Mr. Speaker, on May 3, 1994, I put the following question to the Minister of Human Resources Development, which was preceded by the following comment: "Yesterday, this minister clearly indicated to this House that the Atlantic fishery workers unions had been consulted about the individual contracts that workers must sign, thus committing themselves to undergo training or do community work in order to receive their benefits. We checked and the unions were never consulted on this".
My question to the minister was: "How can the minister reconcile the statement he made yesterday in the House with the confirmation that was given to me afterwards by the head of the fishery workers union, who said he had never been consulted on the issue of the individual contracts?" I later met the president of the fishery workers union who again confirmed that he had never been consulted about this matter.
My question was: How can the minister reconcile his answer with my information? I expected an answer that would at least address the question, but that is like trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. What I got was a model of political rhetoric, not from the Minister of Human Resources Development but from the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans.
I therefore want to take this opportunity to draw the attention of the House to the lack of openness of the government and the ministers. Some explanations are in order about the issue of obliging workers who participate in the pilot project to sign a contract in exchange for the benefits promised by the minister, something people find disturbing.
If this pilot project leads to further projects, people certainly had the right to know whether there was any consultation. The answer was no. This government will have to learn to be more open, because otherwise, how can it proceed with its reform of social programs?
I have a very good reason for raising this issue again this evening. There are communities all over Canada where workers, like the fisheries workers, have lost all hope, except that their numbers are not as high as in the fisheries industry.
So how can we help those workers? Can we help them only by making this help compulsory, when in many cases they are older than average? There is a very large number-24,000-between the ages of 25 and 49, but many, in fact more than 6,000, are at least 50 years old. Now workers who are between the ages of 35 and 49 need to know what they will get in the end, because we cannot pay them a pittance for a few years and oblige them to take training that is a dead end. We have to ensure that the community has the resources to create jobs, to help them create businesses and to attract businesses, so there is some hope for the future. Compulsory training, clean-up programs and com-
munity assistance programs as such are useless if workers and their communities are not helped to find real jobs.
My question was: How can the minister reconcile that? There was no consultation, and that is really too bad.