Mr. Speaker, in a speech on February 28 in the House of Commons the Prime Minister said that corporations in Canada "have a responsibility to eliminate the human deficit of unemployment. No true balance sheet can ignore the heavy and growing cost of chronic unemployment. It is wrong. It is wrong on a human level. It is wrong on an economic level. It is wrong on a commercial level. It is wrong on a moral level".
The question to the Minister of Finance on March 5 was to suggest that Hollinger Incorporated ignored the Prime Minister's challenge in the private sector to help create jobs. It was a slap in the face because two days after Hollinger Incorporated took ownership of the Regina Leader-Post , the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix and the Yorkton Enterprise , 182 employees were terminated. Twenty-five per cent of the staff is gone because, in the words of a Hollinger representative, these newspapers made profits but not enough profits.
The owner of Hollinger Incorporated, Mr. Conrad Black, has shown a clear lack of corporate citizenship. He is flagrantly ignoring the challenge of the Prime Minister because he does not care if he creates a human deficit, in the Prime Minister's words. He is only interested in the bottom line. However, by ignoring the human factor in his profit chasing, Mr. Black is not fooling the people of Saskatchewan or his employees; he is only fooling himself.
Putting more people out of work hurts the whole economy. It means fewer consumers with purchasing power to buy goods and services. No company lives in a glass bubble. Businesses are interdependent and when we put people out of work the whole business community feels the repercussions and in some cases the whole country suffers.
The Liberals were elected on a promise of jobs, jobs, jobs but delivered nothing but talk, talk, talk and fewer jobs. It is not only Hollinger Incorporation but many other profitable corporations that made substantial profits yet terminated jobs. They terminated employees as a reward for their efforts in making these profits.
Bell Canada made a profit of $502 million yet had 3,100 fewer jobs as a result of that. General Motors had $1.39 billion in profits yet laid off 2,500 employees. Imperial Oil had a record profit of $514 million and 452 fewer jobs. The Bank of Montreal made $986 million with 1,428 fewer employees.
What these statistics show is a lack of corporate responsibility in a country which provides them with these profits as well as various tax support from our treasury.
Should Canada continue to provide these profitable corporations that downsize tax breaks when they lack a sense of corporate responsibility to create jobs? More and more Canadians think not. More and more Canadians think corporate tax breaks should only be provided to those companies that treat their community and their employees with dignity. Canadians want tax breaks only for the corporate responsible corporations and tax breaks should only be provided to those who would support a Canadian code of corporate citizenship.
What did the Liberals do in response to these large, profitable corporations? The Liberals responded with a very small youth employment program to hire the kids of the parents who lost their jobs at minimum wage. Fire the parents and hire the kids at reduced wages. That is the Liberal approach to employment. Under the Liberals, economic development has become an oxymoron.