Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to support Motion No. 400 put forward by the member for Churchill. I want to thank the member for Churchill for her initiative because this really is an excellent motion. It is very straightforward. It states:
That...the government should amend bankruptcy legislation to ensure that wages and pensions owed to employees are the first debts repaid when a bankruptcy occurs.
I say, “Hear, hear”. It is about time.
It is really quite astounding to actually look at the current legislation and see that everybody else lines up ahead of the people who actually put their labour into whatever company or business fails.
First up is the government. The government is the first creditor to be paid, through CPP, income tax and employment insurance.
Next on the list are the secured creditors, of course, which could include institutions such as the banks. Of course the banks will make money off bankruptcy, having carried loans secured by company assets.
Third in the current legislation are the preferred creditors, who are placed on a prioritized list.
Then, of course, the employees are at the end, at number four, behind the legal costs and the levy that goes to the Superintendent of Bankruptcy. This really has to be one of the most unfair provisions. Not only have people lost their jobs, they then get slapped in the face and really stuck with it when a bankruptcy occurs. They do not get anything in terms of wages they might be owed or, most importantly, their pensions.
I think this motion for a change in the bankruptcy legislation is needed today more than ever before. We live in a world of globalized capital, of deregulation and, unfortunately, now a world of privatization. Not a day goes by on which we cannot open a major newspaper and see colossal failures of the bastions of capitalism, whether it is Enron, Air Canada or other major corporations going into a tailspin and going into failure.
In this economic climate, where there is an emphasis on corporate concentration, where the bigger fish eat the smaller fish, where there are buyouts, bankruptcies and all the rest of it, I think we really have to look at the question of who the winners and losers are. And in every single case, the losers are the people who work for those businesses and those corporations.
The Alliance may smirk at that, but it purports to represent those workers and yet it is those workers who are being absolutely skewered by the kind of legislation we have in Canada today, which sees them at the bottom of the line, not the top.
I say hats off to the member for Churchill for identifying this as an issue that needs to be corrected and for having the initiative to bring it forward. It will be beyond me if members of the House cannot find it in themselves to support the motion and to say of course employees should be the people who get their wages and their pensions covered.
We only have to look at what has taken place with Air Canada. When Air Canada filed for bankruptcy, I do not know about anybody else, but I got loads and loads of e-mail from people who were terrified that they were going to lose their pension in Air Canada because they knew what the legislation was and they knew they would be at the end of the line and out of luck.
I even had children of Air Canada retirees writing to me because they were so terrified for their mothers or fathers who had worked for Air Canada for 25 or 30 years, who had paid into their pensions, and who had grown up in the company believing that their pensions were secure. They were terrified that suddenly, through the stroke of a pen and proceedings through the bankruptcy laws and so on, their parents would find that their pensions and sense of security were in jeopardy and were threatened as a result of Air Canada filing for bankruptcy.
Surely that one example alone should serve to remind us that the law on bankruptcy as it currently exists is terribly discriminatory toward workers. It puts them at the end of the line.
A couple of weeks ago in east Vancouver I met a constituent who had gone through the most incredible runaround in trying to collect $4,000 that he was owed by a small company that had gone into bankruptcy. He had gone through employment standards, which in B.C. under Gordon Campbell do not really exist any more; there really is no protection for workers. This guy was a hardworking person. He had helped his employer. He had been a diligent worker. All he wanted was his $4,000. He could not get any help from anyone. It was not available.
What caused most of the distress for this constituent was not so much the $4,000. I think he had kind of given up on that at some point. It was the fact that there was nothing there in a legal framework that could actually protect his interests as a worker.
It demonstrated to me the need to have this motion that is before us today. I note that the Canadian Labour Congress has been advocating a package of measures that would ensure that workers' interests are protected in the event of a bankruptcy or an insolvency. It advocated the idea of a federal wage protection fund.
The member from the Bloc pointed out very eloquently that on every side workers are now completely skewered. Workers are not able to claim for EI, which is money that has actually been paid in. There is no government money in EI; it comes from the employer and the employee. Not only can they not get EI but now there is no protection under the bankruptcy legislation.
A federal wage protection fund that would provide employees with some measure of certainty of payment when they are faced with uncertainty in this world is a very good idea.
There is the idea of pension insurance arrangements. The whole scandal around what is happening to pension funds is something that should be sounding off alarm bells in this place.
Here again under the bankruptcy legislation the current situation would mean that someone who has paid into their pension does not have the most basic protection when it comes to bankruptcy. They do not even have protection for where those pension funds end up or who manages them. The administration of the Canada pension fund has been contracted out by the Liberal government, which is costing us billions of dollars. What a scam that is going on. Yet it is employees who are on the receiving end.
In conclusion, this is a very fine motion. It is so easy to shoot something down and to say it does not do this or it does not do that. The member has worked very hard to give responses to members who have raised questions or issues in the House and she will do so again today.
The basic principle of this motion before us which is to say that workers should come first in terms of the wages and pensions they are owed when a bankruptcy occurs is the correct principle. It is where we should start from. If the motion needs fixing when it is implemented and legislation is changed, there is time enough to do that for sure. Let us vote affirmatively on the principle that is being advanced by the member for Churchill.
I encourage all members of the House to support the motion for the very important principle that it advances. It is worthy of support.