Debates of May 3rd, 2013

Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1

[Joyce Murray, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the remarks of the parliamentary secretary, who mentioned “as we grow our economy” several times, but in fact the Canadian economy is virtually stalled. There is a great deal of concern right across the spectrum over how poorly our economy is doing right now.

One of the ways it is being stalled is by the hits on small businesses, which, as we know, are the job creators of Canada. My colleague from Thunder Bay—Superior North mentioned the attack on tourism and the downturn in the tourism industry. Small businesses are hurting under the Conservative government.

I would like to ask the parliamentary secretary which small businesses that the government consulted advised that there should be an extra tax on dividends, which will cost small businesses $2.3 billion over the next five years?

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the premise of my colleague's question, in that Canada actually has a strong record of economic growth in the global context. The fact that we have created over 900,000 net new jobs in our economy since the economic downturn was deemed to have slowed down is something that our country should be quite proud of. We should be touting that.

We are attracting workers and investment to this country at greater rates than some of the developed countries are, and this is through our government's focus on ensuring that our products have access to other markets, that we have increased trade relations and that we have a proper regulatory structure that allows for investments in major infrastructure projects.

All of these things are at the core of budget 2013. They build on our government's track record, and yes, absolutely, we are seeing economic growth.

[Blake Richards, Conservative, Wild Rose, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I noted that my colleague mentioned she had been spending some time recently knocking on doors in her riding.

I have been knocking on doors in my riding, which is in the Calgary area as well. I have knocked on doors in the community of Cochrane and I have spent time at trade shows in communities like Airdrie and Didsbury, which are all in the same general area. My constituents are quite happy to be hearing that we have reconfirmed in the budget that we will make sure we balance our federal budget by 2015. I am wondering if she has heard similar things from people in her community and if her constituents are supportive of our commitment as a government to make sure we balance the federal budget by 2015.

[Michelle Rempel, Conservative, Calgary Centre-North, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my very hard-working colleague raises an excellent point. What his constituents told him shows that this is a principle that is very important to many Canadians. Why? It is because Canadians know in their hearts what it takes to balance a chequebook. They understand that if we spend more now, we have to either spend less in the future or increase revenue.

As I said earlier, through our government's efforts to increase trading opportunities and increase job creation through various programs, we are creating the economic growth or the increased revenue component through the strategic review of various government departments and through looking for operational efficiencies. We are also trying to make sure that government works more effectively. It is that balance that our constituents expect.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to voice my disappointment and opposition with respect to the various measures set out in Bill C-60, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 21, 2013.

Once again, I am sorry that the government has decided to move a time allocation motion to limit debate in the House. This denial of democracy is especially appalling since Bill C-60 contains many amendments that will affect Canadians directly.

It is important to point out that this bill amends close to 50 laws, including a number of things that have nothing to do with the budget, strictly speaking.

Rather than splitting it up so that we can study it in-depth in committee, the government wants to impose its views in a mammoth bill for the third time in this Parliament. The Conservatives are rejecting good democratic sense, without any consultation and without in-depth debate.

What we are getting is yet another austerity program that will in no way help Canadians re-enter the workforce and that will keep the country on a precarious path.

Tax increases, tariff hikes and the elimination of tax credits for labour-sponsored funds and co-operatives: the outcome is that Canadians have less money in their pockets, have access to fewer services and are the primary victims of the Conservatives' action.

As the Parliamentary Budget Officer reported this week, budget 2012, the 2012 economic update and budget 2013 alone will lead to the loss of 60,000 jobs by 2017, and a 0.57% drop in the GDP.

This determination to make massive cuts is unacceptable because they will inevitably cause an economic downturn. What the Conservatives are doing is weakening Canadian growth to serve some backwards ideological imperative.

Issues related to immigration and the temporary foreign worker program have a prominent place in this bill. It is therefore essential that we pay special attention to them.

First, the Conservatives were true to form with regard to the temporary foreign worker program. They waited until they were backed into a corner before reacting. They waited until the very last minute to make adjustments to the program. Today, without any consultation, they quickly and with great fanfare announced adjustment measures.

In reality, what the government is announcing with regard to the temporary foreign worker program undoes everything the government has done since it was elected.

The Conservatives were pushing for an increased number of temporary foreign workers. Today, they realize that they went too far. They were allowing companies to pay temporary foreign workers 15% less than Canadians workers. Today, they admit that that was a mistake, even though they completely denied those accusations less than a week ago.

They announced a program to fast-track the processing of applications. Today, they realize that companies are taking advantage of this opportunity to replace Canadian workers.

The fact is that the Conservatives hastily went ahead with these measures without consultation, which is exactly the same criticism we have of Bill C-60 today.

The government's laissez-faire attitude has led to such debacles as the ones involving HD Mining and the Royal Bank of Canada.

We believe that the temporary foreign worker program must return to its core mandate, which is to allow companies to meet specific workforce needs for a temporary period of time when Canadians are not available to do the job, particularly highly skilled occupations.

The program must not be used to replace Canadian workers nor to cut companies' payroll costs, as the Conservatives have allowed.

Last week, Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada, reiterated what the NDP has been saying for a long time.

The new user fees and the government's requirement for companies to submit a hiring and training plan for Canadian workers before being able to benefit from the program will penalize small and medium-sized businesses much more than large businesses.

SMEs will have more difficulty complying with these requirements since the costs will have a much greater impact on SMEs overall spending than they will on that of the big Canadian banks, for example.

Similarly, Bill C-60 gives the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism new discretionary powers. This is in addition to the powers he gave himself under Bill C-31 and Bill C-43.

Instead of putting the normal appeal process in place, the minister is once again setting himself up as both judge and jury in various immigration matters. As for other aspects related to immigration, the issue of fees is also cause for concern. It is important to point out that the new fees put forward by the minister for applications for permanent residence, citizenship and the temporary foreign worker program will not be subject to the User Fees Act under Bill C-60.

Accordingly, for these new fees, the minister will not have to consult with anyone, do any impact studies or inform applicants. In the last budget, the Minister of Finance gave Citizenship and Immigration Canada the latitude to increase various fees. Now he is giving that department carte blanche.

An application for permanent residence can cost over $1,500 with all the associated fees, and increasing costs even further will limit people's access to our immigration programs.

In addition to wanting to create a distinction between citizens with just one citizenship and those with dual citizenship, now the Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism will also be creating a distinction between wealthy immigrants and those who are less well off. The government's decision to reduce that department's budget for integration services will have a direct and negative impact.

In closing, this House must work on behalf of all Canadians. Imposing major changes of this nature without sufficient debate shows carelessness and contempt for democracy.

The immigration measures announced in response to pressure in the House and in the media, particularly concerning the temporary foreign worker program, reek of improvisation and amateurism, as usual.

Once again, this government is demonstrating that it has no overall plan and it has no idea what it means to be accountable.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

Mr. Speaker, hundreds of people in my riding of Toronto—Danforth have been writing to me about what they want to see in this budget. I have to say that trashing unionized workers was not on anybody's list.

Bill C-60 authorizes the government's Treasury Board to intervene at any stage of collective bargaining between any one of 49 crown corporations and unionized workers in order to impose a negotiating mandate on the corporation. It also permits the Treasury Board to intervene directly with the crown corporation and change the conditions of employment for any non-union employee at any time.

This represents the deepest possible hypocrisy by the Conservative government. I wonder if my colleague agrees that in this House and in the media, government ministers repeatedly tell us that crown corporations operate at arm's length from the government as a way to shield these corporations from accountability, effectively saying, “Don't ask us; ask the corporation.”

For example, repeatedly the government does this with respect to Canada Post when it is closing outlets, while never failing to take the opportunity to defend Canada Post's freedom to do what it wants, including pushing a business model that is designed to squeeze out unionized workers more and more.

Therefore, beyond hypocrisy, this is a combination of big government and Big Brother government. I wonder if my colleague for Saint-Lambert agrees with me or can add anything else.

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

I obviously agree with him. The government is always telling us that this is an austerity budget and that it is meant to stimulate the economy. That will have a number of implications. My colleague talked about complete and total interference in crown corporations, when these corporations should be independent and should remain that way.

In addition to interfering in crown corporations, this government is choosing to take control over everything. We can see in particular how it is trying to interfere in collective bargaining and everything related to hiring or choosing employees. This government is misguided and continues to be very controlling.

[Bruce Hyer, Independent, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to build on the question asked by the hon. member for Toronto—Danforth and ask the member for Saint-Lambert to say more about this.

It was very worrisome to me when I discovered that in Bill C-60 we would have the government staff sitting on the boards of our crown corporations, vetting and making decisions. This would end an historic arm's-length status of companies like VIA Rail, Canada Post and the CBC—

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order, please. Unfortunately, I do not think the translation was working.

The translation is not working. Is it working now?

It seems to be working now.

[Bruce Hyer, Independent, Thunder Bay—Superior North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the hon. member, following up on the question from the member for Toronto—Danforth, about government staff sitting in on the boards of crown corporations, vetting and making decisions under Bill C-60. As we know, these omnibus budget bills have little surprises and this is a worrisome surprise. This would end the historic arm's-length relationship of companies like VIA Rail, Canada Post and the CBC.

In light of today being World Press Freedom Day, what does the member think about the government taking control of what is supposed to be our independent broadcaster in Canada?

[Sadia Groguhé, NDP, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. This situation is very serious. We are talking about the CBC. Today is World Press Freedom Day, and we have to send a clear message that freedom of the press must be observed and, obviously, maintained.

We have a democratic system. However, this government is taking over many aspects of our economy. This interference will be nothing but disastrous. As the official opposition, we will continue to oppose these completely unacceptable control tactics.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the ability and the opportunity to debate the budget implementation act.

Like everybody here, I am encouraged by Canada's steady progress toward recovery from the recession. People have heard the statistics already. We are moving forward while many of our trading partners are actually struggling to keep their footing. Our record of job creation is better than any other G7 country and we are further ahead than any of the G7 when it comes to our debt to GDP ratio. Thanks to our government's prudent fiscal management, we still have a Triple-A credit rating.

Because of these strong fundamentals, Canada is seen internationally as a good place to invest, and that can only bode well for our continued prosperity. However, this is simply no time to relax. At the global level, the economic recovery is still fragile and we will need to continue to be prudent and follow the plan that has always served us so well. We will also need to come to grips with the greatest threat to our long-term economic vitality. Simply put, that is the skills shortage.

As Canada's Minister of Labour, I have my own particular perspective on the issue. I travel across the country and I talk to workers and employers about the importance of co-operative labour relations, about health and safety in the workplace and about the benefits of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. These are wide-ranging discussions and they often shift to the topic of skills shortages.

Employers say that they are having a hard time finding qualified workers and this stifling of their ability to grow is a direct result. In some cases, it has actually put their businesses and even their industries at risk.

On the other side, workers are always aware as well of the pressures and they are rightfully concerned. Indeed, I have been stopped on the shop floor by machinists who are very concerned about the fact that they are heading to retirement and there is nobody coming in to replace them.

The workers and the employers I talk to often express their bewilderment that it does not make sense that we have this skills shortage at a time when we have so many Canadians who are still unemployed.

We have heard from the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development that there is a mismatch in our country between the skills that employers are looking for and the skills that are actually available in the workforce. Our government is committed to giving Canadians the skills they need in order to get the jobs that are in demand. That is why skills training is such an important part of this new budget.

In economic action plan 2013, we will give our young people better access to information on where the jobs really are, particularly in the skilled trades area and the STEM fields, science, technology, engineering and mathematics, and what skills are required to get these jobs.

As members know, the Government of Canada invests about $2.7 billion a year in agreements with the provinces and the territories for skills training and for employment training as well. However, these programs need to be better lined up with the skills that the employers require and we want to transform the way that Canadians get training. That is why we will create the Canada job grant. Instead of having the situation where officials or bureaucrats decide what training should be delivered, employers themselves will identify their training needs and then they will apply to the provinces for the funding. This will ensure that Canadians will get the skills that employers seek.

With the current $500 million a year labour market agreements with the provinces and the territories set to expire in 2014, we will negotiate new agreements centred on this job grant. When it is fully implemented, we expect this job grant can help 130,000 Canadians to access the training they need to get a job or to improve their skills for in-demand jobs.

Just as important as in-school training is on-the-job training. We already have grants to encourage people to pursue and complete their apprenticeship training in a red seal trade. In our economic action plan 2013, we introduce new measures to further support apprentices. People who want to enter the skilled trades will benefit from reduced barriers to accreditation and as well from support to complete their apprentice training and their certification.

To that end, we will work with the provinces and the territories to help harmonize requirements for apprentices in the red seal trades. I will give the House an example. We are going to examine the potential use of practical tests as a method of assessment.

We are also going to take a number of steps to recognize the importance of hiring and training apprentices. The government will be introducing measures that will support the use of apprentices through federal construction and maintenance contracts, investments in affordable housing and infrastructure projects receiving federal funding.

Finally, we are increasing our support for training and employment programs that target groups that are under-represented in our workforce. What we know is that people under the age of 25, aboriginal people, newcomers and people with disabilities have a significantly higher rate of unemployment than the general population. Quite frankly, this is a waste of their potential and it is a loss to our economy, because we need all of the talent in Canada at work.

As the minister responsible for employment equity, diversity in the workplace is an issue that is very close to my heart. There are almost 800,000 Canadians with disabilities who are employable, but they have yet to find a job. Almost half of these, 340,000, have a post-secondary education. They could fill many of the jobs that are now vacant.

That is why last year our government created a panel on labour market opportunities for persons with disabilities. It was given a mandate to identify private sector successes and best practices in increasing labour market participation of persons with disabilities. In January 2013, it issued a report entitled “Rethinking Disability in the Private Sector”, and it presented a convincing business case for hiring persons with disabilities. It helped to form the measures that were announced in economic action plan 2013.

The budget announced an investment of $222 million per year for a new generation of labour market agreements for persons with disabilities. These reformed agreements, to be introduced by 2014, will be designed to give persons with disabilities more support in finding employment.

The opportunities fund for people with disabilities assists people with disabilities to prepare for, to obtain, to keep employment or to become self-employed. Our government is extending this program with ongoing funding of $40 million per year. It will also be reformed to provide more demand-driven training solutions for people with disabilities and make it more responsive to labour market needs.

We are extending the enabling accessibility fund with annual funding of $15 million to support capital costs of construction and renovations to improve physical accessibility for people with disabilities.

We also announced additional funding of $7 million for the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, or SSHRC, some of which will support research related to labour market participation of people with disabilities.

In addition, the economic action plan will enable the creation of the Canadian employers disability forum, which will be managed by employers for employers. The forum will continue the good work of the panel by educating employers about the best ways to attract and retain persons with disabilities.

I am looking forward to contributing to the government's efforts to modernize the disability regime and focus on early return to work for federal civil servants.

Our government is also proposing ways to meet the challenge of employment for youth. The Minister of Finance pointed out in his budget that good choices made early on in life could help ensure that young Canadians would get the skills and experience to find work quickly, avoid unnecessary debt and get a better start to their career.

Our government has never wavered from our commitment to strengthen the economy for all Canadians and get more people into the workforce. Our economic action plan 2013 reflects our fidelity to that commitment. The measures it proposes will help us close the skills gap and it will benefit both employers and workers.

As the Canadian Chamber of Commerce said, “The measures announced...are a significant step forward in the federal government’s attack on Canada’s skills challenge”.

With that in mind, I ask the House to support the budget implementation act.

[Raymond Côté, NDP, Beauport—Limoilou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, the Minister of Labour is all talk and no action.

The government is responsible for a number of failures. I could talk about the $600 billion accumulated by Canadian corporations.

Let us focus on the government's bragging rights that the member for Fort McMurray—Athabasca desperately tried to have the Parliamentary Budget Officer's analysts validate. The 900,000 jobs created since the end of the recession are for the most part structural in nature, but let us not forget that the government could do more damage to the economy.

If the minister wants to take credit for creating 900,000 jobs, is she prepared to take the blame for the loss of 500,000 jobs during the recession while her government was dithering?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure you that this government does not dither. It gets on with getting the work done that needs to be done. Quite frankly, the proof is in the results. Yes, we have net new jobs in Canada. Yes, our economy is doing much better than anywhere around the world.

However, as I said in the opening speech, we need to continue to be prudent. We have recognized what the gap is for us. It is a skills gap. We have developed programming to help us close the skills gap.

We are the party, we are the government, that figures out what the issues are and then develops a plan. We execute that plan, and we get excellent results.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, as heritage critic, I received a letter from the Independent Media Arts Alliance. They quoted from the Canada Council for the Arts. The Canada Council is what the Conservatives brag about putting more money into. They obviously feel that it is an effective organization.

What the Canada Council says is this:

...freedom of artistic expression from control or dominance by external forces such as governments and markets...

Contained within the budget is something unprecedented. It is the presence of the Treasury Board in the midst of all these negotiations. The answer we get in return is that they want to be more in control of the process.

This poisons everybody, management and union alike. They are so quick to endorse the idea of arm's length when it is convenient for them, but this really goes against all theories of being arm's length.

Where did it come from? Why is it really going to be the case in the budget implementation bill?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, at the end of the day, every minister who has a crown corporation in his or her portfolio is responsible for the crown corporation. Indeed, the government is responsible for crown corporations in total, and as such, it is responsible for their fiscal management.

One of the key aspects of looking at crown corporations is the reality that we have a significant portion of their budgets associated with human resources. It makes very good sense that we want to improve the financial viability of crown corporations, including their compensation levels. We are doing so by introducing the ability of the government to take part in setting the mandate for negotiations on behalf of the crown corporations.

It is very simple. It does not go to anything with respect to day-to-day activities in the arts world and whatever arts endeavours are being undertaken.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Mr. Speaker, we know that our economy is doing very well. We have heard from world leaders, the OECD, and the IMF about how well our economy is doing as a result of the $45-billion economic action plan and the infrastructure stimulus fund this government put in place. We have seen jobs created as a result of new bridges, new roads and new community centres right across the country—in Quebec, Ontario and Alberta.

Mr. Speaker, you and I know, but many Canadians do not know, that the NDP voted against the economic action plan and every single dollar that went into Ontario, Quebec and across the country.

What would have happened had the NDP had its way? What would have happened if we had not had the economic action plan and had not created the 900,000 net new jobs we have as a Conservative government? What would have happened to our economy?

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I can tell you what would have happened in my part of the world, in my constituency of Halton. There would certainly be fewer jobs than there are right now, and there would certainly be less of an economy than there is right now.

Many constituencies and many communities across the country benefited greatly from the prudent plans we put in action to ensure that we have long-term growth, economic growth and prosperity and that we continue to create jobs. We did it through infrastructure investment. We did it through job share and so many different programs that helped keep us moving through the recession.

It sets us up for an excellent future.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to follow on the heels of the speech just made by the Minister of Labour, because it gives me the opportunity to point out to anyone listening, to the country in general, that this particular piece of legislation and the recent actions of that Minister of Labour constitute nothing less than a war on labour and the left. It is a war on fair wages and benefits, earned over a century of free collective bargaining and trade union rights. The minister has been systematically undermining the rights of workers to organize, the rights of workers to bargain collectively and the rights of workers sometimes to withhold their services, in fact, as is their right should collective bargaining reach an impasse.

We find it again in the most egregious assault on trade union rights in the post-war era. We find it again in the parameters of this document in which the Conservatives are interfering pre-emptively in the collective bargaining rights of crown corporations. They say that they will dictate the terms and conditions of those working people.

I do not think I need to remind you, Mr. Speaker, that a burgeoning, well-paid middle class is the greatest strength our economy has, and it can be traced directly to the advent and rise of the trade union movement, which bargained for fair wages and working conditions for working people all over North America. It was the United States of America's biggest folly and biggest mistake when it attacked trade unions in that country with its right-to-work legislation, with measures just like we are seeing from their neo-conservative counterparts in Canada. They diminished the rate of unionization in those right-to-work states, and correspondingly, wages and working conditions cascaded and tumbled to where a good job in Georgia or North Carolina these days pays $8, $10 or $12 an hour, with no benefits whatsoever.

If that is the direction the Conservatives want to go, I ask in whose interest it is to drive down the wages and working conditions of Canadians. Canadians do not need to elect a government to do that. There are market forces all over the place that seek to do that.

The Conservatives are interfering with the normal market forces, the natural market forces, that dictate that in a time of skills shortages, working people can command a better wage. That is the time they go to the bargaining table and say that our labour might have been worth only $20 an hour last year, when there was no work, but there is lots of work now. Now is the time when working people should be able to negotiate fair wages.

What are the Conservatives doing in my industry? One example found in Bill C-60 is the temporary foreign worker program. People forget that in the last omnibus budget bill, that minister eliminated the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act. They hardly even noticed that. The construction fair wages act set minimum wages for non-union construction workers at something higher than the provincial minimum wage. She said that they got rid of that because hardly anyone works under it anyway.

Correspondingly, the Conservatives brought in the temporary foreign worker expedited 10-day guarantee. Labour brokers, labour pimps, from around the world are now bringing crews of construction workers to Canada under that program. They are being paid 15% less, and not less than the construction wage but less than the minimum wage in a province. How does any fair employer ever compete? How does any fair contractor ever win another job if its competition is using these labour pimps that have been facilitated by the minister to undermine the whole fair tendering process?

These are the unintended consequences, or maybe intended consequences, of the rash, irresponsible legislation we are seeing in these massive omnibus bills. There is no debate. There is never any time to debate any of these predictable consequences. We would have brought these things to the attention of the minister if these things ever could be debated fairly.

I was thinking earlier today of a poem by Allen Ginsberg called Howl. It begins, “I saw the best minds of my generation [rot]”. I watched the best aspects of our parliamentary democracy systematically undermined, assaulted and destroyed by the government. The Conservatives have this idea, like a lot of neo-conservative fundamentalists, that the end justifies the means, that they can throw away everything that is good and decent about our parliamentary democracy, because somehow God is on their side and they are going to drive this down people's throat, in spite of overwhelming evidence that it is the wrong way to go.

I saw a bumper sticker the last time I was in Washington that said, “At least the war on the middle class is going well”. That is what is happening here.

The Conservatives have this idea that they have to ratchet down the expectations of Canadian workers by ordering people back to work at Canada Post at a rate lower than what was negotiated with their employer, or by pre-empting job action at Air Canada by ordering people back to work before there was even a strike, or now, by stripping the collective bargaining ability from the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who work in crown corporations.

In whose interest is it to drive down the wages of Canadian workers? Are they out of their minds? We can look south of the border at the predictable consequences. They have destroyed their middle class there. They have completely undermined fair wages.

I come from the building industry. I served an apprenticeship as a carpenter. I have indentured literally hundreds of apprentices in my experience as the head of the carpenters' union. We predicted skills shortages 40 or 50 years ago, for heaven's sake, given the predictable demographics of the baby boom. It was no surprise.

A temporary foreign worker program that saturates the market with cheap foreign labour is not a human resources strategy. It is the polar opposite. It is admitting defeat.

Let me give an example of some of the catastrophes in that program. I already brought it to the minister's attention years ago. Gold River Tahsis, on Vancouver Island, had a pulp and paper mill shut down. It was a terrible loss to the community. A company in China bought the pulp and paper mill, but it had to be dismantled and torn down. Eighty unemployed millwrights in the town of Gold River Tahsis could have used one more year's work to dismantle the pulp and paper mill. Instead, the company had to go to a labour broker, a labour pimp we call them, and bring in 80 people from South Asia to do it. We got the documents. We got a copy of the application. It asked if they had tried to find qualified Canadians. The response was “yes”. It asked why they did not hire qualified Canadians. The response was that the cost was too high.

That is what the contractor put in the documents that went to the minister's desk, and the Conservatives signed off and brought in these guys. All these local people in Gold River Tahsis were locked outside the gate looking in while a bunch of temporary foreign workers got the last few weeks of employment in their dying pulp mill. That is an atrocity.

The Winnipeg International Airport is another example. Again, I tried to go to the minister with this complaint. We have a couple of hundred unemployed carpenters in Manitoba. We are building a brand new airport that we are all proud of. Where does the construction crew come from to place all that concrete? They come from Lebanon. Their last job was in Latvia. They are a bunch of Lebanese workers being shopped around by these labour pimps who go around the world with their crews undermining the local conditions. There are hundreds of unemployed carpenters in Manitoba. It is skilled work doing elevated concrete ramps with all kinds of staging and scaffolding involved, and it goes to a bunch of Lebanese workers.

I have nothing against the good people of Lebanon, but they have no right to those Canadian jobs. If we need to open the doors to immigration, there would be no complaint from this side of the House, but those jobs should not be given away to temporary foreign workers.

God knows under what terms and conditions they were being paid. Believe me, the local contractors can never compete with someone who can get 40 people working at 15% less than the minimum wage. How does a fair contractor ever win another job?

The most recent example is the Women's Hospital in Winnipeg. That is going on right now. The labourers and carpenters are picketing that job as we speak, because temporary foreign workers are doing labour work. These are not even carpenters' jobs. They are construction labourers. The Conservatives cannot tell me that there is not some unemployed aboriginal kid in a northern Manitoba reserve, where the unemployment rate is 80% and 90%, who could not be trained and put on that job at $20 an hour to do construction labour.

No one has tried hard enough to place the skills shortages with the labour surpluses. It is a pathetic situation, absolutely pathetic.

Bill C-60 is full of 50-some odd pieces of legislation that we as members of Parliament, representing the people who elected us, will never have a chance to give proper scrutiny and oversight to. We are being denied that right by closure again. How many times have the Conservatives moved closure on a bill? All of them. It is an easy number. I do not need to even know the number.

Every single time they have a piece of legislation, they deny us the right to do due diligence, as is our obligation and duty as elected members of Parliament.

I am sick of it. I have watched it deteriorate, and in my 15 years as a member of Parliament, I have never seen it as bad as it is today. These guys are a disgrace.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, some things do not change. The hon. member across the row believes that calling people names and being very flowery in his words is actually going to matter, but what really does matter is actions. They speak a lot more than words. I think it is important to set—

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

They are one step up from Simon Legree. They are slave drivers. They are human traffickers.

[The Acting Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Order. The hon. Minister of Labour has the floor.

[Lisa Raitt, Conservative, Halton, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will say one thing, and I hope that the women on the other side of the House will listen and consider this clearly.

I think it is inappropriate to utilize language associated with the sex trade in this House of Parliament to describe people who are doing different jobs around the country. I think it is nothing more than grandstanding, and I think it is nothing more than trying to grab a sound bite.

I am offended by it personally. He should know better, and the women sitting behind him should know better than to put up with that kind of nonsense as well.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, another question comes to mind.

First of all it was robocalls and the fixed election. If the Conservatives won their razor-thin majority by cheating, they do not actually have a mandate to govern at all, never mind what they are doing now by abusing and undermining every institution of democracy that we hold dear.

Then it was election financing fraud. Now it is using MPs' mailing privileges to carpet bomb ridings like mine. Ten members of Parliament from Manitoba used their MP mailing privileges to carpet bomb my riding with all this stuff.

The question that comes to mind and the question I put to you, Mr. Speaker, is this: where did they get the lists? How did they know that my neighbour's mother only lived at my neighbour's house for four months before she passed away? How did they send a personally addressed letter to that person's mother?

How about the case in which they filed their income tax from their son's address? How did they know that their income tax was mailed from that address?

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!