benefits at any given time. That is down from 70% in 1990. Only 20% to 25% of unemployed workers in most major urban centres like Toronto or the Lower Mainland in Vancouver now receive benefits.

These are the statistics, but what is behind those statistics are the unbelievable hardship cases. People who, in good faith, work and pay into the EI fund and then when they apply for coverage because through no fault of their own they are laid off or unemployed, they find out suddenly that this system has, in effect, crashed. It is a system that does not work for them any more. In my own riding of Vancouver East there are many cases involving employment insurance. People come to my office who cannot understand why it is so difficult for them to get benefits and why they do not qualify any more.

Clearly, what has happened since the 1990s is that coverage has shrunk because there have been so many changes in the program rules. It began with the Liberal government and has now continued with the Conservative government. They are changes that have made it near impossible for workers to collect something that is their right, which is their unemployment insurance earnings.

In all urban centres, except Windsor, people now require 630 to 700 hours minimum to claim for 22 weeks or less. The threshold for new entrants is even worse. They need 910 hours and that really impacts young people, recent immigrants or women who are returning to work. All of these barriers exist to collecting something that people should have by right.

Under the current system, the basic benefit that is paid is 55% of the insured earnings, with a level of insured earnings averaged over a 26 week period, to a maximum of $423 weekly. That is not enough to live on. Is it any wonder that the income gap is growing between people who are affluent and doing very well and people at the bottom, working people particularly, who are really struggling? People who go on to EI basically live below the poverty line. They struggle to support their families and then end up going to food banks. These are the kinds of cases I have seen in my riding.

We know that the replacement rate for insured earnings was cut in 1996 from 57% to 55%, itself the result of a cut from 60% in 1993. That was a cut from 66% in the 1970s.

We can see that we have an insured earnings rate that went from 66% down to 55%. These are really appalling figures and they really tell the story of how bad things are under the EI system.

We want to bring this to light and to show how this is impacting millions of workers in this country. I want to congratulate the Canadian Labour Congress and many affiliates of the CLC who have valiantly kept pace, done the tracking, and done the monitoring of what is happening to the EI system. Many of these figures come from the Canadian Labour Congress. If we did not have that independent research being done, I do not think we would have any idea just how bad things have become.

We know that in this budget bill the government created the Canada employment insurance financing board act. We know that it has set up this separate crown corporation, but to add insult to injury is the fact that the surplus in the EI account is now at $54 billion. I cannot visualize that amount of money, but I know it is money that is being robbed from workers. I know it is money that has gone into general revenue that is being used for other purposes. Again, the previous government started it and the current government is continuing it. There are so many questions about what it will mean in terms of this new crown corporation.

One of the basic questions we have is, why is it that this crown corporation has only been set up with a fund of $2 billion, when even the Auditor General of Canada says that what is required for insurance purposes is closer to $10 billion to $15 billion? We are very concerned that not only has the system so fundamentally changed in Canada over the last 15 years but even this new setup that we are dealing with today is going to do a great disservice to workers.

It is going to be a situation where yet again workers get cut out. Workers lose entitlement and rights and there will be no oversight from Parliament. At least now we have had some parliamentary oversight of the goings on and the scandal really, and I do call it a scandal, of what has happened to EI. Now with this arm's-length crown corporation, where will that parliamentary oversight be?

We are very concerned about these changes in the budget implementation bill. Our leader, the member for Toronto—Danforth, when he was at the Canadian Labour Congress convention just last Thursday, spoke on this issue to the 1,800 delegates who were there representing all of their affiliates across the country. He pointed out that the former government treated the money in the EI fund like money that it found and could use it however it wanted. He pointed out that the $54 billion from the EI fund was used to pay down the debt. That was money that was owed to workers. That is money that belongs to workers.

We see this as the biggest theft in Canadian history. There is a great deal of anger among working people within the organized labour movement about what is taken from EI. I want to assure the affiliates of the CLC and all of the labour partners that we are not going to let this issue go. We are going to fight this tooth and nail because we think it is pretty scandalous the way workers are being ripped off in this country.

I know for example that the building trades, at their recent policy convention here in Ottawa, raised the issue of EI. The Liberals did not have any answers for them. The Conservatives did not have any answers for them even when they asked basic questions as to why the new board would only be allocated $2 billion.

We have made these amendments today under Bill C-50 because we are so outraged about the budget bill generally, how it is really robbing workers of very basic entitlements: to feel secure, to feel safe, and to feel like they have something that they can rely on when they are hit by hard times.

I know that all of us in the NDP will be fighting these changes and I hope that other colleagues in the House will rethink their position. It is pretty appalling that the Liberals are willing to sit on their hands and to let this terrible bill pass through the House. That is what they have done before and that is what they are prepared to do again today. It is pretty appalling that they are going to let workers down that way. We should be fighting for these rights. That is what we intend to do.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Vancouver East explained it very well in her 10 minute speech about EI and what has been created across the whole country.

At one point in time we did ask to have an independent fund to ensure that we took it away from the general fund and had a fund set aside, but surely we are not talking about a crown corporation where we cannot question it anymore. That is the difference between having a separate fund from the general fund and a fund that is a crown corporation, that when we raise a question here in the House of Commons about the fund, the government will say, “Go ask the crown corporation. It is not legislated by the government and we cannot answer anymore”. Does she worry about that? That is one thing.

The other thing is that the Auditor General has said before that we should have about $15 billion in the employment insurance fund set aside. Now there is only $2 billion and I would like to hear what she thinks about that.

With Bill C-50, on which the Liberals tonight will not get up and vote, or just walk away like they usually do, they should lose their pay, because when workers walk away from their jobs they do not get paid, and the Liberals have been doing it pretty often lately.

With the $2 billion that will be in this fund, this crown corporation, if the workers run out of money and they need more because of downsizing in the economy, they will have to borrow it from the government and there will be interest charged to them. The government already has a $54 billion surplus and the workers will have to pay interest on their own money. What does the member think about that?

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Mr. Speaker, those are all very good questions.

There is no question that the Auditor General has said that there needs to be between $10 billion and $15 billion in that fund to provide enough of a cushion for when things get really rough, as they may well do, so why was it set up with $2 billion?

I do not know if many people know that the member for Acadie—Bathurst has presented 13 bills on EI reform. He has done an incredible job on his own of bringing forward individual bills to try to fix this system that has been deliberately broken by two successive governments. We are very respectful and we admire his work very much, that he has taken the time to research what has gone on and to bring forward bill after bill to bring back the changes that are needed to create fairness for workers so that they can have access to this fund that they paid into.

The member raises some very important questions in terms of the set up of this new crown corporation, the fact that it will not have enough money, there will not be any parliamentary insight, and that with this new system, workers are still going to get ripped off. They are not going to get any more money. They are not going to get any better benefits. They are not going to get longer insurance.

This is just such a basic part of what we consider to be our social safety net in Canada. This is one of the things we are proud of as Canadians and it has been completely ripped to shreds by the two governments that we have had, so we really want to stand up to this and say that this should not be allowed to happen.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to get back to the debate on the sections of Bill C-50 that affect the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act.

The reason I want to do that is because we are making fundamental changes to the act, and instead of doing that through the front door by sending proposed changes, and changes are needed, to the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration, so that the committee can conduct--

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

On a point of order, the hon. member for Acadie--Bathurst.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I believe we are on EI now. The debate on the motions in group one, which were on immigration has passed and now we are on employment insurance.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Certainly if the amendments have to do with employment insurance, the member for Kitchener—Waterloo might want to explain how his speech about immigration is relevant.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I might have been stretching it somewhat, so to speak, but Bill C-50 makes massive changes to the immigration act and unfortunately we really did not have the time in this House, nor did we have adequate time in committee, either to hear from the public or to debate these fundamental changes.

Seeing that this is all part of Bill C-50, I was hoping that we could talk about it in this chamber, because I think the changes that would be made in one of our most important departments and in the whole issue of immigration are going to be so massive and so destructive to everything we have done in the past that they are certainly worthy of debate.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

I am not sure whether the member just relinquished the floor or whether he was responding to the point of order.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

I was responding to the point of order.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

The hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, as for responding to it, we already had debate on it. You called it out just before question period and said that after question period the debate would continue. Nobody from the Liberal Party found it important at that time to get up to speak on the immigration issue and then you closed the debate. We voted on it.

Now we have switched to employment insurance and Group No. 2, which is another part of Bill C-50, I agree with the member. He wants to talk about immigration as part of Bill C-50, but that was part one, which we did before question period. Those members had enough time. As a matter of fact, if it was all that important they could have talked about it all night and we would have stayed here, but they did not choose to get up. Then you switched from the immigration issue to employment insurance, Mr. Speaker, and I think we should respect the debate.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

In the opinion of the Chair, the member for Acadie—Bathurst has a point. The reason we group amendments is so that we can discuss all the amendments that are lumped together as relevant to one particular piece of legislation.

The group that we now have before the House does have to do with employment insurance. If the member for Kitchener—Waterloo feels that he can only talk about the section of the bill that actually came before this grouping, then maybe he should reconsider.

On the same point of order, the hon. member for Hull—Aylmer

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I know that my colleague, as he himself said, was stretching it somewhat, except that it was his way of getting into the discussion. I am sure he will be addressing the problems that the first part of the discussions this morning will bring on to the second part of the discussions this afternoon.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Having said everything that I have already said, I look forward to how the member for Kitchener—Waterloo makes the connection.

[Andrew Telegdi, Liberal, Kitchener—Waterloo, ON]

Mr. Speaker, given that I did speak on it prior to question period and I did not think we had adequate time to address it, I will return to the topic at third reading.

However, I just want to make the point that the changes being proposed are going to have an incredible impact on the whole process of immigration to this country, and some of those fundamental changes are going to be draconian, which is something that is certainly worthy of more debate than we have had on the issue.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Chambly—Borduas.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, indeed, we are now talking about Group No. 2, the amendments concerning employment insurance. At the outset, on behalf of the Bloc Québécois, I must say that we will support the NDP's amendment to remove the part that deals with the employment insurance board.

Let me provide some context for the people listening today. At the Bloc Québécois' request, the House dropped two successive bills, one of which died on the order paper just before the last election.

That was about the creation of an independent fund with full, exclusive authority over the administration of employment insurance benefits by commissioners selected, for the most part, from among employers and employees. Why? Because they are the ones who pay into the fund.

The board proposed in Bill C-50 does not meet those criteria. Not only that, but it entrenches an injustice perpetrated on both workers and employers: the diversion of $54 billion from the employment insurance fund.

There are some people in this House who would like us to forget about that money. They are doing their level best to make us forget, but we will not forget. They would have us believe that the money is virtual. It is not. Workers and employers who contributed put real money into the fund. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives have used that money for other purposes. Today, they are trying to convince us that because it was spent on other things, it no longer exists and is therefore virtual money.

I would also note that representatives of all parties on the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities unanimously recommended that the money be returned to the employment insurance fund at a rate of at least $1.5 billion per year for 32 years. At the time, about $46 billion had been diverted; now that figure has risen to $54 billion, as I said earlier.

My NDP colleague said earlier that this would be a serious economic crime against the unemployed, their families and the communities and the provinces affected. Each time money does not return to the provinces through employment insurance benefits, the provinces—notably, Quebec—have to make up for this lost revenue with welfare.

Once again, this further worsens the fiscal imbalance. And none of this will be improved by the board. Even worse, within the fund there will be a reserve of $2 billion that will come from the consolidated revenue fund, but as a loan. At least admit that this reserve is money owed to the people.

The reserve is absolutely insufficient as well. The chief actuary of the Employment Insurance Commission has been saying for many years that the reserve should be at least $10 billion to $15 billion. Why? So that year after year, whatever the rate of unemployment, we can provide at least one year's worth of EI benefits according to the fund's obligations.

We are not the only ones who are saying this. Everyone who came to testify in recent days at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, including the major unions, employers and interest groups such as those representing the unemployed, came to say that this reserve is insufficient and that the $54 billion should not be forgotten.

Those are the first two points I wanted to bring up.

The third point is that the government is creating a new board separate from the commission, but is keeping the commission in place. The board is an addition. There will therefore be one decision-making body and two management bodies. The main management body is the Employment Insurance Commission. It will continue to ensure that benefits are paid in accordance with the minister's decisions. It will have no decision-making authority. The minister will make decisions based on the previous year's experience and will recommend a premium rate to the board. When he testified on April 29 and May 27, the minister essentially said two things. According to him, the employment insurance system is already generous enough. He said that. However, we find that the system currently excludes 60% of workers who pay into the fund. If they are unfortunate enough to lose their jobs, they are excluded under existing conditions and cannot receive benefits.

In a written statement that was tabled in committee, the minister also said that, from now on, any surplus can be used only to reduce premiums. That reflects a dangerous and unacceptable ideology that is based on the same principle as the one behind reducing the GST. Of course, every time it reduces the GST, the Conservative government subsequently finds a reason to cut social spending. Now the government wants to do the same thing with employment insurance, as if it had not done enough damage already.

Initially, we were in favour of the board because the government said its sole function would be to manage contributions in the interests of the unemployed. In fact, this is not true, as we have seen. Not only is this not true, but the board will work against the interests of unemployed workers. As I said earlier, the government is legalizing the theft of $54 billion and saying that in future, this money will not be used to help rebuild the fund, much less improve benefits. Instead, from now on, it will be used to reduce premiums. That is the government's philosophy, and it is unacceptable. I said earlier that we were in favour of the board because the clear intention was that, from now on, this fund would be used only for employment insurance.

The minister's statements, the facts revealed to us in committee, as well as the concerns expressed by the stakeholders, showed us that this board would not assume the responsibility I just described.

There is another thing. By separating the roles, by not allowing the Employment Insurance Commission to set the rates, the government is trying to have it both ways. We think it would be wise to create an Employment Insurance Commission worthy of that name. Commissioners are appointed by the minister, of course, but recommended by whom? We need to have commissioners who serve the interests of contributors, which would mean people who, for the most part, are recommended or delegated by the employer and employee organizations. Also, as was the case for large management companies in Quebec, these people need to be able to work alongside consultants who can give them information about decisions to be made. The chief commissioner is one of them. A representative from the Canadian Institute of Actuaries also came to speak about this. He said that the fund needed to be managed by taking into account a five-year period, that it should have a reserve fund that is worthy of the name, and that it should be used exclusively for employment insurance.

I thank you for your attention, Mr. Speaker, and I truly hope that our colleagues here will vote in favour of the amendment before us in order to remove the employment insurance financing board from this bill.

[Christian Ouellet, Bloc, Brome—Missisquoi, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague on the clarity of his presentation regarding the misappropriation of $54 billion by the government.

Is reduced accessibility to employment insurance benefits not part of the poor treatment of workers? The member for Chambly—Borduas gained some insight into this, as we did, when he met with people who were truly depressed and about to be declared clinically mentally ill because workers are not being looked after when they experience the shock of becoming unemployed.

Does this mean that monies should be transferred to Health Canada, which must look after those suffering from depression because the employment insurance fund did not meet their needs as it should have?

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by congratulating the hon. member for Brome—Missisquoi on his excellent work concerning homelessness and the whole issue of housing.

He is quite right about how the fund has been used over the years. As everyone will recall, when there was a high unemployment rate, the fund could not fulfill its obligations through contributions. Here is how it worked: when there was not enough in the fund through contributions, the national treasury loaned money to the fund and contributions were later adjusted to pay back the treasury, and this always worked out.

When the EI fund was rolled into the consolidated revenue fund, the government at the time, a Conservative government, began dipping into that fund. First, it tried to lower contributions as much as possible in order to limit benefits as much as it could. This government is trying to adopt the same system.

When the Liberals came to power, they re-established a certain level for contributions to meet their obligations, but they began restricting access to benefits, gradually excluding over 50% of people who normally would have received benefits if they became unemployed.

My colleague is quite right to say that this strategy was used to create surpluses, at the expense of people who lost their jobs, in order to use those surpluses to pay off the debt or pay for other budget items.

This is appalling, especially since it has been inflicted by the government on the people who are hurting the most.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking about a crown corporation. I know that the Bloc Québécois has always supported the concept of an independent fund, just as I have.

However, with respect to the employment insurance financing board, a crown corporation that will be created tonight following a vote on Bill C-50, is the member concerned that the same thing will happen with this entity that is happening with all of the other crown corporations, such as CBC/Radio-Canada and Canada Post, that is, when members of the House ask the government a question, it will say that it is not responsible and refer us to the crown corporation in question? Is he concerned that once such a board is in place, the government will wash its hands of the whole matter and the fund will be lost?

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. Our discussions with the minister have pointed to that happening. Why take this matter out of the hands of commissioners, as I was saying earlier, and give the responsibility to a board?

The board will have no power other than making sure that contributions are sufficient to comply with the requirements set by the minister. In other words, the real work will done by the chief actuary, who will advise the commissioners.

This is the problem our colleague raised: once they have a purely technical role and no performance obligations with respect to the decisions they make, they will lose control over decision-making; their only purpose will be to rubber-stamp other people's decisions.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to part 7 of Bill C-50, although I am not pleased about what is happening. I will be clear with all Canadians, including workers and businesses.

This evening, we will see the first vote that will truly legalize the theft from the employment insurance fund. This evening, we will see $54 billion being taken away. That is what will happen. The sad thing in all of this—and we saw this coming—is that the NDP proposed amendments, which went to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, asking that, if such theft must occur, that there at least be a mechanism in place to try to help workers.

For example, the Auditor General said that a $15 billion cushion was needed in the employment insurance fund. We would like to have an amendment stipulating that there be at least $15 billion in the crown corporation. The Liberal Party refused and even refused having $15 billion out of $54 billion placed in the employment insurance fund. It voted against that.

Today, we are in the House of Commons and we see that to date, the Liberal Party of Canada has not even stood up to explain whether it is for or against Bill C-50, which is the government's budget implementation bill. The government will take this $54 billion, put it aside and forget about it. That is what is going on right now.

What is more, in Bill C-50 the government is saying that it will put $2 billion into the crown corporation. If there is a problem with the economy, money can be borrowed from the government's general funds and interest will be charged. Imagine that. Today we see that the Liberals are not even standing up to condemn this. I am talking about $54 billion that was taken out of the pockets of workers. Those people got up every morning to go to work and that money was deducted from their pay.

If the government wants to pay down the debt, it can use the taxes we pay. I remember when the Mulroney Conservatives brought in a new formula called the GST, which was to be used to pay down the debt. But instead of paying down the debt with the GST, the taxes people paid, the Conservatives decided they would use the money in the employment insurance fund and hit workers. When workers lose their jobs, they have no money to defend themselves in court. They cannot defend themselves. If workers try to get money from Imperial Oil, Shell, Ultramar or Irving in New Brunswick, these companies can afford to take the workers to court. The poor workers, who have lost their jobs and have no more money to feed their families, cannot afford to go to court. That is who the government is taking money away from. The government is taking money away from the poorest, most vulnerable members of society. That is what the Liberal government did in 1996. It made cuts to employment insurance, and the Conservatives supported those cuts.

In 2005, the last year the Liberals were in power, 28 recommendations were made regarding employment insurance. Among those recommendations was one made by the Conservative House leader that the $54 billion be put back in the employment insurance fund within 10 years. The Bloc Québécois had generously called for a timeframe of 32 or 33 years. The current Conservative House leader said that this should be done within 10 years. The money belonged to employers and employees and should be returned to them.

Now, the Conservatives are telling us that this is just virtual money, that it disappeared because it was spent and that this is the Liberals' fault. They have brought in a bill that legalizes all that. They are also telling us that if we want to get our money back we will have to pay interest. This is a sad day. It is true that they would like us to stop talking about this.

Why should we stop talking about the biggest theft in Canadian history? It is the worst scandal to have ever taken place in this Parliament. It is even worse than the Liberal's sponsorship scandal and the Conservatives spending $1.5 million over the $18 million spending limit in the last election. We are talking about $54 billion. This money could have been used to help people, but instead people are forced to go on social assistance and to embrace poverty. That is the end result.

In Canada, only 32% of women and 38% of men are eligible for employment insurance; some 800,000 workers are ineligible. Furthermore, 1.4 million children are hungry. How many times have I said this in my speeches in the House of Commons? I have never tired of repeating it. Today it seems that the Liberals are tired of hearing it and are in a hurry to move on.

The member for Kitchener—Waterloo rose earlier saying that he wanted to talk about immigration. He had already had an opportunity to do so. He said that it was terribly important and that he wanted to talk about immigration. If it is so important, he will have the opportunity to vote this evening and tell the government that he does not agree with it. The Liberals do not have to sit on their hands or leave Parliament or not vote. This evening, if the Liberals decide to remain in their seats and not vote, that will mean that they approve of the Conservatives' theft from the employment insurance fund, a theft from the workers that they initiated in 1996. I hope that workers are listening today and that they do not forget what happens.

I hope some workers are listening to what is being said here. The government has decided to put Bill C-50 to a vote tonight. The Liberals will just sit in their places. They have decided not to vote on the bill. As a matter of fact, they have decided not to speak to the bill at all today.

I hope the men and women who call their members of Parliament telling them they cannot get their employment insurance will understand that today the Conservative Party and the Liberal Party have stolen their $54 billion employment insurance surplus. There are provisions in Bill C-50 to create a crown corporation and only $2 billion will go to the crown corporation. What is going to happen if it runs out of money? The bill is very clear. If Canadian workers need money from employment insurance, the money will have to be borrowed from the government and interest will have to be paid on that money. They will have to pay interest on their own money, something never seen before in the history of this country. The vote is going to happen tonight. It is a sad day for workers. I hope workers never vote for the Conservative Party or the Liberal Party based on the action those parties are going to take against workers tonight. Canadians must remember.

When a person has a job, things go well and he or she has no problems. However, when the person loses his or her job and the paycheques stop coming in, it is a sad day not just for the worker, but for the family under the person's responsibility.

There are 1.4 million kids in this country going hungry. When 800,000 people do not qualify for a program that belongs to them, they will go hungry because they will have no money. The Liberals are partly responsible for this. The Conservatives are totally responsible by introducing Bill C-50 and creating this crown corporation.

Having a crown corporation means that when a member of Parliament raises a question about EI premiums, the government will tell the member to ask the crown corporation. It is arm's length to the government. The government will not answer any questions, just as it does not answer any questions about CBC or Canada Post.

For this reason, I am proud that the NDP members will stand up this evening in the House of Commons and vote, unlike the Liberals, against this bill and against the immigration bill. They are not like the Liberals, who will remain seated and so shirk their responsibilities as parliamentarians and as Canadians.

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, always true to form, passionate, full of emotion, just as we should be when we are defending the common good of those whom we represent. I say it often, and I will continue to do so: I truly appreciate the comments and the ardour that my colleague puts into his speeches.

My question is very simple. For all of those who are listening to us and will follow the events right up until the vote tonight, could he explain the fate of the $54 billion, to become $2 billion if this reserve is created? What will happen to the $52 billion that belongs to both the workers and businesses that contributed to the current fund?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the sad part here is that in 1986, after the auditor general said that this money should go into the general fund, all of a sudden the government had found a cash cow. This is the government's cash cow. Each time the government announced profits, a surplus, or even a balanced budget, it was at the expense of workers.

The question was asked of the Liberals when they were in power and of the Conservatives. They only responded that we should wake up, because they had taken the money. They admitted having spent it and that the money was gone. This evening, they will legalize this theft. That is what they will do.

Then, we will hear that if the workers need money they will have to borrow it and pay interest on that loan, because there will be interest on the $54 billion that belongs to them. That is the sad part, and we will find out the ending tonight.

The other sad part is that, instead of borrowing money, the government will reduce EI even more, which will mean less for the workers.

These are the two things that can happen after tonight. This marks a sad day in Canada's history. This is $54 billion gone into the coffers of the government, which used them for sponsorships, as we know, or other things that were not good for Canadians.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague for the very fair analysis that complements my own. We have been working together since 2004 to prepare the 28 recommendations that were referred to earlier.

The first eight recommendations aimed specifically to create an independent fund that is independently administered and to ensure that the money that had been diverted was very gradually returned to the fund.

All members are facing this reality in their respective ridings. We are all meeting workers who are struggling with this problem. We are talking with them. They voted for us and entrusted us with this mandate. I am referring specifically to the hon. member for Louis-Hébert, the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, the hon. member for Lévis—Bellechasse and the hon. member for Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean. I know they have worked directly with unemployed workers. They promised those workers a POWA, an income support program for older workers, and a solution to the problems of access to EI.

Can my colleague, who has been a member of this House longer than I have, explain to me how it is that these decisions are being reached, decisions that negate the commitments made to workers and other people directly involved? Is there an explanation for this?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the only explanation I can give is that in order to do those things, you must be either a Conservative or a Liberal.

I remember the members for Bourassa and LaSalle—Émard who, in 2005, promised to change employment insurance if they were elected, but they did not. Now it is the same thing for the others.

I went to Forestville myself—I believe that the member for Chambly—Borduas was there, at least some of the members of his political party were there—where 2,500 people, workers and business owners, demonstrated in the streets. Everyone said that the changes made no sense.

Today, the Liberals have not once stood in the House of Commons to discuss the employment insurance fund. As for us, we will ensure that workers know that the Liberals are no more interested in making changes to employment insurance than they are interested in repaying the workers.

So, the only answer I can give is to say that in order to act this way, you would have to be a Liberal or a Conservative. The Liberals and the Conservative have been making promises for 100 years without keeping them, and that will be the case again tonight.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the EI provisions in the budget implementation bill. My riding is part of steel town, Hamilton, the city that was built on a vibrant manufacturing sector where industrial workers earned family sustaining wages. Unfortunately, today those decent paying jobs are disappearing. They are being replaced by minimum wage, service sector jobs with no job security, few if any benefits and certainly no defined benefit pension plans. In that regard, Hamilton is a microcosm of what is happening in the country as a whole. We have lost 350,000 manufacturing sector jobs in the last five years alone and we are still hemorrhaging 300 additional jobs each and every day.

As the manufacturing sector is confronted with the tsunami of job losses, we as elected members have a responsibility to mitigate its impact on the hard-working Canadians who are losing their jobs through no fault of their own.

That of course was the original reason for creating EI, or unemployment insurance as it was originally known. It was established so workers who lost their jobs would not automatically fall into poverty. EI is the single most important income support program for Canadian workers.

In 2004-05 almost two million workers received some $13 billion in benefits. Just under two-thirds of that amount was in the form of regular benefits for temporarily unemployed workers actively seeking work, while most of the remainder was for parental and maternity benefits, which allow a new parent to take up to a year's supported leave from the workforce.

It is a myth that the EI program is mainly accessed by frequent users in high unemployment regions. While the program is indeed of vital importance to seasonal workers and other workers in high unemployment areas, only about one-third of regular claims in 2004-05 were filed by so-called frequent claimants.

In today's labour market, many workers can and do experience periods of interrupted earnings and require temporary income support. But even workers who never, or very rarely, make a claim have the knowledge that support would be there if needed. In short, the EI program was designed to help reduce poverty and insecurity. In the process, it stabilizes community economies.

It is true that the stabilization effects were significantly weakened by the cuts of the mid-1990s. When the Liberals were in power, the then finance minister took almost $50 billion of workers' money out of the employment insurance program and used it to cut taxes for his friends in corporate Canada. By the end of their 13 long years in office, the system had been gutted so badly that only 38% of unemployed workers were receiving benefits, down from more than 75% in the early 1990s before the Liberals took office.

Women were particularly disadvantaged because they make up the bulk of the part time workforce. Only three in ten women who lose their jobs are now eligible for EI.

Similarly, long years of service in the workforce no longer count for anything when it comes to collecting EI benefits. Workers on leave for training, the key to staying employed and employable in a modern economy, are also no longer covered. Why? Because after the Liberals took close to $50 billion out of the employment insurance program, there was little left to meet the program's original mandate, except it was not their money to take.

Employment insurance is funded solely by worker and employer contributions. The government simply administers the fund, so why are benefits being denied to those who have faithfully paid their premiums? Why do Ontarians get on average $5,000 less in EI than people in other parts of the country? Why is it virtually impossible to access retraining benefits when disaster strikes? New Democrats have been raising these questions in the House of Commons since the former Liberal government first started this unscrupulous raiding of the EI fund.

With the change in government in 2006, voters could be forgiven if they thought that a Conservative government might lead to some positive change. After all, before the election, it was the Prime Minister, then serving as the leader of the opposition, who joined us in harshly criticizing the raiding of the EI surplus, but that was then and this is now. Once elected, the Conservative government simply continued to rob workers of what is rightfully theirs.

It is totally unacceptable and frankly incomprehensible that last year when there was a $51 billion surplus in the EI fund, 68% of women and 62% of men who pay into the system were not eligible for benefits. It is time to say enough is enough. Workers' rights have been pushed to the side for far too long.

That brings us to the bill that is before the House today, Bill C-50, the implementation bill for the 2008 budget. What does it do? Instead of doing right by hard-working Canadians and returning all of the employee and employer contributions to the EI fund, it does the unthinkable. It legalizes the theft of $54 billion. That is the biggest theft in Canadian history and it is being perpetrated in the House of Commons and in the Senate. That is wrong and it is completely unacceptable. That money belongs to workers and their families. It is time to give it back. Workers deserve enhanced benefits, not enhanced bureaucracy, but more bureaucracy is all that the workers are getting from the government.

The Conservatives are setting up a new Canada employment insurance financing board that is mandated to use surpluses to reduce premiums instead of using them to improve access to benefits and the quality of benefits for Canadian workers.

Moreover, the reserve fund is limited to just $2 billion. Even then the bill says that the finance minister may give that sum to the board, not that he has to. How can we ensure there will be enough money in the reserve permanently?

The EI fund is supposed to protect workers in the case of economic downturns. It needs to be recession proof, but the Auditor General has estimated that $10 billion to $15 billion would be the amount required to balance the employment insurance account in the event of a recession.

I could go on forever, but I realize that I am running out of time, so let me reiterate my main concerns.

I have concerns about the legalized theft of the $54 billion surplus. I am concerned that the surpluses will not be used to improve access to or the quality of benefits for Canadians, which may even be a step toward the covert abolition of the employment insurance program altogether.

I am concerned about the reallocation of the most recent employment insurance surplus. I am concerned about the government's evasion of its obligations to workers since it will not have to answer for a crown corporation in the House. I am concerned about the uncertain funding for the reserve fund. I am concerned about the possible inadequacy of the reserve fund. I am concerned that the establishment of the board in no way improves Canadians' access to benefits or the quality of those benefits.

I am concerned about a potential suspension of benefits. I am concerned about the government's focus on establishing the board rather than attending to the employment insurance program's real problems.

These concerns are shared by thousands of hard-working Canadians in my riding of Hamilton Mountain and, indeed, right across our country. Yet today, the government is ramming it through the House just like it rammed it through committee.

There were no meaningful consultations. There were no cross-country hearings nor indepth study. The finance committee closed down debate on the bill. The Conservatives imposed a five minute limit to each speaker, and the Liberals supported that motion, five minutes to steal $54 billion. Workers deserve better. The EI surplus comes from their pockets. Unemployed workers desperately need these funds.

I urge all members of the House to do the right thing now, especially my Liberal colleagues. They should put the needs of working families in their ridings ahead of their own electoral needs. I know the Liberals do not want an election this spring and to vote against the government would trigger one, but this is not about their future; it is about the future of workers in our country. This is the time to stand up and be counted.

I am proud to stand with my NDP colleagues in voting against the bill. We know which side we are on.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I thank my colleague from Hamilton Mountain for standing up so strongly and clearly for the interests of the working people in her riding. Everything she has mentioned that applies to them applies to all workers in all our ridings.

One thing should jump out, and I will ask the hon. member to expand on it a bit so everybody truly understands. She spoke of the 68% of women who did not qualify. The underlying message is this is of the people who pay EI premiums. It would be insulting and awful enough if it were true, that 68% of all the population did not qualify, but it is worse.

Of the 100% of people who pay, that is how many do not qualify. Would the member expand on that in any way she can to get that message across, that this is about as clear a legal rip-off as we are ever going to see, made worse by the budget bill in front of us?

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Hamilton Centre makes the important point of the debate. The money we are talking about, the theft we are talking about, of $54 billion is money that has been paid into the EI fund by workers and employers specifically to cushion the blow when they lose their jobs.

The fact that over 65% of men and women are not eligible to access this money is the crime that is really being perpetrated in the House. It goes beyond just the statistics.

In our hometown of Hamilton, which the member for Hamilton Centre and I obviously share, people are trying to access training dollars through EI. I do not know if members have been speaking to people in their riding, but accessing training dollars is almost impossible.

The burden that the paper process put on workers to demonstrate the skills they have used in successful careers for years are no longer needed in their community takes an inordinate amount of time just to satisfy the burden of proof. By that time, they are almost running out of their EI benefits, and training programs often take a year or two. They no longer have the EI benefits to assist them in the retraining to again accept jobs in our communities.

The EI program no doubt needs fixing today, but the government's solution of legalizing the theft is not a solution for the hard-working people in ridings like Hamilton Mountain, Hamilton Centre and right across the country.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Mississauga South, Airbus; the hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, Airbus; the hon. member for Willowdale, Automotive Industry.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise today to join my friends from Hamilton Centre and Hamilton Mountain in this important debate.

I will be speaking to Bill C-50, as the others have, and in particular the aspects of Bill C-50 concerning employment insurance. One of the most important parts of this debate must include how the unemployment insurance fund came to this end, how it became employment insurance in the first place and what it meant to the working people who had been paying into the fund all of their working lives.

I can recall in the early to mid 1990s the finance minister of the day, the member for LaSalle—Émard, undertook substantial and fundamental changes to the social compact that Canadians held so dear. It was also what we believed was part of the very foundation of why Canada was a great country. It took into account the needs of people when they fell on hard times.

It was during this period that new buzzwords started to appear and it became the language coming from Ottawa, the bubble that is Ottawa. “Downloading” and “offloading” were among the most destructive of the words that I heard used. One may ask why? In the name of deficit fighting, the Liberal government of the day foisted changes in the form of the Canada health and social transfer onto the provinces. The Liberal government systematically began to seriously cut back the funding the federal government was transferring to the provinces, as well as offloading many of their responsibilities.

Included were changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act, which were meant to reorganize the act and begin to focus more on retraining, as we heard the member for Hamilton Mountain speaking about a few moments ago. In my community of Hamilton, workers began a cycle of training, retraining and then some more training, but no one understood what they were training for because there was a serious job crisis at that time. No jobs were available, just this cycle of training and retraining.

In addition, during that period, the theft of some $50 billion of worker and employer contributions was well underway. However, to grow the fund to the unprecedented size of in excess of $50 billion, the Liberal government first had to build up the fund and to do so, changed the eligibility rules. Following the massive rule changes, Canadians found that instead of the benefits they previously could depend on, the benefits that for years they had paid for, more and more Canadians found they did not qualify for the benefits at all or, if they did, they received them for a far shorter time period.

This effectively forced some Canadians onto welfare rolls. These Canadians were offloaded, so to speak, from the more equitable funding available from income tax and shifted over to the less comprehensive programs funded by property tax. That not only hurt those workers, but it added a new burden to the municipalities. We have heard from the FCM how it has the $23 billion deficit in infrastructure in the country, and that is part of the reason it has that. However, municipal governments, especially in hard times, had to raise property taxes and that hurt people on fixed incomes, pensioners or low income earners.

Canada's employment insurance program was significantly undermined by the previous Liberal government. Canadians knew it as one of the strongest programs, which helped working people when they lost their jobs. When they needed bridging to new employment, this program used to provide funding for unemployed workers. Some 80% of unemployed workers used to get EI, or UI as we knew it, to help them through that transition. As a result of the cuts made by the previous Liberal government and other changes to EI, it significantly undermined who would get benefits and the level of those benefits.

Today, about two-thirds of Canadians do not get employment insurance benefits. I still find it impossible to accept that new language. The fact that so few actually get the benefits is shocking. If other insurance companies refuse to allow individuals access to the benefits they have paid into, there would be a huge uproar across the country.

This move to EI and what we have before us today is completely unfair. Working people across Canada and employers, in good faith, have paid into the employment fund for many years, building a huge surplus. The estimates vary but some say it is as high as $57 billion. It now appears the previous government, as well as the present government, used that money to pay down the debt and for other programs. People who have been paying into the fund and who ought to get the benefits are denied those benefits.

This is at a time when the current government's budgets have failed to invest in strengthening our economy and opted instead to reduce social spending in favour of the huge corporate tax breaks to the banks, oil companies and gas companies. Consecutive Liberal and Conservatives governments collected EI premiums and made a conscious decision not to distribute those proceeds to the people who need them.

The jig is up. What will the Conservative government do with this misappropriation of the EI premiums of Canadians? What is its goal? Rather than saying there is an imbalance between the money paid in and the abysmal level of benefits and services available as a result of the inadequacies in the EI program, the Conservatives have decided to write these billions of dollars off Canada's book. To ensure that they never have to repay the money, they are setting up a separate account that will not be accountable to Parliament.

In spite of all the rhetoric we hear day in and day out in election campaigns about accountability, the Conservatives are legislating accountability away in this bill.

This should be unbelievable. Sadly, and equally unbelievable is the Liberals who, in the ultimate act of self-preservation, will sit on their hands, take a walk or somehow allow this stuff to occur. I guess it is understandable when they already were accomplices to the theft or even the masterminds behind so many of the subtleties of the theft that it led to the legislation before us today.

How does this provide fairness and support for unemployed workers across the country?

People in my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek are among the thousands who have lost their manufacturing jobs. These manufacturing jobs paid living wages, provided good benefits and allowed workers to live and retire in dignity with adequate pensions. Unfortunately, these jobs are evaporating, forcing workers into non-standard arrangements. What will the budget do for the workers of Hamilton who are in need?

Clearly, the provision contained in Bill C-50 will legitimize the stealing of billions of dollars from the employment insurance fund, and is done to cover the steep costs of the government's corporate tax breaks, estimated at $14 billion yearly.

The Conservative government is taking the wrong approach on employment insurance, especially by creating a crown corporation for EI, as envisioned in Bill C-50.

With Bill C-50, the Conservatives are ducking their much touted public accountability, and are aiding and abetting the continuation of the fine tradition of previous governments, of stealing the money of Canadians, the tradition of taking billions of dollars in premiums paid by workers and employers and using them to support their own political agenda, rather than providing benefits for those most in need.

The government's creating of the Canada employment insurance financing board as a crown corporation will completely undermine the principle of parliamentary accountability for employment insurance.

The NDP agree that EI should be separated public accounts, but it is the government's job to manage it. It is the government's responsibility to take care of its people, not profit from them.

The government must recognize it owes Canadian workers and their families a $50 billion-plus debt. That money belongs to the workers and their families and it is time to give it back.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear the Auditor General said that if we are to have an EI reserve fund, rather than $2 billion, we need $15 billion in it.

Not only the Auditor General has said this, I notice that Mr. Michel Bédard, who was the chief actuary for the federal employment insurance fund, has said that a $2 billion cushion is too small and that his organization believes the new corporation being debated today would need $10 billion to $15 billion to draw on to avoid wild swings in premium.

If the corporation needs the funds, it would have to borrow it and therefore pay interest. Does the hon. member think it is fair that the money the workers put aside is now being taken away, the entire $56 billion, and instead they are forced to borrow money in future and have to pay the interest. Is that fair?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, of course it is not fair and it is not realistic, especially when we consider that the workers and the employers built a foundation of a fund that should have been self-sustaining. There were enough dollars in that fund to protect workers for many years and not subject the government to borrowing money and paying interest. In fact, it is absolutely ridiculous.

However, I do not think we can lose sight of the fact that the present government and the previous government need to be held accountable for the money that has been misappropriated, the money that belongs to the workers of Canada. It should not be written away, as it is about to be done.

I call upon the Liberals, as other members of the House have, to join us and stop this theft of Canadian workers' money.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my hon. colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. Members may not know this but the hon. member is the former president of the Hamilton and District Labour Council and was the longest serving president of the council. Therefore, the member has a reputation and a track record for standing up for working people. It is a perfect segue to take a member like him directly from the labour movement, elect him to the floor of the House of Commons and then bring in a Conservative budget that attacks unemployed workers in the way that this has.

I want to thank him for bringing those personal experiences and knowledge here to the floor of the House of Commons. What does he think about the idea that all the people he represented, the hundreds of thousands of workers he represented for all those years, had all their money used by the former Liberal government as a legal slush fund by which it played a shell game to create its balanced budgets? I would like to ask him to reflect on how those workers feel about having paid all those years only to see the money virtually stolen from their fund. This fund was for unemployed workers, nothing else.

How does he now feel about the idea that out of that $54 billion there will only be $2 billion put aside at a time when the world and the U.S. in particular is teetering on the brink of major recession? Could the member explain on behalf of those workers what this does to them?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Hamilton Centre for his kind words.

It is difficult to stand here and relate the stories that I have come across when I was in the position of president of a labour council at a time when we had restructuring, such as the 350,000 jobs lost in manufacturing in the last few years, and to have those people come before us and ask what they will do. Some apply for EI but find out they only qualify for 13 weeks or whatever the number of weeks.

We know the reality that is left for them is welfare. We have people who have proudly worked all their lives, who contributed to an employment insurance fund that was supposed to be there for them, contributed to pensions that were supposed to be there for them and that social compact that I spoke about earlier in my remarks where they could depend on their government and their country, and they have been betrayed. There is no other word for it.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to join in the debate on behalf of my constituents in Hamilton Centre.

I want to touch on three things in the short time that I have.

First, I want to talk a bit about how the system was unfair to my home province of Ontario, even prior to the budget bill coming forward.

Second, I want to talk about the $54 billion, much in line with the question I asked my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek in terms of all that money being paid for one specific purpose and what it means to see it diverted into other things and not being there when it is needed.

Third, I want to enunciate the absolute unfairness, which is such a mild word, that over 60% of the people who paid EI premiums are not eligible to receive benefits.

With respect to the first item, Ontario loses, I would like to put on the record some of the remarks that are contained in a Toronto Star editorial dated February 10, 2008. Its headline reads, “Benefit rules cheat Ontario's jobless”. It reads in part as follows:

Workers in Canada have no choice whether to pay Employment Insurance...premiums. No matter where they live, they must pay, and in that sense they are all treated alike.

But they are certainly are not treated equally when it comes to collecting EI benefits. While nearly 80 per cent of workers in Newfoundland qualify for benefits when they lose a job, the figure in Ontario is closer to 25 per cent. And for the minority who are eligible in Ontario, benefits run out much sooner than they do elsewhere in Canada.

According to Premier Dalton McGuinty, here is what this unfair treatment means: “Last year, the average unemployed worker in Ontario received $5,110 in regular EI benefits, while the average unemployed person in the rest of Canada received $9,070.” That difference cost Ontario's unemployed $1.7 billion

Because of that built-in unfairness, introduced through a series of “reforms” by the Chrétien government in 1996, EI in Ontario can hardly be called an insurance program when barely a quarter of workers can count on benefits if they lose their jobs.

In setting a higher bar for Ontarians to qualify for benefits, Ottawa ignored the fact that Ontarians who lose their jobs need EI support while hunting for a new job, just like the unemployed in any other region. But far too many Ontarians never get even that limited support.

The article closes with this paragraph:

Ottawa needs to straighten out this mess and restore fairness to all Canadians. The time to do it is in the upcoming budget, before Ontarians feel the full brunt of the spillover of a recession in the U.S.

Unfortunately, as members know and as the rest of the country now knows, the government did not fix this unfairness in Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, as you would know, as you have been here longer than anyone else in this House, it is not historically easy for Ontario MPs to stand and talk about what they are getting in fairness because Ontario used to be so big, population wise and in its strength of economy compared to the rest of the country, but that has changed significantly.

The Toronto Star was right to point this out. Ontario MPs will continue to raise the issue of unfairness because I suspect that the newfangled machinery being created by the government will still not address this problem, in addition to all the new problems that will be created. We will not stand by, particularly as Ontario gets massacred in the number of jobs that are pouring out of Ontario and out of Canada.

Second, with respect to the $54 billion, I am glad the CLC is taking the action it is taking in terms of making a claim. This is not like any other fund under the purview of the finance minister. As we all know, there is a virtual consolidated revenue fund. Everything goes into one fund so there is one bank account and then on paper we break down how much is allocated for each of the various departments' activities. There is one collective chequing account into which everything gets deposited and then the breakdown is provided on paper and then within that the accountability on how it was spent and so on.

As my friend pointed out, EI used to be unemployment insurance, which I am still not happy with, but the EI fund is different because it is not general revenue. It is money that workers pay, in part, and employers pay, in part, to ensure money is available to support workers and their families in the transition from one job to another. It is not to pay any other bills, buy anything else or to pay for other programs. It is to help unemployed workers.

The former Liberal government ignored that mandate and used that money to pay for the great economic miracle, which it likes to talk about, in the nineties that it performed because it balanced the budget. Balancing a budget is no big deal. It is not that difficult. If that is one's only purpose, then just slash all one's spending. The balancing, in and of itself, is not the answer, especially when we find out that it was able to do that balancing act on the back of the unemployed workers' fund. Even without this change into an arm's length agency, Canadian workers have every right to demand that every penny be put back into that fund for workers who may need it in the future.

Do members want to know why we are so incensed about this budget? Do members want to know why we are dragging this out as long as we can? It is because of the damage that is being done to people, such as workers and others, in that budget.

Unfortunately, the government listens but it does not hear. Whether I am loud or not, I really do not care whether that bothers government or not. When people are unemployed for months and they do not have the money to buy their kids the shoes they need or put food on the table, the government would be hearing a lot louder from those workers than it would be hearing from me today.

The fact is that this new fund would wipe out the $54 billion in one move. It would be gone and it would start over with $2 billion.

Let us understand what is going on. Two important things are going on, or three if we consider the fact that the Conservatives have left inequities in place, like those that are hurting my fellow Ontarians.

The first thing the government is doing is trying to eliminate that moral debt. CLC will argue that it is a legal debt in court, but certainly one can make an argument that it is a moral debt, that the money is owed to the people for whom it was put into that account in the first place. However, this game plan is meant to take that $54 billion and just sort of pave it over and permanently ignore the debt that is owed to unemployed workers in this province, and, instead, it puts in $2 billion.

What happens if there is a major downturn or if the downturn continues? What happens if that $2 billion runs out? Will the money be there or not? Will we run a deficit and start to make it look like unemployed workers are the cause of some kind of economic drain on this country when they have done absolutely nothing wrong?

The other thing it does is it makes it much more difficult for ordinary members in this House to get accountability because, it is true, ministers will stand and say that they did not make the decision, that they had nothing to do with it, that it was arm's length making all the decisions so they should be blamed.

Workers in this country have heard “blame them over there” for long enough. This budget bill hurts unemployed workers. Every worker who is not unemployed who might be listening and who thinks he or she does not need to worry about this should understand that they are one pink slip away from being a part of this catastrophe.

Let us remember that we all know the difference between a recession and a depression. A recession is when it happens to our neighbours. A depression is when it happens to us.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to the speeches we have heard here today.

I must say that I am deeply disturbed by the fact that $54 billion has just vanished. My friend from Hamilton Centre indicated that it was a travesty that this money was taken out of the hands of unemployed workers. To that, we heard calls from the government benches that the money is already gone, which is even worse.

I would like the hon. member to comment on one of the things I heard over and over again in the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, which was that women are particularly negatively impacted by what is happening with employment insurance in this country. Of all of the women who contribute, only one-third are ever able to collect the benefits that they need. Those benefits are needed when they are on maternity leave or when they face a layoff. Many of these women have little children who are depending on them.

Even worse, self-employed women, young women and middle-aged women who clean offices or do services within the community, do not even get the benefit of qualifying. Nor do farm women. Where would some of these hon. members be without the good women who work so hard to provide food and sustenance for this country?

Would my colleague comment on some of these things?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity and the remarks of my colleague from London—Fanshawe. As everyone knows, she is a very effective critic on women's issues and once again has proven that point.

It does take us back to the issue that each of us has spoken to. I am glad to have the opportunity to underscore it. Of all the people who pay EI premiums, which is everyone who pays them out of their paycheque, 68% of the women who make up that 100% who pay EI premiums do not qualify.

The number for men is about as bad at 62%, but unfortunately, once again, which is why my colleague is so effective in her remarks, it is women who are being hit harder. If we look at the agenda of the government, we can see that it is pretty consistent. When we take a look at what it did to the Status of Women, we will see that it took out the word “equality”.

This is not a government that is going to stand up for women. This is not a government that is standing up for workers. That is why each of us needs to stand up. I do not know what the official opposition is going to do. Probably nothing. The Liberals are getting very good at sitting on their hands.

But this is a bill and a budget that call for Canada's representatives to stand up and say no, the Conservatives are not going to do this to workers, they are not going to do this to unemployed workers and their families, and they are not going to do this to the women of our country, because it is wrong.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, speaking about unemployed workers, we have lost 378,000 jobs since November 2002. Those were manufacturing jobs that paid well. That entire sector is in crisis. That number represents about one in six of all the manufacturing jobs that existed in Canada prior to November 2002. What is this theft of $56 billion going to do? What is the message that those of us here are sending to these unemployed workers?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is a representative of Toronto, the largest city in the province of Ontario, naturally, and these people are being hit very hard. This theft of $54 billion means that if we get into a serious downtown we run the risk that there will not be enough money there, even for those who do qualify. It may not happen tomorrow, next week, next month or even in this cycle, but eventually, unfortunately, cyclically it will happen. When it does, we run the risk that there will not be enough money there, even for those who do qualify.

There are two things that need to be fixed. One is that more people who pay the premiums should be entitled to collect the benefits when they need them. When they are down and out, they do not need their own federal government putting the boots to them by telling them the support mechanism that is there is an emergency fund that they do not qualify for.

What would be just as bad would be to qualify and then find out there is not enough money because the money has been taken by the previous government and the debt will not be paid by the current government, a debt that I hope it loses in the courts, because it ought to be paid. It ought to be there for every unemployed worker who needs the money. That is what it is for.

For far too long, governments have been taking that money and using it for other things to make themselves look good, leaving unemployed workers and their families twisting in the wind.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is an insurance scam in this country. It is a sham for most workers. This insurance scam is actually a theft. It is highway robbery. It is a tax grab.

Normally when a person buys insurance, whether it is house insurance or drug insurance, there is an amount the person pays out to make sure there is a sense of security. If there is a theft in the house, if the house burns down, or if something happens, there is insurance to assist. Anybody who buys insurance expects that to happen.

However, that does not happen in the case of the Canadian scam we have, which is called the employment insurance scam. Do Canadians know what it is? It is a burden to the workers.

Yes, the Government of Canada will take the money. The Conservative government takes it now and before that the Liberal government did. Governments take the money for so-called insurance from the workers, but if the workers need it when they are in trouble, unemployed, sick, laid off or on maternity leave, most workers will not qualify. Actually, two out of three workers will not qualify.

Most people, then, ask why they are paying into this so-called insurance fund. In the mid-1990s, the Liberal government set it up so that the government would draw the money into general revenue. Then it would be given for corporate tax cuts and to deal with other matters. That is the workers' money. It is supposed to be theirs. It is their insurance. It is a cost for them with absolutely no return whatsoever to most of them. That is really very unfair.

I will give an examples of workers who need assistance. I recently came into contact with a family, a husband, a wife and a daughter, and unfortunately the daughter has a rare illness that requires her to be in the hospital quite often. The mother told me that she had contributed to employment insurance most of her life but for some reason she did not qualify. She said that her husband earns a good living, but they were really stretched. “This is supposed to be insurance,” she said. When her daughter is sick, she needs to take time off to take care of her. That is supposed to be compassionate leave. She really should qualify, yet she does not.

There are other examples. Workers either do not work enough hours or do not have lengthy enough employment and therefore do not qualify. Many of these workers end up being forced onto welfare. They then feel that they are in a downward spiral of poverty. When we are receiving employment insurance, we do not feel that it is a handout. Why? Because it is our own money. If people have to go onto welfare, they feel they are depending on the state. It makes them lose confidence in themselves.

This bill in front of us actually legitimizes the $54 billion surplus. With one stroke of a pen, it now will disappear.

Let us imagine what we could do with this money. We could, if we had a proper employment insurance program, generate all the funds from employment insurance premiums and that could then increase the percentage of unemployed Canadians covered by the program from the current level up to a target of 80%. This would mean that most people who contribute would be able to receive the insurance for which they paid. When it was first set up, that was how the system was supposed to work.

We could reflect the realities of seasonal workers by using the best 12 weeks of employment to determine the EI benefit levels. We could phase in a decrease in the qualifier to 360 hours. We could support an expanded caregiver program where caregivers would receive up to one year of employment insurance while caring for sick or elderly family members.

We have an aging population. Many ordinary Canadians want to stay home and take care of their parents. They want to take some time off from work. They want to receive employment insurance, which they have paid into throughout their working lives, so that they can take care of their parents or other loved ones and yet we are saying no to compassionate care because of this EI theft.

For Ontarians it is particularly unfair. On average an Ontarian worker may receive only $5,110 versus on average, $9,070 in the rest of Canada. If EI were structured properly, each year Ontario workers would receive an extra $1.7 billion but instead, the $1.7 billion is being taken out of their contributions and given away.

Also the amount of $2 billion which is being put into the reserve fund of the new arm's length agency is nowhere near enough. The Auditor General said that at least $15 billion is needed. In fact, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries also said that $15 billion is need and that the way the reserve fund is structured now, if more money is needed, it would have to be borrowed and interest would have to be paid. Again the taxpayers would end up footing the bill. That is grossly unfair.

We also have trouble with who is going to be on the board of directors. We are worried about the details of the plan. We believe that the $54 billion should be given back to the workers.

If ordinary Canadians understood what is actually happening to their insurance money, they would be outraged. Insurance coverage should mean that if a person contributes, he or she should get it back. This extra penalty on workers is unfair, unjust and unethical. We have an opportunity to comprehensively reform the entire system. We should be fixing the system and providing benefits for workers who lose their jobs or become incapable of working through no fault of their own.

EI payments should never be seen as a hand out, just as house insurance or life insurance is never seen as a hand out. The policies were paid for completely with the hard-earned dollars of working Canadians.

That is why New Democrats are completely opposed to the budget implementation bill.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for outlining some of the problems associated with part seven of Bill C-50.

My colleague pointed out how fundamentally wrong it is to deduct something from a person's paycheque for a specific purpose and then to use it for something completely different and for which the government was never authorized to use it. That goes beyond misrepresentation. It builds an expectation that workers will be covered for income maintenance should they be unfortunate enough to be laid off.

Would my colleague agree that this is a double insult? First, it is fundamentally wrong to take money off a worker's paycheque every week, and there is no choice because it is compulsory, and then use it for purposes the worker may not have ever authorized or approved. Second, it is a misrepresentation to say that a worker has insurance against unemployment and then when the worker becomes unemployed, in some cases, the worker has a less than 40% chance of being eligible for any benefits. A youth has only a 25% chance and a female youth has a 15% chance of qualifying for any benefits at all. What kind of an insurance policy is that? I would ask my colleague to expand on these two big lies associated with the EI fund in recent years.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great insurance scam and the Liberals and Conservatives are scam artists. That is what I see it as. Governments have been raking in this money by the shovelful. People should not have to grovel for that money, which is what is happening and it is their own money.

It is worse than a scam because people have no choice. They cannot shop around to get other employment insurance corporation anywhere else. They have to pay because the Canadian government says they have to. It is mandated. It is the only game in town.

That is why it is a complete scam for ordinary workers. It is unfair, unjust and unethical. This bill should be defeated. The Liberals should stand up for their principles.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to something my hon. colleague said with regard to the Liberals and their treatment of the employment insurance fund.

I recall in 1997 the prime minister of the day standing up at a $250 a plate luncheon and declaring that the Liberal Party had defeated debt and deficit in this country and that the people at the luncheon had made a great contribution. It is interesting that he neglected to talk about the thousands and thousands of Canadians who had lost their employment insurance benefits while I suspect that the people who could afford $250 for lunch suffered not.

I was wondering if my hon. colleague could comment on that.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I remember the despair on the faces of hotel workers who were laid off when the hotel industry suffered greatly during the SARS crisis in Toronto. Many of the workers had to sell their houses because they had no money to pay their mortgages. They said to me, “We have paid into this insurance. Why are we not qualified to get some of it back? It is our money”. They were desperate. They lost their homes. Some of them were in great despair. That is what happened to ordinary workers when they faced unemployment.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for their interventions. I think most people would be more than surprised to find out that probably the two most significant changes that have occurred with the Conservative government exist in Bill C-50. I say that because what we have in front of us is not a traditional budget bill. Bill C-50 has a couple of Trojan horses in it. One will irreversibly change our immigration system and the other will irreversibly change our employment insurance system.

In speaking of the changes to the Employment Insurance Act that are in front of us, it is interesting that the Conservatives previously had suggested that government should get out of the way of Canadian citizens and just let the invisible hand take over. We have seen that with the rhetoric and certainly the economic philosophy of those of the Calgary school. We have seen the government and its predecessor party advocate for that.

It is interesting what the government is doing. It is taking what was a social democratic idea, something that was a progressive idea and it is using a crown corporation to delegate away the authority, to delegate away the responsibility and to delegate away any efficacy of our employment insurance system. It is deft policy making on the one hand, but it is really absurd on the other.

We have a government with a philosophy of a certain school of economics that does not actually believe in crown corporations. If we actually got behind closed doors with some of our friends in the government, I think the truth would come out that if they had their way they would get rid of all crown corporations. I find it passing strange that the Conservatives are using the crown corporation structure with respect to the EI system. I guess they think that Canadians can be fooled, but I do not think that is the case at all.

Employment insurance, or unemployment insurance as we used to call it, came out of the Depression. In 1935 Prime Minister Bennett came up with the idea and was pushed by the predecessor party to the NDP, the CCF, to do something about the egregiously horrific situation of people suffering from unemployment. I could regale members with stories that were passed on to me from my mother and father who lived through the Depression. Their parents would help people at the back door by giving them food and supplies. People would go to the back door because they were too ashamed to go to the front door. This country built social programs to deal with that. That was in 1935.

When it was first brought in, an interesting thing happened from a constitutional perspective. It actually was one of the times we had to deal with the nature of our system. The relevant act was challenged and the unemployment insurance measures that were brought in 1935 were deemed unconstitutional, because unemployment was deemed the responsibility of the provinces. That constitutional crisis had to be dealt with and changes to the BNA Act were made in 1940, I believe.

Then we went forward with an unemployment insurance system in different capacities for many years. It got to a point where we saw the unemployment insurance system as a progressive way of dealing with downturns in the economy which happened from time to time. We would have a safety net along with our health care system and our pension system. Canadians were proud of it because we built it and supported it. There was a consensus on that.

Around 1990 we saw the first challenges to it fiscally with the previous Conservative government. There were cuts and again in 1993 and yet again in 1994. In 1996 the whole thing was revamped. The then Liberal government changed the name. The most recent way to deal with things is to change the nomenclature, never mind that the challenges to those who paid into it to actually qualify were undermined, but change the name and somehow people will not notice. Now the government is trying to change the administration of it to a crown corporation. It is delegating away the authority, delegating away the accountability and delegating away the ability for us to have a robust system. By 1996 with the previous Liberal government, we were dealt yet another death blow. There was another chink in the armour of our employment insurance program.

Many Canadians who paid into this system will never have to use it, which is the idea of insurance. We pay into it hoping that we will never have to use it, but we pay into it because we know that it should be there for people if they need it. What frustrates so many people is that they watched the previous government stand and take credit for slaying the deficit when in fact what it did was a shell game.

It was preposterous to see and it was horrible to watch as it claimed that it had done all the work when in fact all it did was bleed working Canadians of the money that they contributed to the employment insurance fund. Then it said, “Look, we have slayed the deficit”, and along with that of course it downloaded responsibilities without money to the provinces.

When we look at the history that I have just provided, employment insurance came out of an experience in this country of the Depression. We had constitutional challenges to make sure it was congruent with our British North America Act and it was something that over time was built and changes were made. It has been challenged since 1990 in terms of the fiscal capacity of the fund and recently in 1996, it was raided and the name was changed.

We know that something desperate was going on with employment insurance, and I challenge anyone in this House to tell me that they went out on the doorsteps and campaigned to have the Employment Insurance Act taken out from the accountability of Parliament and thrown over to a crown corporation. There is not one. I see everyone looking down at their computers and their shoes with great interest at this point because they know that none of their constituents had a clue about this planned proposal.

Just like the changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, not one of these government members went out and talked to their constituents. There were no consultations. Not one of the government members, not one of the cabinet ministers or the Prime Minister, I could go through the whole list, consulted Canadians on this change. That is reprehensible.

We live in a representative democracy. We are supposed to be under the guise of responsible government and what we have is a government packaging together all of its changes, feeding them through in a budget, and hoping that no one will do anything. Of course, the official opposition will not do a thing. It will say, “Just wait until we are back in power with our God-given right to govern and we will change everything again”.

The problem with that is that by the time the Liberals get there, there will be a crown corporation set up for employment insurance. It will be too late. There will be an immigration system that centralizes power in the hands of the minister, that gives temporary citizenship to employers to use people and then throw them on the scrap heap when they do not need them anymore, for places like the tar sands. Those things will have been done, and do not tell me that any government is going to come in there and put the genie back in the bottle successfully and without harm.

That is what we are talking about. We are talking about the breaking of a tradition, the breaking of trust, the breaking of a social contract between citizens and their government with this change in the bill, and at the end of the day, what we have done is say to Canadians that we do not care about them. Why? It is because we have foisted all of the responsibilities, fiduciary and otherwise, to a crown corporation that has no accountability here other than whomever the government decides to appoint to that board.

It is a sad day in this place. It is a sad day for responsible government and it is a sad day for everyday people when a government is allowed to do that. That is why this party and our members on this side of the House will gladly stand against the government, vote against this bill, and say to Canadians that when the election day comes, ask the government how it voted and what it did. Did government members look down at their shoes or did they look people in the eye and say, “Yes, we are going to represent you and do something in your interests?”

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and a question to put to my colleague from Ottawa Centre.

I was interested in the way he illustrated the fact that there are EI changes in the budget implementation bill that do not properly belong there and there are immigration changes in the budget implementation bill, which I view as a further Americanization of Canadian politics when all these extra things are stuffed into a budget bill. He called it a Trojan Horse. That is a good, graphic illustration to which Canadians could probably relate.

However, in the context of passing a budget implementation bill, which has a few goodies that the Conservatives are throwing out there to try to endear themselves to Canadians, in the same context, they are sneaking in these major policy changes. I would like to ask the hon. member about that from a process point of view.

I would also like to ask him about the Canadian Labour Congress analysis of the impact of the changes to EI, the most recent changes by the Liberals when they changed the number of hours needed to qualify, et cetera. What was the impact on his riding?

In my riding alone, those changes accounted for a loss of $20.9 million a year worth of federal money that used to come into my low income riding that no longer comes in. I am asking if his riding, which is similar to mine in many ways, experienced a similar impact when the EI rules were changed?

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was very deliberate in providing the analogy of a Trojan horse. What we have here is a budget bill and normally in a budget we will have economic measures, no question, and we hopefully have measures that will help governments. This government likes to have tax cuts, particularly for large corporations, and it gave away the store, actually, before the budget, in the fiscal update.

However, in the tradition of our Parliament and responsible government, we would have major structural changes, at least consultation and debate. Then we would have implementation. My colleague from Winnipeg is quite correct. The government has taken this playbook from another jurisdiction. It has bundled these altogether and will try to get them through quickly.

I recall a paper called, “Cycling into Saigon: The Conservative transition in Ontario”. It was a policy paper about how the previous Conservative Ontario government of Michael Harris got its changes through. The philosophy was as follows: Do all the changes as quickly as possible, the quicker the better and the larger the better, because the public will not pay attention and the opposition will be in such disarray, it will not be able to oppose.

I think the Conservatives have been reading up on the playbook, and they certainly had a willing dancing partner, sadly. In one budget bill they propose to revamp our immigration system and our EI system so that we will not notice it.

The effects on my constituents are significant. You know my constituency fairly well, Mr. Speaker. I see you at events often in my constituency. It is very diverse with high needs. At times there are challenges with employment for many people, be it new Canadians or students. Recently, we had layoffs in the high tech sector.

As I said in my comments, these will bring irreversible damages at a time when we have more than $50 billion in the fund, and instead of changing it progressively, creatively, we are simply robbing the bank, getting out of Dodge, and creating a new structure called a crown corporation to clear up all the details so that there are no fingerprints.

Let it be known, the fingerprints will be analysed. The DNA evidence is right here and we will make sure that Canadians are able to see it, come the next election.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think you should call the cops. I think you should ask the Sergeant-at-Arms to go and find the RCMP because there is a robbery in progress as we speak going on in the House of Commons while I am standing here and while we are sitting here. The robbery I am talking about is numerically the biggest robbery in Canadian history. It makes the great train robbery look like nothing. It makes the Grenkow boys who had the gold heist at the Winnipeg airport seem like peanuts. We are talking about $54 billion being swiped by legislative decree as we speak. If people in the country knew they would be horrified. I am not exaggerating.

The EI fund has been a cash cow for successive governments for as long as I have been a member of Parliament. They have been using this money for all the wrong purposes. A previous colleague of mine explained how fundamentally wrong it is to deduct money from people's paycheques for a specific purpose and tell them it is for income maintenance if they should happen to lose their jobs. Then, to use that money for something else completely is just fundamentally wrong. It is not the government's money. The government should start from that basic premise. That pool of money is not the government's.

It was the Mulroney Conservatives who withdrew from the EI fund. The unemployment insurance fund used to be made up of money from the employer, the employee and the Government of Canada. In 1986, the Mulroney Conservatives stopped doing that. The government no longer paid anything into it, so it was 100% funded by employer and employee contributions at a ratio of 1:1.4. It simply is not the government's money to use unless it passes a bill. It can do anything. The Government of Canada's Parliament can pass legislation to make this its money but it should not. Morally and ethically it would be fundamentally wrong.

It is fundamentally wrong to balance the books on the back of the unemployed. It is almost cowardly when we think about it, of all the places governments could look for additional revenue to fund their fiscal agenda is from the unemployed. Almost no one qualifies for EI any more, that is why it is showing such a great surplus. Fortunately, we are in buoyant economic times as fewer people are applying for employment insurance although that is about to change given the layoffs in the manufacturing sector.

Let me tell everyone how Liberals balanced the books and what is wrong with that, and then explain why it is wrong for the Conservatives to do the same. The Liberals came up with $100 billion worth of tax cuts and they brag about that. They say they cut more taxes than any government ever, $100 billion worth, but let us look at how they paid for it. They took $30 billion right out of the EI fund, so that is like an upside-down Robin Hood, robbing the poor to give tax cuts to the rich. Another $30 billion they took from the surplus in the public service pension plan.

Just before he left politics in late 1999 and early 2000, Marcel Masse, the former treasury board president, the last thing he did on his way out, knowing full well the hue and cry would be deafening, was to rob, and I deliberately use this term, the $30 billion surplus that was in the public service pension plan. The average beneficiary of the public service pension plan makes $9,000 a year and they are female. The government could have taken that $30 billion and doubled the annual pension of those beneficiaries currently, or improved the benefit package for future beneficiaries, or it could have shared it.

That is what is done in the private sector. When Bell Canada had a big surplus, union and management sat down and negotiated. Some went to benefits, some went to donation holidays and some went to the company. But no, the Government of Canada took it all. With the other $40 billion, the Liberals engaged in program spending, the most ruthless, cutting, hacking and slashing of social programs in this country's history. That is how they came up with their $100 billion in tax cuts.

Taking a page from the same book, the Conservatives find themselves wanting to spend money, trying to endear themselves by buying their way into the hearts of Canadians. Where do they look for money? They do not look at offshore tax havens. They do not look at perhaps having a tax on excess profits in the oil sector. They do not look at the tax fugitives who take $7 billion a year of tax revenue out of our country, something they promised they would do when they were in opposition. They have left those tax havens alone and they have left the very rich able to expatriate their family fortunes and family trusts offshore. Not only the millionaires themselves never pay taxes in Canada again, but none of their progeny ever pay taxes in Canada again. These things have been exposed in the newspaper this past couple of weeks by Diane Francis, a right-wing Conservative journalist. She has condemned the government, to which I presume she sends money, for not acting on these tax havens, these tax fugitives.

It really begs the question why, now that they are in a position to do so, the Conservatives would have three budgets and one economic update and never touch this atrocious situation, leaving $7 billion a year untouched? Instead, where do they look for revenue? They are taking it off of the backs of the unemployed. It is almost a cowardly thing to do.

I will tell members the impact the changes in employment insurance has had in my inner city riding of Winnipeg Centre, by some standards the lowest income riding in all of Canada.

When the government changed the system to the existing hour based system, it took $20.9 million a year out of my low income riding of Winnipeg Centre. That would be like taking the payroll of four pretty major companies, a $20.9 million payroll, from the poorest of the poor. It would be different if it took that from high income earners and they lost a couple of grand a year each.

However, the people who miss out on the income maintenance benefits of employment insurance are in desperate circumstances. They went from being marginalized and poor and getting by on EI, to abject poverty. The government has offloaded the income maintenance burden onto the province and these people on welfare.

That has been the experience with the brilliant social policy initiative of the management of the EI fund to day.

For years, we said EI should be a separate fund. I guess we have to be careful what we wish for because we were not specific enough as to what we wanted. The Conservatives are creating that separate fund. They are taking it out of consolidated revenue, as we have always maintained they should. They are putting it into this crown corporation. I do not disagree with that. However, they are taking $54 billion of surplus that exists now and using it for whatever general consolidated revenue spending they wish to spend it on. That is fundamentally wrong. It is morally and ethically wrong. I call it robbery, and I do not hesitate to put it in those terms.

We need a $15 billion operating surplus, according to the Auditor General, to be safe. Otherwise we will fall into deficit with that fund if we have any kind of an economic downturn. Judging from the job losses in Ontario in the last 18 months and what could happen elsewhere in the country, as we turn our back on the manufacturing sector, we will need a robust employment insurance fund to provide income maintenance and bridge training to retrain the workers affected by that. The $2 billion left in the fund would be gone in a minute.

The Conservatives are showing a surplus of $750 million a month and they are only going to leave a $2 billion surplus. They are taking the rest. That is not a per year surplus; it is a per month surplus. It is a cash cow. It is a licence to print money. It is a dream come true for a finance minister. It is like catnip for a finance minister. They cannot stay away from it, but they should because it is not their money. That is the most fundamental basic element the Conservatives seem to forget: it is not their money. They have no proprietary right to that fund. That is our money. It is not even the employers' money. It is all the workers' money because it is put in there for the benefit of the employees if they should be unfortunate to find themselves out of a job.

[John Williams, Conservative, Edmonton—St. Albert, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my good friend speak about the employment insurance fund and what he perceives to be a dearth in the surplus. I thought it was rather cute when he said “send out the RCMP and the Sergeant-at-Arms to see if we can find this missing money”. He knows exactly where that money went, as we all do. It was spent by the Liberals.

Every year the Liberals used the money in general revenue, treated it as a tax revenue and spent it. It was spent on behalf of Canadians and now the money is gone and the coffers are empty. That is why we in the government have put forth a plan to kick-start this with a $2 billion fund.

As the member already admitted himself, a $750 million a month surplus is going into the fund. How much does he actually want to tax Canadians? Is this a notion that Canadians are a bottomless pit when it comes to paying tax so he can boast about having all this money sitting in a bank account? We would rather see the money in the pockets of Canadians. We want to see that the fund is protected and there for them should they ever find themselves unemployed.

I thought it was rather cute when he pleaded ignorance as to where the money had gone. Does he acknowledge that the money was spent by the Liberals, that it is gone now so therefore the fund has to be rebuilt?

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, that money exists as a debt to Canadian workers and that debt is just as real as any other debt of the Government of Canada.

It was under the Conservatives in 1986 when the money was directed into the consolidated revenue fund. When workers were told the money would be deducted from their paycheques, there was an expectation, a promise made, that it was for the specific purpose of income maintenance should they become unemployed.

If the Conservatives were looking to roll back taxes, they could have rolled back some of the tax cuts they gave to corporate Canada, which does not need them by the way. The richest and most successful corporations in the country were the beneficiaries of most of the tax cuts. Why did the Conservatives not look there instead of unemployed workers? If the Conservatives wanted to harvest a few dollars out of the existing system, they could have asked Exxon or Shell for some of that money back. They were high-grading when they needed it the least.

I recognize that successive governments have used the EI fund as a cash cow since at least 1986. It has fallen into deficit and into arrears a couple of times over the years, but the cumulative total of deficit has been $11 billion and the cumulative total surplus has been $54 billion. No matter how we add it up, that is a lot of money owing to Canadian workers, either as improved benefits for when they are unemployed, or changing the eligibility rules so if someone becomes unemployed, they might actually qualify for some benefits, as most currently do not, or a premium holiday for both the employer and employee. That has been done. The government has ratcheted down the premiums a number of times.

The fact remains that over that period of time more money went into the fund than was paid out and it was not the government's money to use. It was morally and ethically wrong for the government to use it for anything else.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as the member knows, the auditor general is the one who directed the government of the day, Brian Mulroney's government, to incorporate the deficit at the time in the unemployment insurance fund into the consolidated revenue fund because the government had to be accountable for the operation of it.

Something went wrong somewhere, and maybe the member wants to comment on it. Premiums up until—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The member for Winnipeg Centre has 30 seconds.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I wish I had more time to listen to what my colleague from Mississauga South had to say.

I understand that the premiums exceeded the need, but only because the benefits were ratcheted down so drastically. The guy that I beat, David Walker, the parliamentary secretary to the minister of finance at the time, devised a scheme where nobody qualified any more. It is not hard to show a surplus—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, the more this government introduces legislative initiatives, the more I realize that it is incapable of proposing a really good measure for our people, our workers in particular. It is not capable of that because the only thing it considers to be a social measure is cutting income taxes and taxes in general. It is turning a long awaited measure that would be a step in the right direction into a real crime meant only to please businesses, in that contributions would be reduced.

For more than 10 years, people who are concerned about social justice have been calling for an independent employment insurance fund. For a long time now, the federal government has been collecting employment insurance contributions from employees and employers, restricting eligibility for benefits and using the money for other purposes.

In addition to causing endless frustration among the workers and a good number of colleagues here, such the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst and the hon. member for Chambly—Borduas, who are worried about this situation, this reprehensible behaviour by the government has created a double standard.

First, employees and employers pay far too much for what they get in return. Then their benefits are reduced.

Access to these benefits is also being limited more and more, especially for seasonal workers who work in necessary jobs that vary from season to season.

Year after year, the government has used the surplus created in this way to balance its budget and create astronomical surpluses that it then used to pay down the debt, as everyone knows.

The result is as follows: $54 billion that belongs to the people who contributed—not to pay down the debt—has been used for other purposes, while there are pressing needs in employment.

The Conservative government has finally reacted and decided to create a Canada employment insurance financing board. It was a good idea, but behind the terms healthy management and good governance lie intentions that will not really help workers.

Cutting EI contributions will not help workers. The government is obviously trying to convince us that it will—and this is not the first time—but does paying a dollar less every week matter to a worker who receives $100 less in benefits because of a bare-bones calculation? In reality, this calculation is of much more benefit to businesses and regions experiencing full employment, like Alberta. Is anyone here surprised?

The only way to help workers is to provide benefits that ensure a decent income for seasonal workers who are supporting families and for older workers who get laid off and have to make it to retirement with no hope of receiving any income other than employment insurance and, unfortunately, welfare.

The only way to help workers is to transfer funds for employment programs to Quebec—in our case—for workers in seasonal and precarious jobs.

Creating a Canada employment insurance financing board is a step in the right direction only because it will finally put an end to the theft of people's contributions. That being said, the government has no intention of reimbursing the $54 billion by applying it to employment programs or worker assistance, and that is unacceptable.

The new board will not be giving that money back to workers. In fact, should a recession or massive layoffs occur, it will have to borrow from the consolidated revenue fund. So there is that whole borrowing problem. What will happen? Who will have to pay when there is a liability? Unfortunately, once again, the workers are the ones who will pay.

This is what they are calling improved management and governance, which the government promised on page 6 of its Budget in Brief.

An actuary will determine the contributions to be paid. Only $2 billion will be kept in reserve, and employment programs will in the hands of the Minister of Human Resources and of businesses that will pay as little as possible.

This vision will be enshrined in legislation, and this crown corporation will not have to answer to Parliament.

As for Bill C-50 on the budget, I want to bring up a point that has to do with part 7, concerning the board's duties and restrictions, so to speak.

According to clause 36 of this part, “the Governor in Council [the cabinet], on the joint recommendation of the Minister and the Minister of Finance, may make regulations...respecting the investments...the limitations—” and other revenue. I would like to know how this clause 36 will work with subclause 4(c), which states that the object of the board is to manage any amounts paid to it. Who will do what?

We are talking about transparency and good management. Does this not strip the board of its essential role? Does this not strip it of the great transparency and also the great responsibility it is supposed to have? Is it an independent entity? I get the impression that sometimes it is, sometimes it is not.

Also, what about the auditor general's recommendation that there should be an adequate reserve, estimated at $15 billion, I believe?

In conclusion, as we can see, the Conservatives are trying to make it seem as though they are responding to a legitimate demand, and have concocted a bill that is unacceptable on at least two points, not to mention that they did not address all the demands for the redistribution of wealth. In particular—and this topic is close to my heart—they have not attempted to help poor seniors get out of poverty.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her intervention and particularly for the following phrase.

She said that the Conservatives “have concocted a bill that is unacceptable”. It is a good turn of phrase and I agree with her.

This is an unacceptable change to a program when we consider what the Canadian population expects of the government. In fact, if we take this out of the annals of governance in terms of public administration, if we were to posit this whole equation in the private sector, because I know that is something the government likes to do, would it be acceptable to have any successor to a previous plan benefit to the degree that this plan will benefit?

We wipe out, tabula rasa, all the benefits that have been paid in by the previous payers to an insurance system and hand over to the new corporation no liabilities, saying to the members of this plan that there is a new owner in town and they do not have to worry about it. I would appreciate receiving the member's comments. If this had been attempted in the private sector, what does she think would have happened?

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for his question. I said, and he understood, that for me as well as many other members in the House, this is completely unacceptable.

As to how this would go over in the private sector, I would say that in the private sector there would at least have been provisions under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. At the very least, the organization would have declared bankruptcy, and it would have been done in a transparent and open manner. And in terms of solvency and the remaining assets, the creditors, in this case, the workers, could have decided to recoup as much as they were able. The process would have been extremely rigorous.

Here, however, everything is dismissed. Our colleague says that everything will be handed over from one entity to another and that it will be tabula rasa. They will create something new, and they are using this as an excuse to illegitimately, needlessly harm workers.

And that alone, along with the points raised by the member and his NDP colleagues and those I humbly raised myself, makes this absolutely unacceptable.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The member for Acadie—Bathurst.

There are two minutes left, one minute for the question and one minute for the response.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques.

I stated clearly in my speech that what is happening today is that the federal government is taking $2 billion from the $54 billion in the existing employment insurance fund or from general funds to transfer the $2 billion to the crown corporation it is creating.

Does my friend agree with me that this evening we are witnessing the biggest theft of workers' money in Canadian history?

What is more, when workers need money for the employment insurance fund because of economic problems, they are going to have to borrow their own money and pay interest.

That said, there is no difference between the Liberals and the Conservatives, especially considering that since this afternoon, we have been discussing the history—

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

There is one minute left for the member for Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, who has the floor.

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend from Acadie—Bathurst for his question. As I said earlier, I listened carefully to what he said this afternoon, and I agree with him that this is completely unacceptable.

We are going to see two sad things today. We are going to see what my friend is referring to. I will be the first to celebrate if everyone in this House votes, but I believe that we are going to witness a sad sight, as legitimately elected members choose to abstain by being absent or remaining seated.

I believe that the least members could do is to rise in this House to vote for or against a bill that directly affects millions of people.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak in opposition to Bill C-50 and in favour of the amendments presented today in this House, especially those concerning employment insurance.

I would like to take a moment to talk about the work done by the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst, as he has been working very hard ever since coming to the House on June 2, 1997. Today is the anniversary of that date. Since then, he has worked relentlessly for an employment insurance system that protects workers across the country. It is important to commend his work.

The question is, what do the Conservatives propose to do in Bill C-50?

We talked earlier today about the immigration provisions. That portion of the bill should be entitled the indentured servitude act. It essentially would bring foreign workers into Canada who would have no rights.

These provisions we are talking about now are the legalized theft provisions of Bill C-50. Let us go back a few years. We had the Liberals stealing from the unemployment insurance budget and basically taking billions of dollars of money from unemployment insurance.

That money could have gone to the unemployed workers, of which there are so many, an increasing number in this country. I will come back to that in a moment.

The Conservatives, of course, do not like this. They do not like being connected to criminal acts, but this is legalizing a theft that occurred under the Liberal regime and that the Conservatives have perpetuated. There is no doubt about this.

Essentially--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Hull—Aylmer is rising on a point of order.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am usually very tolerant and can overlook many things, but the fact that the member is trying to directly or indirectly insult us is too much. I would ask that you call the member to order and that he be reminded to use more parliamentary language from now on.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, if the Liberals cannot accept the word “steal”, perhaps we could say that they “took without asking”. This evening, it is the Conservatives who will vote on their side and take this $54 billion from workers.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The hon. member for Hull—Aylmer will see that, since the Speaker is standing at the moment, it would be a good time for him to sit down.

I heard the two points of order, which are in fact further subjects of debate rather than points of order.

I am sure that the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster is going to come to more parliamentary language, but I also noted that when he spoke he did not address any of the objectionable words to any individual member of the House. We will just leave it at that and I hope the hon. member for Burnaby--New Westminster will understand the goodwill that I am offering him and take it as an invitation for improved parliamentary language.

The hon. member for Hull—Aylmer for a short remark.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to point out that the Just for Laughs comedy festival is in Montreal.

Here in the House of Commons, there is language that can be used and language that cannot be used.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

I thank the hon. member. I have already reacted and I believe that will suffice.

The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is very clear that the Liberals do not like the characterization of what they did with employment insurance. However, it is not a laughing matter for the hundreds of thousands of working people who have been denied employment insurance benefits because of the Liberal government's actions and now the current Conservative government's actions.

I would think that everybody in this House, if they were in touch with their constituents on Main Street, would understand if we were to call this the false premises act. Essentially that money was collected under false premises in a fraudulent way. When we say that money will be redirected to support those who are unemployed and then we take that money and apply it to general revenues, that is a false premise. Hundreds of thousands of workers and working families have been impacted by that decision.

The Liberals do not like being reminded of their record, but in this corner of the House the NDP speaks the truth and we are bringing up that record, and we will not let them forget it. However, we also will not let the Conservatives get away with what is clearly contrary to the practices as even covered by the Auditor General.

The Auditor General says that the actions proposed in Bill C-50 are not appropriate, that there must be a larger reserve put aside for the money that was collected under the pretense that it would go to help working people in this country. We have a situation where only one-third of unemployed women can actually claim employment insurance. That is a devastating situation for people who are unemployed in this country. Who are these people? Let us talk about the facts.

We had a debate last Wednesday night with the Minister of Finance and he was unable to even acknowledge the reality that Statistics Canada tells us about working families in this country. Two-thirds of working families are earning less now than they were back in 1989. The wealthiest of Canadian families are doing better than ever. They now take half of all the income in this country and their income has skyrocketed over that same period.

When we talk about middle class families earning between $40,000 and $60,000 a year, they have lost a week's income each and every year since 1989. Lower middle class families earning between $20,000 and $40,000 a year have lost two weeks of income. Try getting by with no paycheques for two weeks. We have a profound understanding of what working families are living through.

The poorest of Canadians, including unemployed Canadians, have seen a devastating fall in income. They have lost a month and a half of income since 1989 for each and every year. We are talking about a catastrophic fall in income and the Conservatives are doing absolutely nothing to address this fundamental economic problem in this country.

What do they do? What is their solution? It is more and more corporate tax cuts. They just shovel the money off the back of a truck to the wealthy corporate sector, the most profitable corporations in the country. CEOs are doing well and that is all the Conservative government responds to, the agenda of corporate CEOs, not to the agenda of working families that are struggling to make ends meet, that are working longer and longer weeks and harder and harder, 200 hours on average. Canadian families are working more and more while at the same time earning less and less.

Perhaps the most insulting aspect of this is when the Minister of Finance stands in this House and says that jobs have been created in this country. We know what kind of jobs they are but the Minister of Finance could not even respond to that last week.

He and his government have kicked good manufacturing jobs out the door, family sustaining jobs paying over $20 an hour, on average $21 an hour, and they have created part time and temporary jobs that pay barely better than minimum wage.

The government, far from being proud of its economic record, should hang its head in shame for what it has done to the working people of this country. We have lost hundreds of thousands of jobs in a hemorrhaging of our manufacturing sector that is without precedence in Canadian history. What it has given us are temporary and part time service industry jobs that pay minimum wage. They do not come with pensions or any sort of benefits.

This hits younger Canadians particularly hard. Right now we have record levels of student debt that the Conservatives have done absolutely nothing about. Young Canadians see themselves going into a job market where there are low entry level wages and jobs that have no pension benefits. They can see, after working a 40 or 45 year career, retiring with no company pension.

What do the Conservatives offer? They offer the false pretense of taking $54 billion from the employment insurance fund and tucking it away, not putting it in any sort of debt reserve, not responding to the needs of Canadian working families, but tucking it away and putting $2 billion aside. That is less than 2¢ on the dollar that they are putting aside.

In this corner of the House we say, no, that is not appropriate accounting practices, which is what the Auditor General says, and it is not at all in the interests of working families who have struggled for 20 years while corporate executives have been given anything they want from the former Liberal government and the current Conservative government.

The Liberals and the Conservatives do not like their actions being characterized as a false premise. They do not like their actions being characterized as taking the money for one reason and then diverting it without consulting the public and without responding to the need in working communities from coast to coast to coast, but that is what has happened.

It is a false premise for the government to pretend it is doing something for working families when it essentially takes $52 billion away that came from hard-working families from coast to coast to coast. It is unfair and inappropriate and we are voting no.

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a question about a specific point.

The budget speech announced the establishment of a board that was to be an independent crown corporation. I would like to know if my colleague has concerns about this as I do. On the one hand, they are talking about an independent corporation. On the other, under clause 36, part 7 of the bill we are discussing and that would establish this board, “The Governor in Council, on the joint recommendation of the Minister [of Human Resources and Social Development] and the Minister of Finance, may make regulations...respecting the investments...the limitations...[and] prescribing anything—”

Although the powers of the board are specified at the beginning of this part, at the same time, the end indicates that these will be made upon the recommendation of these two ministers. These two ministers will readily make a recommendation.

According to my colleague, to what extent will they interfere with a board that is supposed to be independent? Does my colleague have serious doubts, as I do?

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I completely agree. The member has raised some very good questions.

Basically, that is what we think. We also pointed that out earlier today when we talked about immigration provisions. The minister is giving himself a lot of powers, the power to cross names off waiting lists, which are growing longer by the day. The minister will have the power to simply cross names off the list. The Conservatives would rather deal with management issues that way than bring in good management practices. “Good Conservative management practices” is something of an oxymoron. This plan will not work.

We are seeing exactly the same thing with these provisions in Bill C-50, that is, the concentration of powers in the hands of ministers who have already made it clear that they do not have the public interest at heart. They are taking money that honest Canadians contributed to an employment insurance system that no longer exists for two thirds of people who find themselves out of a job. Basically, this problem will not be solved by concentrating powers in the hands of ministers.

That is why the NDP is saying no to all of these measures. We will vote in favour of the amendments to Bill C-50 to fix these detrimental aspects.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my NDP colleague.

The member for Hull—Aylmer was insulted by the language used in the House of Commons. Does he not think that workers should feel insulted to see the $54 billion completely wiped from the government's books today, with $2 billion invested?

Today, the Liberals did not even bother rising in the House to defend workers. Soon, in half an hour, we will see whether the Liberals will rise in the House to vote to protect the employment insurance fund.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, that is just it. The Liberals spoke out against all the changes to the Immigration Act. They stood up in the House one after the other and said they did not like these changes in the bill, but they will vote in favour of it. They are going to allow these immigration changes to go through.

It is exactly the same thing when it comes to the changes to employment insurance. The crime was committed when money was taken and not provided to the unemployed. Now, we are in a situation where the Liberals can stand up in this House and vote against this bill, but we know that the Liberal leader will vote in favour of any Conservative bill if it is a confidence vote.

We are in a situation where this minority government, with the weakness of the Liberal leader, has turned into a majority government. Unfortunately, this comes at the expense of all the workers in this country, people who just want to contribute to their community, work, and whenever possible, have a springboard between jobs. This will not happen because of the Liberal leader and the Conservative government.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate. Is the House ready for the question?

[Some hon. members]

Question.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

The question is on Motion No. 6. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

The recorded division on Motion No. 6 stands deferred.

The recorded division will also apply to Motions Nos. 7 to 20.

The recorded divisions stand deferred until after the time provided for government orders at 6:30 p.m. today.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-50, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 26, 2008 and to enact provisions to preserve the fiscal plan set out in that budget, as reported (without amendment) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 2.

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

It being 6:30 p.m. the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the motions at report stage of Bill C-50.

When we return to the study of Bill C-7, there will be five minutes left for questions and comments for the hon. member for Charlottetown.

Call in the members.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

The question is on Motion No. 1. The recorded division will also apply to Motions Nos. 2 to 5.

(The House divided on Motion No. 1, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #119

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

I declare Motion No. 1 defeated.

I therefore declare Motions Nos. 2 to 5 defeated.

The next question is on Motion No. 6. The vote on this motion also applies to Motions Nos. 7 to 20.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I think were you to seek it you might find unanimous consent to apply the results of the vote just taken to the motion presently before the House.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Is there agreement to proceed in this fashion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

(The House divided on Motion No. 6, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #120

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

I declare Motion No. 6 defeated. I therefore declare Motions Nos. 7 to 20 defeated.

[Jim Flaherty, Conservative, Minister of Finance]

moved that the bill be concurred in.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

The House has heard the terms of the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

Mr. Speaker, again I think if you were to seek it you would find unanimous consent to apply the results of the vote just taken to the motion presently before the House, in reverse.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Is there unanimous consent to proceed in this way?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Karen Redman, Liberal, Kitchener Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are in agreement to proceed in the following way, but I would point out that the member for Halton has left the chamber, so that is one less Liberal.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, regarding the member she just referred to, it was more important to answer a phone call instead of voting.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

I see the problem is resolved. The member is back.

Is there unanimous consent to proceed in this way?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

(The House divided on the motion, which was agreed to on the following division:)

Vote #121

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

I declare the motion carried.