Mr. Speaker, there are many definitions of democracy, but the most succinct one and the one which I have tended to prefer over many years is the one offered by Abraham Lincoln. He said that democracy was government of, by and for the people, not just of and by, but for the people. Political power in a democratic society should be used for the benefit of the average and the poor.
This is a concrete example, it seems to me, of a serious desire to use the capacity of the state that already legislates the benefits of financial institutions, the banks and other investors, to redress the balance on the side of working families. We should approach it from that point of view.
Those who have raised questions about it, those who have praised my colleague's intent with the bill, I hope would vote for it to send it to committee. Then we could have a serious examination of the practical problems that have been raised about generating the necessary investment capital and we would know if we are serious or not.
It would be interesting to hear from people from various government departments and even from the banks. I would love to hear them explain why this would be a serious problem. Maybe the banks could also explain why they are making billions of dollars in profits and they do not pay taxes on their offshore investments in the Caribbean at the same time.
The bill says, to use an old slogan, let us for once put the workers first, the men and women who have devoted 30 or 40 years of their lives to a corporation. Many of us think that is the real investment. I am not denigrating the financial investment. I am just saying that they are both investments. One is through human labour and the other is through capital.
The bill wants us, when we have to make choices, to say that the human labour should be given preference over the capital investment, rather than the other way around. Whether in terms of salaries or wages or in terms of pension benefits, the legitimate claims of workers should be taken ahead of the banks and other financial institutions, suppliers, governments and shareholders if a company goes bankrupt.
Frankly, the only serious argument I have heard against this proposal has been the one that this could somehow deter investment capital. That cannot be dismissed out of hand, but as our colleague from the Bloc Québécois has said, most investment institutions, to understate it considerably, have a widely diverse investment pattern.
If a company went broke in a certain category of its investment, the workers would get, under the provisions of this bill if it passed, the first benefit and the bank would lose some money. Under the present circumstances, it is the workers who lose everything. The banks would lose something here. Normally in capital markets with investments going on in real societies, not just investments here in Canada, they have diverse investments abroad. They will make up for the loss here with what they make elsewhere, which are normally fully adequate profits in their other investments. That is the expectation with the bill.
I come back to my colleagues in the other parties who have raised the investment problem. Why not put a clause in the bill? Why not amend the bill? Why not send the bill to committee and put in an amendment which says that after three years or five years the issue would be revisited? We could take a look at the evidence and, to quote Mr. Diefenbaker's old phrase, if the calamitous disaster should occur as some people think would occur by putting workers first, then we could have a look at it.
Let us try this priority. Let us go ahead and let the working families have the legitimate first claim. If there was a major problem in accumulating capital for investment in our society, after five years, we could look at the bill and then reconsider. I appeal to my colleagues to send the bill to committee.