Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the amendments that have been proposed by the New Democrats. I specifically want to acknowledge the member for Acadie—Bathurst, the member for Edmonton—Strathcona and the member for Hamilton Mountain, who proposed a series of amendments that would delete some of the more egregious clauses of the budget implementation bill.
Those amendments have been divided into two separate groups. Today we are specifically dealing with the amendments in Group No. 1 with regard to deleting the clauses pertaining to the airport security tax, changes to the easing of the rules for environmental assessments and changes to the EI fund. In the short 10 minutes that I have, I am going to deal with two of those areas.
Listeners might wonder why we are debating deletions to the budget implementation bill. This legislation is an omnibus bill that is over 800 pages long. Buried in the bill are a number of items that normally would be stand-alone legislation. They would normally be bills that would be introduced in the House of Commons. They would have a fulsome debate here in the House. If they passed second reading, they would be referred to a parliamentary standing committee where members of the standing committees would call witnesses and examine the legislation in detail.
Instead, the government has chosen to cram some significant changes into an omnibus bill. That is normally not the way Canadians would expect those legislative agendas to be dealt with. They would expect the democratic process of a full parliamentary debate, that due diligence to ensure there would be no unintended consequences.
The New Democrats have been forced to attempt to amend the budget implementation bill. That is the only avenue open to us. Other members have pointed out for example that the part that deals with Canada Post has been introduced as legislation in the House at least twice before. The government had little hope of ramming that legislation through, so instead, it has buried it in a budget implementation bill and is calling it a matter of confidence.
It flies in the face of what we would consider to be a democratic process. I would urge all opposition members to support our amendments to delete the most egregious parts of the budget implementation bill.
I want to turn to two of these deletions.
What the government has done is essentially enshrined the theft of $57 billion from the employment insurance fund. The Conservatives are continuing along the lines of what the Liberals did previously. They are using the premiums that workers and their employers have paid into the EI fund to pay down the deficit.
When workers and employers paid that money, they fully expected it to support the employment insurance fund but also to support other training initiatives. In these economic times, that would seem to be a reasonable use of that money. By including this in the budget implementation bill, the government is admitting that it has no intention of honouring those commitments to workers and their employers.
Let me tell the House why that is important. An article put out by the Citizens for Public Justice, entitled “Bearing the Brunt: How the 2008-2009 Recession Created Poverty for Canadian Families”, states:
The recession revealed the inadequacy of the EI as a social safety net. Despite a rise in EI coverage, almost half of the unemployed did not receive benefits.
Canadians who did receive EI benefits were living in poverty unless they had other household sources of income.
As many as 500,000 Canadians have exhausted their EI benefits without finding new work.
Many of the Canadian men and women who have exhausted their EI benefits are in my own riding. Forestry workers have faced shutdowns in that industry off and on for the last four or five years and now. They have exhausted their EI benefits and many of them are now facing going on welfare.
The article also speaks about employment and income:
The recession increased the rate of precarious work, as part-time jobs replaced full-time jobs, and temporary jobs replaced permanent jobs.
Growth in average earnings for part-time workers did not keep pace with inflation.
Recessions increase the income gap between high income and low income Canadians. The poorest Canadians lose more of their income during a recession, and do not recover at the same rate between recessions.
Those numbers are being borne out. We often hear government members talk about the jobs they have created, but they fail to say that many of those jobs are part-time seasonal contract work and they simply cannot give a family a living wage. They cannot allow families to send their kids to school. In a country as rich as ours, it is absolutely shameful.
The Canadian Labour Congress made a statement to the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. The Canadian Labour Congress, the New Democrats and other organizations in this country have some meaningful proposals on employment insurance reform. This includes uniform entrance requirements across the country of 360 hours so that more workers will qualify. It also looks at evening out the unemployment regions. I have talked about this in the House before. My region is tied to the Vancouver labour market. Despite the fact that unemployment is much higher in my area than it is in Vancouver, workers in my area exhaust their benefits far sooner than they should given the rate of unemployment. That simply should not happen.
The Canadian Labour Congress suggests that those differing rates of gaining access to benefits should be evened out. There should be longer benefit periods of at least 50 weeks in all regions so that fewer unemployed workers exhaust their claims. It also calls for higher benefit rates. Given that there was $57 billion in the EI fund, it seems reasonable to make sure that workers in these tough times have access to that money.
I want to turn briefly to the changes to the regulations around the environmental assessment process. Today is the 20th anniversary of the Sparrow decision which was handed down by the Supreme Court of Canada. It set the foundation for treaty negotiations in British Columbia. Today, Sophie Pierre, the chief commissioner of the B.C. Treaty Commission was quoted in a news article as saying, “It put an end to 130 years of denial of aboriginal rights by the B.C. government”. The article states:
The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled on May 31, 1990 that aboriginal rights exist and were not extinguished by federal fisheries regulations....“We recognize that litigation has informed treaty negotiations and continues to do so. But a government-to-government relationship, with all its complexities must be negotiated,” said Pierre. “We understand that First Nations may feel forced to take legal action to protect interests they do not see being addressed at the treaty table. That's a delicate balance. All governments must recognize that relationships cannot be built in court.”
One might wonder why I bring that up in the context of the easing of environmental regulations. I predict that with the easing of environmental regulations, unless the government upholds the honour of the Crown and makes sure that consultation is in place when these major projects come through, we are going to see more court cases. Sadly, the Sparrow decision is an indicator of how many years it took the first nations to get some justice. There are aboriginal groups who have written to the Prime Minister warning him not to weaken those environmental laws.
On May 26, Duncan's First Nation took its case to the Supreme Court of Canada and the Hague. The case concerns the tar sands and the impact that project is having on first nations in Alberta. It is another example of even when there are environmental regulations in place, first nations are still forced to go to the courts, even internationally, to have their cases heard and their rights respected.
It would be lovely if the government would support these amendments, but I would urge the opposition parties to support our proposed amendments and delete these clauses from the budget implementation bill.
