Mr. Speaker, I want to speak on debate, but I also want to embellish my fan club member from Simcoe Centre. He does well to applaud before because he may not applaud after he hears what I have to say.
After reading the title of the bill, we realize it is just another piece of legislation, typically dry, typically complicated. It is easy in that context to lose sight of what the bill is about. Bill C-96, which I am happy to address for a few minutes, does just one single thing. It has a very simple and single purpose, and that purpose is integration.
My friend from Crowfoot would understand all about integration. Any party that can get the member for Simcoe Centre and the member for Crowfoot at the same caucus table understands integration, I submit.
I would also like to emphasize to my colleagues in the Bloc that this bill is about integration, and just that. It will consolidate the legal powers of the original departments in a single piece of legislation that is clear and coherent.
This is the only goal of this bill. It does not provide new powers or establish new programs. It does not add anything to or take anything away from the powers of the human resources development department.
This bill is merely an official document that puts the integration of social programs and labour market programs in Canada on a sound footing. That is important. But the underlying principle of this bill is even more important, that is the implementation of an integrated approach to human resources development in the new department.
I recognize that my friend from Mercier has an amendment to which technically we are speaking right now. That is another debate. This is really about bringing together a number of functions that heretofore had been under the umbrella of several departments of government.
I say to my friend from Port Moody-Coquitlam who spoke a few minutes ago in this debate that we have to make up our minds about what we want. I heard critics of the government at one point talk about duplication of effort, doing several things, the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. Then when we come up with what I believe is an absolutely laudable effort under Bill C-96 to bring together some functions, so we do not have that kind of duplication, we are accused of just shuffling the chairs.
It is difficult to do the right thing? No, it is not difficult to do the right thing, but it is difficult to be seen to be doing the right thing if somebody has a cliché to cover every situation, even if some of the clichés are mutually exclusive. Which are we doing: are we unnecessarily duplicating effort, or are we just shuffling the chairs?
I listened with interest to her speech, as I did to the speech of my friend from Jonquière, who I always enjoy. We do not always agree, but he has a real ability to state his argument in a very reasoned way. I have always admired his ability to do so.
I want to come back to my friend from Port Moody-Coquitlam. At one point in her speech she said something that was rather curious, about the bill's not having a royal recommendation. I wanted for the record to come back on that one. If she looked at the bill, she would realize that what she says is not true. It does have a royal recommendation. There are several proofs of that in the documentation she has in front of her. If she looked at the Order Paper for today, where Bill C-96 is listed, she will find a little "R" beside it. That means that this bill has a royal recommendation. If she does not believe my word, she should look at the bottom of the page, because it says at the bottom of the page "Recommended by the Governor General".
Or if she wanted to actually look at the bill, and far be it from me to suggest she did not look at the bill, her own words almost condemn her on this point. If she had taken the time to open the cover to page 1A, the very first page inside, the very first thing she would have seen would have been "Recommendation. His Excellency the Governor General recommends to the House of Commons", et cetera. That is the royal recommendation she says the bill does not have. I can only hope that the rest of her input was more informed, because that one was dead wrong.
With this bill the Department of Human Resources Development brings under one roof all of our efforts to help Canadians achieve
their full potential in our society and in our economy. Within a single department we are going to have programs and services under this bill that will help people who are looking for work find and hopefully keep jobs. It will help the employers find the people they need. It will provide services that will help both workers and employers under federal jurisdiction to maintain fair labour standards and a safe work environment.
It will provide services that will help people between jobs, Canadian seniors, families with low incomes, and people with disabilities to get the income support they need. We will have under this umbrella department services to help people get training and to develop new skills for an economy that is always changing. It will provide services that will help local businesses and communities and entire industries to target the skills of the future and build a skilled workforce to keep Canada competitive and prosperous in a changing world.
I think this integrated approach makes sense. It recognizes that in reality people do not neatly fall into tidy little categories. A young person looking for work may really need to get back to school first. She may also be a single mother and the lack of good child care support may prevent her from taking a course she needs. The person with a disability may be quite capable, willing, and eager to work, but also needs help meeting special medical costs. The older worker displaced by technology may need income support, but in the long run he or she needs help retooling and adapting to a new labour market.
By bringing all the different programs these people need into one department we have taken the first step toward making sure the programs work together to provide meaningful co-ordinated solutions for the real world. By taking that first step we set the stage for real integration in the way programs and services are delivered to Canadians. For example, employment and UI services used to be delivered through Canada Employment Centres. Canada pension plan and old age security and guaranteed income supplement services, which used to come from a separate department, were delivered through separate client service centres. Now we are bringing all these together in new human resources centres across the country.
Let us face it, when someone comes looking for a service they could not care less which particular program, branch, or department delivers that service. The last thing they need is to be sent running from one office to another to obtain those particular services. Combining those services in one location means reduced overhead, reduced administrative costs, and more importantly it means people getting better access, with one-stop shopping for all federal social security and labour market services. The ability to access those services under one roof on the part of the client is the real immediate benefit of the integration this bill provides for.
The new service delivery network the Department of Human Resources Development is developing goes a bit beyond that. It goes well beyond that. The new network will make a new kind of integrated service possible, one that is more flexible and responsive to changing needs and circumstances. A fundamental goal of this approach is to ensure that integration takes place at the local level by locating the decision making and even the design of services at the local level instead of highly centralized and compartmentalized programs dictated from a headquarters somewhere.
Ultimately each human resource centre would become an integral part of the community it serves. Decisions about what kinds of programs make sense in that community will be made in that community by the community. To make this work we have to completely rethink the way we define programs and services. We cannot say to communities across Canada here is a program and here are all the rules you have to follow, do it our way or not at all.
We cannot tell people: "We will enrol you in this program even if you do not need it because it is the only one we can afford".
We want to be able to tell communities and individuals: "Here are the basic tools that have proved useful. Here is the money and the resources that are available. It is up to you to decide which tools you want to use and how you can use those resources most effectively. You should not worry about the restrictions of the various programs. The only thing that matters is the task at hand".
We have developed an increasingly sophisticated and effective set of employment programs, a set of tools to help people develop new skills, gain work experience, and find jobs. Our challenge is to integrate these two components to build a single integrated employment system that people can turn to not just for a cheque but for help to get back into the workforce. This means finding a way to combine that essential system of income protection provided by UI with an effective active system of empowerment, a system that gives people the resources and the opportunity to make choices about the kinds of jobs they need, the kinds of skills that are required, the kind of future they want to build for themselves.
For example, we are experimenting with a form of internship with small businesses. These are companies that desperately want to hire new workers but cannot afford the training new workers require. With this program, we help them hire young people, older workers, women coming back into the workforce, and we provide some support to pay for the learning curve, the time it takes the workers to become fully productive in their new jobs. That experiment is already beginning to show some good results. Small businesses are creating permanent jobs for unemployed Canadians. That simply would not exist otherwise.
Let us look at another example. Over the past year we developed a program for self-employment under unemployment insurance so that people have a choice: rather than simply collecting benefits and waiting for a job to come around, they can create their own jobs. The department provides some financial support, mentoring and counselling to help participants get their businesses started. Over the past year 30,000 individuals have started up their own businesses through the unemployment insurance program. They have created not just 30,000 jobs, but 60,000. Not only are they helping themselves, they are helping other unemployed Canadians to get back to work.
That is the kind of thing that can happen when we stop thinking in terms of separate compartments and start thinking in terms of integration. By bringing together the full range of Canada's social and labour market programs, we are setting a new course and making a real difference in the lives of Canadians.
Bill C-96 provides the basis for this new direction. It ensures that the structure is in place for the federal government to continue bringing programs and services together, working with our partners in the provinces and communities across Canada.
As we debate all of the detailed clauses of the bill, let us not forget what the bill is about. It is about making this kind of integration possible. It provides Canadians with a future which is full of new possibilities. That is what the bill is about.
Implicitly the bill is not about several things. It is not about shuffling the chairs, as someone has said. It is about trying to eliminate the unnecessary duplication, unnecessary inconvenience for clients, Canadians across the country who demand and have a right to certain services from government. They demand and have a right to services which are provided at the least possible cost, in the most efficient manner and at the least inconvenience to the taxpayers.
The bill brings together various functions of other departments, including the Department of Health, the Secretary of State, the former department of labour, as well as the Department of Human Resources Development. The bill seeks to consolidate in a manner which gets a bigger bang for our buck. At the same time, it is not meant to underline the role of the provinces, as has been suggested. That is another debate for another time. This is simply a bringing together of several functions which have always pertained to the federal government and will continue to do so until some level of government decides otherwise.