Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have an opportunity to talk about the budget bill which is before us today.
The budget is very much about preserving the future for Canadians. A major thrust is preserving our social programs and particularly the pension plans which have done so much to alleviate poverty among the elderly and provide Canada's seniors with a safe and secure retirement from an economic point of view. We want to make sure that we are able to continue to offer that same sense of security to today's young people when they are retired.
The budget is also about preserving economic opportunities for Canadians, with a very heavy emphasis on enhancing trade opportunities, removing internal trade barriers as well as getting more Canadians out there in the international marketplace trading, producing jobs and economic prosperity here at home.
It is about recognizing that the knowledge industries are where the job opportunities of the future will be and investing strategically what limited resources we have in those areas of technology that we think offer the greatest potential.
We promised Canadians that we would deliver efficient, effective government. We have done that through putting Canada's economic and fiscal position in a much better state and moving toward a balanced budget and eventually debt reduction. We have done it with no tax rate increases at all in this budget. In fact, in the last three budgets there has not been an increase in personal tax rates.
Part of the plan has been smaller, more effective, more affordable government, to look at what we do as a government, to look at how we do it and to look at how we can do it better. Part of that has been examining the best ways to deliver services. Some measures involve privatization and the setting up of special agencies which will operate in a much tighter and more accountable way.
Part has simply been to stop doing things that we felt government no longer needed to do and sorting out with the provinces what is their proper area of activity and what is ours, especially in those areas of government endeavour where there is overlap and duplication between the two levels of government.
As we have been going through this change there is no question at all that it has had a significant impact on employees, many of them my constituents. The fundamental principles, as we have gone through this period of change and as we continue through it, is to be fair to employees, to make changes in a way that will be less disruptive to them, to their lives, to their careers and to their families.
I want to put a few comments on the record on areas where we have achieved that with some success because some comments were made in the House yesterday that did not quite accurately reflect things that have been done and things that are planned. When my colleague from the Reform Party, the hon. member for
St. Albert spoke, I hope he was ill-informed and was not being mischievous with the facts of the situation.
I will put on the record a couple of facts that may correct some misapprehensions arising from his speech yesterday. He talked about air navigational service employees. It is important to know these employees will receive their severance pay when they move to NavCan. The employer has respected the collective agreement which was in place at the time the agreement was signed. Subsequent negotiations have occurred on the treatment of employees who will be affected by alternative delivery mechanisms, some of which I have mentioned.
The majority of public service unions, although not those representing the majority of employees, agreed to changes in the collective agreement such that severance payments will not be made at the time of transfer, but the liability for that severance payment will be transferred to the new employer when the collective agreement is transferred through successor rights.
This agreement with the unions was conditional on the government introducing successor rights through amendments to the Public Service Staff Relations Act and the Canada Labour Code. While one of the public service unions does not agree, I can only say to those unions which were involved in concluding this agreement that they bargained well for their members.
I know the kinds of things they achieved for their members and this is one measure that would not have been accomplished without their involvement and without their working and fighting very hard for their members. The government has honoured its commitments to the 13 unions that did sign this agreement by introducing these amendments and legislating them in Bill C-31.
During question period yesterday, the member for St. Albert, the Reform critic for human resources, pointed out the difference in treatment of these workers with air navigation services and other employees with respect to severance pay. The hon. member also commented that the introduction of successor rights in budget legislation seems to be the employer's way of avoiding negotiating with its union on each transfer case.
Our employees want to know exactly where they stand when new arrangements come into place. I believe their unions have bargained well for them and have provided the kind of security that anybody in a climate of significant change in their place of work would want to have. I do not want to get into the details of that issue, but this is a continuation of our commitment to the employees to change government without drastically altering their lives.
I am pleased to note that the budget has announced that the Public Sector Compensation Act, which froze federal government wages for five of the past six years, is due to expire in 1997. The act will expire as planned. It was introduced under the previous government. We have let it run its course but we do not intend to renew or extend it. We intend to get back to collective bargaining with our employees.
We are also reinstating this June the normal process of increments and performance pay for government employees. There is no question that our fellow citizens who work for the Government of Canada have borne a major portion of the cost of starting to restore fiscal order to Canada's house.
I hope this return to collective bargaining and the way in which the reduction of employment in the public service has been handled has been a signal to them that we value and respect the work they do. I hope they are looking forward, as the government is, to a return to collective bargaining.
No budget is perfect, no piece of legislation is perfect. However, this legislation represents a reasonable balance of many of the objectives we are trying to accomplish.