Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank you for your ruling in this regard and remind you that this complaint is coming from the person who, earlier, referred us to page 282 of the budget, saying that it had to do with the Navigable Waters Protection Act when such is not the case.
The changes in the budget change the rules of the game for teachers and engineers. What we are trying to say about employment insurance is that, from now on, people will have to look for jobs located up to an hour away from where they live, otherwise they will lose their benefits. This is an unbelievable threat to industries that depend on seasonal workers.
For example, what are people in Atlantic Canada who work in the fishery supposed to do if the minister is saying that, from now on, they have to move? Someone cannot train to be a fisher in five hours, five days or even five months. It takes several seasons to train someone to work on a boat. The government is already draining these communities of their lifeblood because of our artificially high dollar. All our export industries are suffering terribly. This is being felt in Atlantic Canada in particular.
Governing also means understanding the country, the regional differences and the different regional needs. Rather than making allowances for that, the Conservatives are applying the same remedy everywhere. They are attacking regions that are sorely in need of a helping hand. Instead of that help, these regions are getting hit hard. That is what the Conservatives are doing.
What is more, the Conservatives are creating an economy where salaries will be much lower. There is less pressure with regard to all working conditions because of a series of measures that are being implemented. It is not by chance that, for the first time in Canada's history, the middle class has seen a clear drop in income, and this occurred in tandem with the signing of NAFTA.
Over the past 25 years, the middle class has seen its real net income drop. This is the first time this has happened. In other words, the richest 20% of Canadians are experiencing a rise in income while the other 80% of Canadians—it has been measured and proven—are experiencing a drop in income. These are the results of the neo-conservative policies of the current government and its Liberal predecessors, who aggressively pursued the same goals for 25 years.
This is putting downward pressure on incomes and on employment conditions. As though that were not enough, these agreements are creating a race to the bottom: temporary foreign workers who used to come and work in a few sectors, such as produce farms, will now be in several employment categories. The government trumpets the fact that we can pay them a lot less than Canadians. People are working hard in mines and many other sectors and what is the result? One simply has to go visit the steelworkers in Prince George, British Columbia, to see what kind of pressure they are under. It is hard work. They work hard their entire lives. They fought hard for fair wages only to be told that the Conservatives are going to force them to work two years longer before they can retire. Then, as though these workers did not have enough pressure on them, the Conservatives want to bring in workers from other countries and pay them lower wages, and this adds even more downward pressure. That is the Canada the Conservatives dream of, where workers are subjected to working conditions from the early 1900s. That is their vision.
The NDP wants to build a fair Canada. We hear appalling speeches, like the one we heard earlier, suggesting that our dream is heresy. A country as rich as Canada is capable of paying for decent working conditions, and that is part of what an NDP government will bring.
That is the path that the Conservatives are paving for us.
Do not forget that Bill C-38, the Conservatives' budget bill in the spring, repealed the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act. That is their vision.
They are not attacking one particular group or sector. Their goal is to drive down wages for all Canadians, a total lack of an economic plan. The government is not just failing workers but businesses that create jobs too. Canada faces a perfect storm of economic challenges. We have 500,000 lost manufacturing jobs, a $50 billion trade deficit, household debt at an all-time high, the worst American downturn since the Great Depression, and we are still in the middle of a eurozone crisis.
When we talk to Conservatives about the interest that we have in using our experience, our expertise and our capability to help in Europe, we get the usual talking points of “You want us to write a big cheque to Europe”. What imbecility. As if the idea of using our experience and our expertise to help avoid a crisis that will invariably negatively affect us is something wrong.
Yet those are the talking points that come out of the PMO because they make stuff up. That is all they have. They have nothing else. They make up pages in the budget and they make up plans for the NDP that have never existed, other than the ones that were the same ones they had. They make stuff up all day long because they cannot defend what they are actually doing. That is what we are talking about now, what is actually in here, what they are actually doing and the negative effect it is having on Canadian workers across the country.
What an irony Bill C-45 is. The jobs and growth act does not contain a plan to generate either. Budget 2012 kills more jobs than it creates. It contains no strategy for the 1.4 million out-of-work Canadians. The so-called centrepiece of the economic plan is the small business tax credit, which members can applaud because the NDP supports a tax credit. It was part of our 2011 platform. This one does not go far enough. It is worth a maximum of $1,000 and it lasts just one year. At best, it may be enough to help companies hire one full-time employee. It will not even make a dent in our lagging job numbers.
The truth is that the government continues its failed policy of lavish corporate tax cuts, even as companies ship jobs overseas. For example, one company demanded a 50% pay cut and shut its doors after receiving $5 million from the Conservatives. It was called Electro-Motive Diesel in London. I got to visit the workers on the picket line in the middle of the winter. It was an extraordinary experience because just a few months earlier a beaming Prime Minister had been out there with a $5 million cheque, because this was evidence of the success of his plan for jobs in Canada.
As soon as that election campaign was over, there was a little meeting. The bosses sat down and said, “We have a deal for you. You accept a 50% pay cut or we move your jobs south of the border”. The company closed, the jobs have been moved, it kept the $5 million and there are no longer any jobs in Canada. That is the Conservative plan.
Thirty years ago a young worker could work his or her way up a company ladder. Now workers have many different jobs in a lifetime. The incentive to invest in workers is being lost. A large workforce is no longer a sign of pride. A couple of generations ago, someone who was running a big company would be very proud and take great pride in stating the numbers in his workforce. Now the great pride is saying how many of those jobs were shipped to another country. That is the change. We have to get back to a feeling in Canada that it is a social responsibility to be proud to be creating good-paying jobs.
Why do we keep doing what the Conservatives do, investing in companies like Electro-Motive Diesel that do not invest in our workforce? This is the type of short-sightedness that we see all over Bill C-45.
For example, under the changes to the scientific research and experimental development tax credit, the program would be cut. The $500 million a year that it costs would be eliminated, but it would also reduce government support for business research and development at a time when businesses need to increase innovation to compete.
To put it another way, if we cannot get the Conservatives to do the right thing because it is the right thing, let us try to get them to do the right thing because it is actually good for the economy. The only way to increase wealth in our society is to increase knowledge, and this is the dumbing down of Canadian business. That is the Conservative legacy. It is going to hit manufacturing particularly hard at a time when they need a little oxygen to keep going.
We need tailored incentives that better serve businesses and our economy as a whole. There are a couple of good examples that can be looked at in Canada where long-term vision and incentive by the government has produced a great result.
For example, take a look at the TV and film industry in Toronto. There used to be a time when it was only New York and Hollywood. Now, Toronto is in there competing with them every step of the way, but it required a partnership between government, business and labour. Those tax incentives were there for decades and they worked their way through the system and are producing the great result of bringing in billions of dollars a year and lots of high-quality jobs. However, it required government involvement every step of the way. The Conservatives simply do not believe in that.
We should be building the next success story now. Instead, we are getting less for workers, less for Canadians and less for our economy. That is what the Conservatives are about, less for everyone.
In the business environment there should be the creation of a climate for growth. We have to ensure predictability. However, look at the catastrophe this week with the sale of a gas company. The government cannot even give the criteria on which the decision was based and it released its decision at 11:57 p.m. on a Friday.
The Conservatives cannot explain the decision. They have to hide it. Then when they come back into the House, they go back to their talking points and keep referring to the statute, but the decision uses criteria that are not in the statute. How is a foreign company looking to invest in Canada supposed to make an intelligent decision? We saw the effect on the stock market immediately on Monday. Stocks were getting pummelled. People do not know. This is a government that boasts about being close to business, but its actual decisions are hurting business.
This lack of predictability is something that we would change. We would clarify the rules for foreign investment. We would welcome investments and trade as long as it was reciprocal, responsible and fair.
What concerns us the most is that since 2009, there has been a strong trend towards eviscerating anything that has to do with environmental protection in Canada. In 2009, the government even did away with one of the first steps, which was the Navigable Waters Protection Act.
I remember that the Minister of Foreign Affairs called it the greatest job killer. We were confused. At the time, we told ourselves that it was not possible to pit the environment against the economy, since the past 50 years have shown us that they go hand in hand, because both of these things must progress together.
I remember being speechless in parliamentary committee, when I saw the Liberal Party vote with the Conservatives for the first time to start dismantling the Navigable Waters Protection Act. That was in 2009. That continued in 2010 and 2011, based on what we are seeing here. They are getting rid of the protections that are so important for everyone.
But the businesses themselves are the ones that want some predictability in all of this. They do not want to end up being told that they did not fulfill their obligations.
Instead of enforcing federal environmental protection legislation, such as the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994, and so on, what are they doing? They are gutting these laws and changing them completely.
This is interesting, because we know that there are procedures, processes and ways of doing things, particularly in the oil sands, where the federal government no longer enforces these laws. The lack of enforcement will cause more degradation of ecosystems.
This government claims to be a law and order government. Normally, when a company violates the law, we force it to change its practices. But the Conservatives instead change the law to bring it in line with those practices.
I will give a concrete example having to do with the Navigable Waters Protection Act, which we were talking about earlier. In Canada, 37 rivers are considered to be heritage rivers. Of these 37 rivers, 27 will no longer be protected.
Now, 27 of Canada's 37 designated heritage rivers will no longer be protected. They include the Bloodvein River, in Manitoba and Ontario; the Cowichan River, British Columbia; the Clearwater River, Saskatchewan and Alberta; the Main River, Newfoundland and Labrador; the Margaree River, in Nova Scotia; the South Nahanni River, Northwest Territories; the Tatshenshini River, Yukon; the Mattawa River, Ontario; and the Upper Restigouche River, New Brunswick.
Mr. Speaker, I actually enjoy responding to the peanut gallery when they heckle. The question was, “Is it navigable?” Duh, yes. It is a definition in the law. No amount of rebranding will take away from the fact that the Navigable Waters Protection Act was meant to ensure sustainable development for future generations.
I mentioned the decision of Judge Lamer in the Oldman River case in my opening remarks. Let me read one section:
The Minister of Transport, in his capacity of decision maker under the Navigable Waters Protection Act must thus consider the environmental impact of the dam on such areas of federal jurisdiction as navigable waters, fisheries, Indians and Indian lands.
After that, the Conservatives stood up and said that law had nothing to do with the environment. Shame. It is Orwellian. The Conservatives made their website disappear after a question was asked by my colleague from Halifax yesterday. There were 29 references to the environment, and the Conservatives made them disappear. They want to make the environment disappear.
We are going to stand up and protect the environment, for now and for future generations. We are going to continue to fight the Conservatives' omnibus budget bills.
There are two different aspects that are being discussed today. When we look at the contents of what they are proposing, we get the results we are looking at here. We are hurting people. We are taking away programs. We are taking away protections that have been given in Canada for generations.
Before we even look at those, there is an aspect that all Canadians have to consider in what we are going through today, which is the continuation of what the Conservatives started in the spring. This type of omnibus budget bill is affecting dozens and dozens of different laws. We have fallen into the American trap of avoiding our parliamentary debate. Our system is different from the American budget system, where they tack on and tack on.
We remember the Prime Minister, and it was not something we have said, admitting that he never watches Canadian television and he never watches the Canadian news. He gets all his news from the Fox network. I guess it is not surprising that he thinks the American system applies here and he has simply given instructions to his House leader and his other officers to start following the American system of using a budget bill as sort of a catch-all, where they can throw in all the stuff they want to change. That is what we have here, again.
That is an undermining of our parliamentary democracy. Those are our institutions. The Conservatives are not only taking away things like medicare, free universal public medical care, and putting it in danger, the cuts I referred to earlier, the $36 billion that they announced without discussion or debate will lead inexorably to a two-tier system. That is just a fancy way of saying that poor people are going to have trouble seeing a doctor and rich people will have access because they will be able to pay for it.
That is not the Canadian system. That is not the Canadian way. We will stand up and fight that.
Yes, at every step, we will stand up because for the first time in a very long time we are beginning to have hope. In the next campaign, there will be two opposing visions for our country. There is the Conservative vision, which slashes the social safety net and takes out $10 billion every year. That is the figure they tried to hide. The cat was out of the bag yesterday.
I heard the member for Saint Boniface say earlier that they held lengthy budget briefings. Let us talk about those briefings. I was the finance critic for the official opposition for five budgets before I became the leader of the official opposition. Never before had I seen what I saw last spring. We often see the same people from year to year. They are usually in their offices. There is very little reason for them to be here, except for the few times they attend parliamentary committee hearings.
Officials are there to provide us with information. When I saw not only the budget cuts, but also the two-year increase in the retirement age, I went to see them to ask for a single figure that could be readily obtained. I asked them what adding two years of work would mean and how much money the government would be taking out of seniors' pockets.
This is what they told me, and I quote:
“I can't give you that information.”
I know a half-truth when I hear it. So I answered:
Are you telling me you can't give me that information because you don't have it, or are you telling me you have that information but you can't give it to me?
And the response, which was worthy of George Orwell, was:
“I can't give you that information.”
That is the Conservatives.
Yesterday the Auditor General confirmed the overall number. The Minister of Finance was asked that question at a press conference right in front of the House of Commons a few months ago. On our side, we had estimated that it was somewhere between $10 billion and $12 billion. We were not far off. They estimated it at $10 billion. The minister refused to give the number. He replied with his usual smile, as though he were saying “I do not give a damn”, that he had heard approximate numbers. Imagine that, a Minister of Finance who says such things. I can say one thing to my colleagues and to any seniors watching us at home: they can be sure that the two-year increase in the retirement age will be cancelled by an NDP government; we will put the retirement age back to 65.
We will stand up, unlike the members opposite who, day after day, have to parrot the lines written by the Prime Minister's Office. They sometimes have one minute a day in their poor little parliamentary lives to finally talk about their ridings and about real issues, and what do they do? They act like parrots. They are puppets, marionettes. They stand up and say exactly what the Prime Minister's Office tells them to say.
We can be reasonable. We can stand up and keep the real objectives in mind. We tell Canadians that when it comes to pensions, the integrity of our Parliament and our free, public health care system, we are proud to stand up for them. We will stand up for the environment, because we in the NDP know that we deserve better than what the Conservatives have been offering us for the past six years.
Since the Conservatives came to power, they have found many opportunities to invent titles for bills that say exactly the opposite of the bill's contents. Last week, I had the opportunity to say that if, by chance, they actually used the most recent incarnation of the mammoth budget bill to do what they promised to do in the election campaign, which was create jobs, we would vote in favour of the bill.
In the comments I made yesterday, I clearly explained that we could have a good discussion about some of the elements in this bill if we could split it. It could be done by splitting the bill and having different committees study it.
We believe that some things can and must be done. I gave an example earlier when I spoke about tax credits for creating jobs. That is how we could go about it.
We will not let the Conservatives fool us. We have become too accustomed to their empty promises. We are telling them outright that if they split the bill and divide it into coherent parts that can be easily studied, they will find that our party is willing to co-operate.
We shall see what they end up doing. We will test the Conservatives' ability to be true to their word. In the case of the Navigable Waters Protection Act, we saw that they said one thing and what was in the documents was altogether different.
Here are some of the elements that could be split off from the bill.
Here are some of the elements of Bill C-45 that could be split off from the bill and studied separately and properly in a parliamentary committee. It has already been shown it is possible because we did it last week.
By the way, I open a little parenthesis to say that there are 450,000 public servants in Canada who are very happy that the NDP actually read what the Liberals were putting in, because such is the Liberal incompetence that they were about to give one-two-three agreement to the enactment of a law that would have taken MPs' and senators' pensions and dealt with them on the same footing as the pensions of 450,000 civil servants.
The NDP stood up, demanded a change, and was able to get it done right.
It was so pathetic to see the House leader for the Liberals standing in the hallway, stuttering away, saying, “It was a spelling mistake. It was a typographical error.” That is one of his classics. Four hundred and fifty-thousand people are a typographical error for the Liberals.
Here are some of the elements that could be split off from the bill.
The gutting of the Canada Environmental Assessment Act should be before the environment committee. The gutting of the Navigable Waters Protection Act should be before the environment and transportation committee. The elimination of the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission should, of course, go to the health committee. Cutting the SR and ED tax credits should be before the industry committee. Changes to the Fisheries Act should go to fisheries and oceans committee. Changes to the Indian Act should go to aboriginal affairs and northern development committee. Changes to the new Bridge to Strengthen Trade Act should go before the transportation committee. Eliminating the grain act tribunal should go before the agriculture committee, and pension reforms should go before the human resources, skills and social development committee.
Therefore, I would like to seek unanimous consent, and I am sure it is going to be given, to move the following motion.
That notwithstanding any Standing Order or usual practice of the House, that Bill C-45, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures be amended by removing the following clauses:
(a) clauses 9, 27, 28 and 62 to 64 related to the scientific research and experimental development tax credit;
(b) clauses 173 to 178 related to the Fisheries Act;
(c) clauses 179 to 184 related to the proposed bridge to strengthen trade act;
(d) clauses 206 to 209 related to the Indian Act;
(e) clauses 210 to 218 related to the Judges Act;
(f) clauses 264 to 268 related to the Customs Act;
(g) clauses 269 to 298 related to the Hazardous Materials Information Review Act;
(i) clauses 316 to 350 related to the Navigable Waters Protection Act;
(j) clauses 351 to 410 related to the Canada Grains Act;
(k) clauses 425 to 432 related to the Canada Environmental Assessment Act; and
(l) clauses 464 to 514 related to pension reforms
That the clauses mentioned in section (a) of this motion do compose Bill C-47; that Bill C-47 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.
That the clauses mentioned in section (b) of this motion do compose Bill C-48; that Bill C-48 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
That the clauses mentioned in section (c) of this motion do compose Bill C-49; that Bill C-49 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities.
That the clauses mentioned in section (d) of this motion do compose Bill C-50; that Bill C-50 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.
That the clauses mentioned in section (e) of this motion do compose Bill C-51; that Bill C-51 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights.
That the clauses mentioned in section (f) of this motion do compose Bill C-52; that Bill C-52 be deemed read a first time and be printed; that the order for second reading of the said bill provide for the referral to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security.
