Mr. Speaker, I too begin by thanking the member for Lakeland for allowing us the opportunity to debate this important issue once again.
As previous speakers have pointed out, it is an issue of great interest right across the country, and certainly in the House, proven by the fact that every political party currently sitting in the House has introduced this issue. Even the Liberal Party, when it was in opposition, saw fit to try to get some relief for ordinary working people when it came to the high cost of tools needed to do their jobs and earn their livings.
I differ with the hon. parliamentary secretary. This is an issue of tax fairness. This would not exacerbate any unfairness in the tax system. It would give some relief and recognition. Working people also deserve the ability to ply their trade and not be hampered by the unbelievably high cost of a working person's tools.
The bill specifically cites mechanics. There is good reason for this because there are probably the most glaring examples of difficulties in this area. An apprentice mechanic has to put together a tool kit costing anywhere from $10,000 to $20,000 worth of expensive tools. A mechanic's job gets more complex and technical with diagnostic equipment. It is no longer tuning up an old six cylinder in-line six with a simple set of tools. It is very complex and very technical. We do not recognize that.
The real frustration for me is the government's unwillingness to recognize working people in this way. This fuels the whole blue collar stigma that blue collar work and trades are not valued by the government. Therefore, it is even more difficult to attract and retain young people in the industry. There is evidence of that.
I am a journeyman carpenter and the average age of a carpenter today is 49 years old. We cannot attract young people to the trade. In part it is because of this overwhelming feeling that their jobs are not valuable. Only the high-tech jobs appear sexy. People feel they should be going into the B.A. program even if their skill set would point them in the direction of being a skilled trades person.
The root of the problem of who gets to deduct their expenses can be found in the definition of the independent contractor. What is a truly independent contractor as opposed to an employee? If a mechanic hangs out his or her shingle as an independent entrepreneur, the person can deduct everything from the space rented, to the tools purchased, to the depreciation on those tools and even the truck he or she drives. All those things are tax write-offs because he or she is now a small business person.
The industry has taken advantage of this. Mechanics are different from the average hourly paid employee in most shops. They are actually paid by piece work. They are not paid by the hour anymore, they are paid per job. If it takes 2.1 hours of labour to do a head job on a Honda Civic, that is what they get paid whether they take three hours or one and a half hours to do it. In that sense they differ from the traditional relationship of employer and employee. They are independent to some degree. This is not recognized in the tax system which is one of the basic problems. Other workers in the country also suffer from the same ambiguity in the definition of what an independent contractor is.
I remind the House of the plight of the rural route mail couriers who find themselves in the same situation. They are actually wholly dependent on one source for their income but they are not categorized as employees. As such, the rural route mail couriers get it from both ends. These individuals are dependent, not independent, but they do not get any of the advantages of being employees.
This basic tax unfairness helps to fuel the whole skill shortage problem faced in all of the skill trades. This is because we do not recognize how very difficult it is for apprentice mechanics to rack up what is really a small business loan, up to $20,000, just so they can start plying their trade.
We might say that most trades people make more money than the average industrial worker and that higher wage offsets the additional costs they must go through to be able to practise their trade. That really is not true. If a survey was done on what a mechanic makes, the amount would be anywhere from $15.00 to $21.00 per hour. There are people working in pulp mills with none of the risk factor or the additional costs of buying their own tools who make more than that. The compensation package is not offsetting the additional expenses they have in setting up shop.
One of the most galling things in hearing the Liberal government refusing to entertain this very modest tax relief idea is that it just spent $100 billion in tax relief in its last announcement. The government plans to give tax relief right across the country in the figure of $100 billion, some of which is to corporations. The corporate tax rate will go down from 17% to 16%, which is a huge benefit to the corporate sector. Capital gains taxes will be reduced for high income earners. Do not tell me there are some high income earners here who applaud that. There are a lot of mechanics who do not find any comfort in that whatsoever.
Do not tell me that the bureaucrats who put together the tax relief package were not aware that this was a pressing national issue. They were reminded every year in the House of Commons by every political party that this was pressing.
The member for Lakeland pointed out that he had some 70,000 pieces of correspondence, not just from employees but from employers in the industry, who are very concerned that their inability to attract young people into the industry is affected by the lack of recognition that skilled trade gets from this government.
Hearing the Liberal Party talk about apprenticeship in the Speech from the Throne and then failing to recognize one of the most pressing problems that apprentices face today by failing to introduce any tax relief for working people when it had the opportunity to do so, tells me that it is really just lip service. The Liberals are not really seized of the issue of those blue collar trades, the apprenticeship industries. They are more concerned with the high tech field or providing tax relief to corporations so that something will trickle down to ordinary working people.
This is an issue which has been raised to virtually every member of parliament in the House. I doubt there is a person here that has not had some communication from a mechanic, a carpenter or an industrial electrician who has to shell out a great deal of money just to ply their trade, so they can get up in the morning, go to work and do what they are trained to do. They do not get any of the recognition that even a small businessman or an entrepreneur might get if they went into business on their own.
There is another issue of tax fairness or tax unfairness that working people face. As a journeyman carpenter, many times I had to cross the country looking for work. I had to go where the work was. I had to throw my tools into the back of my pickup and then drive from B.C. to Thunder Bay to look for a job. None of that can be written off. If I was going to a job and was actually hired at the other end with the proof that I had a job, I could write off my moving expenses. If I showed enough initiative to look for work and kept travelling until I found a job, none of that can be written off. This is another example of how we are overlooking a whole sector of the population who make their living by their skills, who have to go where the work is and who are not being recognized by the government.
The final piece of evidence that I would offer to show that the government does not really care about apprenticeship, the skilled trades or even the industries that employ skilled trades people, is the EI treatment of apprentices. When I went to trade school, after I had left my job to go to the community college component of my schooling, EI kicked in immediately. There was no interruption. I have income maintenance to survive that six week period.
That was one of the changes made in 1996. Now when apprentices leave their job to go to a community college they have a two week waiting period as if they were unemployed. They not unemployed. They are just doing the learning component of their apprenticeship. The government has been reminded of that oversight time and time again. Now it has put forward amendments to the EI bill and it has chosen not to address the issue that faces apprentices, the one single issue that has been brought to its attention by the building trades council.
My compliments to the member from Lakeland for letting us have the opportunity to debate this again. It is a shame the Liberal government does not see fit to meet the needs of industry by addressing this pressing concern.