Debates of May 6th, 2014

Opposition motion—Temporary Foreign Workers

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

I absolutely flagged that as an issue within the embassy and recommended that it be stopped henceforth. It would have been stopped had the public servants of that time had their way. However, they were told by the political level that this was absolutely a legitimate form of employment that was required for political purposes, presumably by members of the Liberal Party at that time in the greater Toronto area and elsewhere who benefited from the support of certain establishments where those poor women went. We all know that stream was linked to criminality and human smuggling. We are all proud on this side of the House, and I hope at least all women in this place are proud, of the fact that it has been ended, and ended as long as we are in office, for good.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Who ended it?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

It was ended by this government.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

It was not.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

It was absolutely ended by this government, finally.

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. I would remind the minister that his comments should be directed to the Chair and there should not be an exchange going on between the opposition parties and the minister while he is speaking.

The hon. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will take this opportunity to remind the members of the opposition that we listened respectfully to their speeches and that they would do well, on a serious subject, not to interrupt ours.

There has been inconsistency from the Liberal Party. There have been low standards and, most important, there were no pathways. There were precious few and, in many cases, zero pathways for temporary foreign workers to become immigrants to our country.

Our government is proud to have taken action to change that. We have scaled up the provincial nominee program, mostly thanks to my colleague, now the Minister of Employment and Social Development, from a program that brought a paltry 5,000 or 6,000 people to our country 10 years ago to one that is on track to bringing 47,000 people to our country as permanent residents this year. Most of those people are already here. Most of those people are the temporary foreign workers that serve us in high demand occupations in western Canada. Some of them have served in the seasonal agricultural worker program, very successfully, in southern Ontario and other parts of the country. They serve us in trades where we cannot, honestly, in good faith, find Canadians. No employer can find enough Canadians to do the job, so we bring these people to Canada temporarily at first, then give them the opportunity to become Canadian permanent residents and Canadian citizens. That is an opportunity afforded to temporary foreign workers by our government. That is in addition to the dignity of temporary foreign workers and indeed to the motivation of temporary foreign workers by our government.

This is not the end of the story. The Canadian experience class, a new stream of immigration, is bringing 15,000 permanent residents this year. It is targeting both students who have work experience and temporary foreign workers. It is a creation of our Conservative government in 2008, when my colleague, the Minister of Employment and Social Development, was in this portfolio. It started small. We wanted to ensure that it worked, but it has grown faster and further than any new program in recent history. It essentially brings us to a point where our economic immigration has two sources. One of them is through the new and improved federal skilled worker program with higher language requirements and higher skills requirements. Because of the attractiveness of Canada in this day and age, we can afford to be selective about who comes here as immigrants. We are getting an unprecedented quality of economic immigrants to the country, thank goodness, and thanks to years of effort on this side of the House. We have added to that the federal skilled trades program and the start-up visa, all targeting the best and brightest from beyond our shores.

However, the other source, almost equal in size and volume to the programs that target skilled workers, tradespeople and skilled citizens of other countries to come from beyond Canada's borders, targets those who are already here, the highly skilled people here as temporary workers in a wide variety of capacities across the country. Some of them are here on LMOs, others without, having just finished their studies, proven themselves as able to adapt to the Canadian job market by having studied here and having received a diploma or degree here. That is a pathway. That is a vast stream of immigration to our country that simply did not exist under the previous Liberal government.

We are proud of that innovation. We are proud that we are able to promote temporary foreign workers, when they want it and when they meet the criteria, to permanent residents and to citizenship in a growing number of cases. We have seen the results that this gives in terms of not only the satisfaction of those new Canadians, but also in terms of the satisfaction of employers and labour market demand that would otherwise go unfulfilled in the country.

We are all aware that, starting in 2006, there was abuse in the system. There was abuse in the asylum system, the immigration system, the citizenship program, and yes, in the temporary foreign worker program, that needed to be addressed. We have striven, at every stage, to balance our strong immigration programs—20,000 people per year, on average, higher than under the previous Liberal government—with integrity measures that have sought to close the door to those who would take our generosity for granted, abuse the welcome mat Canadians put out, cut the queue, misrepresent the facts, or engage in other forms of fraud.

We have made huge progress on this. The compliance measures introduced by my colleague, the Minister of Employment and Social Development, came into effect at the beginning of this year: the blacklist, administrative and financial penalties, and the possibility of criminal investigation for those who abuse the temporary foreign worker program. Those measures are unprecedented, and we are prepared to use them.

We have taken similar steps in the live-in caregiver program to give these potentially vulnerable but very hard-working temporary foreign workers, who in the vast majority of cases go on to become permanent residents and citizens, the ability to phone hotlines if they are in trouble and to have more of their expenses defrayed by their employers so that they make a proper living.

Of course, the current moratorium in response to demonstrated cases of abuse in the low-skilled end of the food industry we felt was absolutely necessary. It will help us frame a temporary foreign worker program for the future that serves Canada's interests and the integrity of the Canadian labour market. It is a last resort. It is to be used only after we have exhausted our domestic possibilities, after we have exhausted the talent of our young people, who are increasingly getting the skills and work experience they need to handle the jobs of today in a changing labour market, and after we have exhausted the potential of the immigration system.

Express entry, our new approach to delivering economic immigration, which will come on stream on January 1, 2015, is going to result in a six-month processing time for all of our economic immigration programs. We have never had that, not under a Liberal or a Conservative government. It is going to be a very attractive new initiative in immigration that will help make it a good habit for provinces, territories, and employers themselves to have recourse to the permanent immigration system instead of the temporary foreign worker program, in a large number of cases.

Let me be clear about what has really been happening. Our temporary foreign worker program is long standing. We have had temporary foreign workers in this country at every stage of our development. Most of them have ultimately stayed as immigrants, whether they were first building railways, were in the construction industry in our cities, or were in the natural resource sector.

Let us be clear about what has happened since the 1990s around the world. There has been an explosion of this particular stream of economically driven migration around the world, and the larger number of temporary foreign workers we have in Canada is by no means out of step. In many ways, because of our immigration system, it is less, proportionally, than what other countries have. The difference is that we know how many temporary foreign workers there are in Canada, whereas many of our European, North American, and Asian partners cannot even report how many temporary foreign workers they have and what the impact of those workers is on their labour markets. We at least have data, and we are using it.

A lot of this analysis is done by the OECD, and I recommend to all members the comparisons between an increasingly well-managed Canadian system and systems in others parts of the world, in other advanced economies, which, in many cases, are out of control.

What lies behind the increase in Canada's temporary foreign worker population, in spite of our efforts to increase integrity and in spite of our efforts to tighten, scrutinize, and penalize those who would abuse the system? Why is it still growing?

Well, we should not go too far down the road in this debate without talking about the performance of the Canadian economy.

There are simply no other G7 economies or even OECD economies that have the sectoral and regional labour needs of northern British Columbia, most of Alberta, southeastern Saskatchewan, the manufacturing towns and cities of Winnipeg, or the mining towns and manufacturing towns in southern and northern Ontario and northern Quebec, where there is growth but not enough people.

We see this in the shipbuilding program in eastern Canada. We see it in Newfoundland and Labrador, where the mining industry is forging ahead and the offshore industry is strong. Newfoundland and Labrador had not really talked about immigration for decades, and maybe even a century or more, and it is now at the front of the queue asking Canadians to move there. It is also asking immigrants with the right skills to come. When those two sources fail, and only when they fail, foreign temporary workers fill the gap. Our economic performance has driven these numbers upward.

The International Experience Canada program was, again, created by a Liberal government. It was expanded dramatically by a Liberal government. There was more balance between Canadians leaving and foreign students coming here under Liberal governments. What is the difference between today and that time? Canada's economic performance was not so dramatically better than that of our IEC partners. That is why fewer Canadians choose to go to some of these European jurisdictions today. There are no jobs there. We hope that in two or three years, as we continue these excellent initiatives aimed at building long-term bridges and long-term economic relationships around the world, there will be jobs, and Canadians will go. We are obliging our partners to promote the jobs that are there to Canadians.

In the meantime, we will be proud of our superior economic performance. We will be proud of the integrity measures we have taken and that my colleague, in particular, has taken in recent days to ensure that our temporary foreign worker program works as planned, as a last resort in support of a skilled labour market in Canada and in support of economic immigration that is increasingly on target to meet the needs of the Canadian economy.

[Hedy Fry, Liberal, Vancouver Centre, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the minister made a lot of allegations, saying that it was his government that brought in the idea of temporary foreign workers becoming permanent residents and citizens.

I want to remind the minister that former minister of immigration Joe Volpe, in 2005, created a new class of immigrants. It was called the in-Canada class of immigrants. This process allowed Canadian-experienced workers, such as temporary foreign workers, and Canadian-educated international students who came to Canada for an education, to apply for landed immigrant status from within Canada. In the past, they had to leave Canada to apply. Mr. Volpe put $700 million over five years toward that end, because he felt that these were experienced people with Canadian experience and language, and if they wished to, they would be able to fast-forward that. The objective was to have a more responsive and proactive immigration system for skilled workers.

I wonder if the minister could tell me why he did not know that, when he is the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. It would obviously be part of the information in his department.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, there is not enough time to go into everything we know about the Liberal record on immigration. If the member would care to have another debate about the Liberal legacy on immigration, we would be happy to have it.

Joe Volpe did not implement a five-year plan with x million dollars, because he was not the minister for very long. Canadians saw quickly enough what gross abuses a late-term government with a Liberal label was capable of, and that government was turned out of office, with a positive impact on our immigration system.

Let us be clear. The numbers are here. In 2005, the last full year of a Liberal government, we had 13,800 immigrants with some background of having worked in Canada or having been temporary foreign workers here. In 2012, that number rose to 38,000. That is almost four times the Liberal number. I guarantee that when we have the 2013-14 statistics, the number will be dramatically higher again.

[Jinny Sims, NDP, Newton—North Delta, BC]

Mr. Speaker, whether we are looking at the outsourcing of jobs at HD Mining in B.C. or RBC, which was the only one identified, but I am sure other organizations are doing the same, it is very clear now that wages are being stolen from workers. We have seen all over the media revelation after revelation that employers are firing or not hiring Canadian workers and people living in Canada.

Would the minister agree that to restore Canadian confidence in the temporary foreign worker program, it is time for an independent review while the government carries on with the tinkering fixes it is doing?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will agree that this moratorium was absolutely necessary to make sure that the integrity of the temporary foreign worker program is respected with regard to those going into the food industry.

I will also agree that the reforms the minister and this government have undertaken are wide-ranging and are having a positive impact on integrity and compliance. It is absolutely unacceptable for employers to let Canadians go, when they are available and have the skills and qualifications necessary, to turn to temporary foreign workers as a first choice. That is an abuse. Our government has been clear. When we have found those abuses, we have taken action.

What is not clear is where the Liberal Party is going on this issue. The member for Markham—Unionville outlined his plan, then halfway through his press conference called for some cooks to be admitted to a restaurant in his riding. For the Liberals, it is fine to have rules, but when they know someone who is a supporter, and they want to help out, the rules do not need to be followed. That is their record.

On the NDP, we have also heard of some in B.C. calling for a complete moratorium, a complete end, and others in B.C. calling for a broadening of the temporary foreign worker program to allow all temporary foreign workers to become immigrants. We do not know from either of the opposition parties which way they want to go. We will go in the direction of Canada's economic interests and the integrity of our immigration programs.

[Roxanne James, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness]

Mr. Speaker, I have been in the House listening to speeches and some of the questions coming from the Liberal Party. Time after time, I hear the Liberals talk about their progressive immigration policies. As a Conservative and a woman, I cannot believe that they would consider bringing in 600 strippers as temporary foreign workers very progressive.

However, I have a question for the minister. Part of what was brought forward by the Liberals is to have another review and report done by the Auditor General. In fact, that has already been done. In 2009, the Auditor General reviewed the program, and Employment and Social Development Canada and Citizenship and Immigration actually agreed with many of the recommendations, and virtually all have been done.Those that were completed, and the ongoing changes to this program, the opposition parties have continued to vote against.

I would like to ask the minister if now is the time for another study or if now is the time for the opposition parties to get on board and begin supporting some of the measures to actually improve this program.

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, obviously it is long past time for studies. We have systems in both the Department of Employment and Social Development and the Department of Citizenship and Immigration that are continuously reviewing the data. The data in Canada for temporary foreign workers, even when the programs are implemented in partnership with the provinces and territories, is high-fidelity, high-quality data.

When we see abuses taking place and trends that are not justified by economic circumstances, we take action. That is why as the member well knows, we have expanded access to Canada, the pathway for temporary foreign workers to become permanent residents, fourfold since the ill-fated last Liberal minister, Joe Volpe, made a late, desperate attempt to try to do something about this in 2005. It was far too late, after so many abuses had multiplied and gotten out of control, to do anything that would have redressed the situation.

It has taken us eight years to get there, but we are proud to have 40,000-plus temporary foreign workers becoming permanent residents of Canada every year. That is very close to four times what happened in the last year of the Liberal government, when the temporary foreign worker program was already huge and growing quickly but when the door was still shut to immigration to Canada for people who really deserved it.

[John McKay, Liberal, Scarborough—Guildwood, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to congratulate the minister on the brilliance of his speech on a subject matter that is not in front of the House and his talent for setting up straw men, particularly Liberal straw men, and vigorously knocking them over.

However, the opposition day motion is on the subject of the problems with the temporary foreign worker program. Which part of the motion does the member not agree with: the disclosure of labour market opinion, the tightening of labour market opinion, the implementation of stronger rules, or the Auditor General part?

It appears that his colleague, the Minister of Employment, thinks this is mostly a good motion. He is a little bent out of shape about the Auditor General. Any minister does not want the Auditor General poking around in his department. What part of the motion does the hon. member not accept?

[Chris Alexander, Conservative, Ajax—Pickering, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do agree with my colleague, the Minister of Employment and Social Development, that most of the motion goes in the same direction we have been travelling as a government with a view to ensuring compliance, with a view to ensuring accountability, with a view to ensuring that Canadians get first crack at jobs. However, we will not direct the Auditor General with regard to the work that he or his office does. Liberals might do that, but we actually take the independence of officers of Parliament seriously on this side of the House, and we will continue to do so.

For my part, my main concern about the motion is that it does not address the issue we have been trying to address for a year, which continues to be central to our strategy for immigration, of creating pathways for temporary foreign workers to become permanent residents of this country, when they meet the criteria and when they are needed in Canada.

The leader of the Liberal Party seemed to want that. Then sometimes he seems to want a lot of things. The motion that is before us—

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

Order. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Winnipeg North.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I am not really sure of where one could actually start to try to deal with the spin that is coming from the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration. I am astounded by how he is trying to mislead Canadians not only inside the chamber but outside the chamber. Maybe if we try to stick to a few facts it might assist, but I would really encourage the minister to put on his reality hat and try to get a better understanding of actually what has been taking place.

The motion before us today is of critical importance for all Canadians, because it does deal with the economy and how important the economy is for each and every one of us from coast to coast to coast. The unfortunate reality is that the government just does not get it, or it chooses not to get it.

The issue before us today with the temporary foreign worker program is entirely of the government's making, 100%. It created the problem. This was not something that was created years and years ago under a Liberal administration. This is something that was 100% created by the current Minister of Citizenship and Immigration and the former minister. Those are the two individuals who created the problem we have today.

The first thing they need to do is go to the Prime Minister's Office and maybe apologize for the mess they have made of this program, as opposed to trying to pass the buck to the former Liberal administration. There were no problems with the temporary foreign worker program before the Conservatives took office. The program was in fact effective. This is a program that served Canadians exceptionally well for many years until the current government took office. That is when we started to see the real abuse. That is when we started to see the displacement of thousands of Canadians who could be working today but are not working today because of mismanagement and incompetence that comes from the minister today and yesterday's minister with regard to immigration. That is the reality.

Yes, the truth does hurt and I am passionate about the issue because at the end of the day, you are hurting the middle class by the government's inaction on this issue.

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. The hon. member knows to address his comments to the Chair, not to the other side of the chamber.

I would also direct the other side of the chamber to lower the tone. It is way too loud in here, coming from both sides of the House.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I see the former minister of immigration is hurting. The reality is that sometimes it does hurt. The reality is that the current government has to take responsibility for its actions. That is why we are suggesting, first and foremost, to ensure that this program continues into the future, we need to get the Auditor General of Canada involved in the program in terms of looking into it and coming up with the recommendations that are critically important to preserve the integrity of the program.

We must remember that this is a program that started during the 1970s with Pierre Elliott Trudeau. He is the individual who created the program. It is interesting to hear the comments from the government side in regard to immigration, that it was just a skilled program and had no pathways to immigration. That is not true. There were complementary immigration programs like the live-in caregiver program, which had a direct link for every live-in caregiver to ultimately be able to land and become a permanent resident. The difference is that the Liberal Party recognizes the valuable contributions that immigrants make to our country, today and in the past. It is important to us that, as much as possible, we have pathways that lead toward immigration for a worker possibly landing here in Canada.

That is one of the reasons why the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration was taking credit and glowing about how wonderful the provincial nominee program is and how the current government has been expanding the numbers. Let me remind the minister that it was Jean Chrétien who created the provincial nominee program in the late 1990s, and it continued to evolve to today, where it is one of the most successful immigration programs we have. As a direct result of that program, members will find, if they take a look at the province of Manitoba, that the need for temporary workers is actually significantly stagnant compared to other regions of the country for one reason. It is because, through the provincial nominee program, they have been able to address the labour needs and at the same time allow people to have a pathway to immigration. The statistics will show that.

[Robert Chisholm]

Government in Manitoba?

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Do not go there.

Mr. Speaker, the numbers will clearly demonstrate that we have had huge increases in temporary foreign workers. We are talking about 140,000 or 150,000 at the time when they took office. Then last year, when I was critic on immigration, it was 338,000. That is a significant increase. We know the government has dropped the ball on that particular file, and this resolution goes a long way in saying to the government that it needs to recognize that action is necessary today.

It is interesting that the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration says that there is conflict within the Liberal Party. He says that some people want to see temporary workers immigrate and some want to close it down. He tries to portray that there are inconsistencies within the Liberal Party. In reality, there are no inconsistencies whatsoever within the Liberal Party. We have said that at the end of the day, once all things are said and done, we believe in a temporary foreign worker program. If it is managed properly, it will have a complementary effect on the Canadian economy and society as a whole. If the government had been doing what it was supposed to be doing, there would not be a need for this particular resolution.

Let me give a specific example. The former minister of immigration—I think it was on CTV or inside the House—and the current minister to a certain degree, when he tries to emulate the former minister, said that there are members of the opposition who requested foreign workers, and they ask how hypocritical those opposition members can be, when after all, opposition members are saying to limit the numbers and then a member is requesting a foreign worker in his own riding.

I must confess, I am one of those individuals. I did write one letter. A company from China is establishing a business in Winnipeg. There is substantial machinery, multi-million dollars' worth, coming to Winnipeg. The owner approached me to say that they would like to have the people who disassembled the machinery in China come to Canada to reassemble it, and to assist in training Canadians for those jobs.

Whether it is that particular example, or the agricultural industry here in Canada, which is so very dependent on the program, that is what the program was designed for. Members of Parliament are doing their job if they are approaching the government to try to assist companies in getting those temporary worker permits where there is economic benefit for Canadians.

What would the alternative be? If the government were doing its job, maybe there would not be as much of a need for members of Parliament to do so. That is not what is happening.

The government has been closing its eyes and has allowed the temporary foreign worker program to expand at a rapid rate. The result of that expansion has had a significant impact on the economy here in Canada when it comes to those individuals who are unemployed and want to find work.

The leader of the Liberal Party cited specific examples where the numbers of work permits have gone up in a riding, as has the level of unemployment. This is something that frustrates a lot of people when they are watching the 10 o'clock news, or whenever they see it. The government is taking action that ultimately hurts the economy. People, their siblings or children, who are trying to find employment, are finding that the government, through its policies, is actually undermining their ability to obtain employment.

There is a valid argument to be made that the government is using the program to suppress wages. There is a very strong argument for that.

Members should ask what the motion is hoping to accomplish. It is a very reasonable motion. I do not understand why the government would oppose the motion. We are talking about an immediate and full review of the program by the Auditor General. The government seems to have the most resistance to that particular clause.

Let us go to the rest of the clauses:

(b) the disclosure of Labour Market Opinion applications and approvals for Temporary Foreign Workers; (c) a tightening of the Labour Market Opinion approval process to ensure that only businesses with legitimate needs are able to access the program; and (d) the implementation of stronger rules requiring that employers applying to the program demonstrate unequivocally that they exhausted all avenues to fill job vacancies with Canadian workers, particularly young Canadians.

From his seat, I hear the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration saying “done that, done that”. Why does the government not agree that this is a worthy motion that the members could actually vote in favour of?

I have heard the government, even before the current minister was Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, pretend how mad it can get. We have had other complaints with respect to the temporary foreign worker program. The former minister would huff and puff and say, “We're going to take tough action on this; it's not acceptable to see this abuse; we're going to ensure that Canadians are in fact being given the first opportunity”, to no avail. A few months go by, the issue comes up again and the Conservatives once again pretend how outraged and surprised they are by the program.

This is not the first time the Liberal Party has raised this issue inside the House of Commons. We have raised this issue on several occasions. I can say that the Conservatives have been consistent by doing nothing in terms of resolving the issue.

Having said that, for the first time they are being a little more sensitive and have taken some action. To a certain degree, I will applaud some of the actions they have taken. However, they are missing one of the most important aspects. If they believe in the program as the Liberals do, and believe that if the program is managed properly it has so much to contribute to our economy and our society, then they will recognize that it is important that the Auditor General of Canada needs to get involved in the program.

They say that the Auditor General has the power. The Prime Minister also has the power to release the opinion from his office that there is nothing wrong and he does not have any objection with the Auditor General getting engaged and encourage it. That is what we are arguing for. It would be wonderful to see unanimous support that the Auditor General of Canada be asked to investigate the program. If they believe that there is merit in the program, instead of doing a little here and a little there and try to give the impression that they are doing a whole lot, why do they not allow the independent office of Canada's Auditor General to get engaged on the issue so at the end of the day we would have a healthier program, which will ensure that our economy and our society will prosper that much more under a healthy temporary foreign worker program? That is what the Liberal Party of Canada wants.

[The Deputy Speaker, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. It is now time for statements by members. The hon. member for Winnipeg North will have about four minutes to complete his speech after the resumption of the debate.

Statements by members. The hon. member for Brant.

Best Buddies

[Phil McColeman, Conservative, Brant, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is exciting to see organizations in Brantford seeking out new, innovative strategies to support persons with disabilities and promote their social and economic inclusion. One of these strategies involves a unique collaboration between Assumption College and the Best Buddies program. Best Buddies creates opportunities for one-to-one friendships, integrated employment, and leadership development. The program helps prepare persons with disabilities to secure rewarding jobs, live on their own, become inspirational leaders, and make lifelong friendships.

Thanks to local teachers like Lisa MacDonald, the program continues to grow in Brantford to pair up high school students with their school-age peers who have intellectual disabilities.

At the recent Hooping It Up event, enthusiastic faces packed the gym at Assumption College for a fundraising basketball game to support the program. The incredible atmosphere and the enthusiasm of those supporting the program showcased that Best Buddies provides inspiration to many in my community.

The Environment

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, environmental issues surrounding the Alberta oil sands are some of the most controversial pollution problems in Canada. First nations in the region are concerned about health issues, environmental degradation, and the impacts on wildlife and plants. Nationally and internationally, these pollution concerns have had a negative impact on Canada's reputation.

Recently I had the opportunity to visit Fort McMurray's Wood Buffalo Environmental Association, a multi-stakeholder air monitoring agency. It operates 15 state-of-the-art monitoring stations that provide data to make informed decisions on environmental protection. It is vital to have the best possible data so that politicians of all stripes, federally and provincially, can take appropriate action to create an effective environmental management regime through regulatory measures.

Unfortunately, the failure of Conservative governments, federally and provincially, to create new environmental regulations to protect the people of northern Alberta is both foolish and short-sighted. In 2015, an NDP government will do much better.

Family First Radiothon

[Ray Boughen, Conservative, Palliser, SK]

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend, the generous folks of Moose Jaw and area rallied together. I am proud to announce that they raised more than $688,000 for the eighth annual 800 CHAB Family First Radiothon. The major donors included Golden West, via the Orange Benevolent Society and 800 CHAB Kids Fund, the Mosaic Company, the Fox family, and the Moose Jaw Union Hospital Auxiliary.

All funds raised will be used to purchase life-saving medical equipment for the future universal care unit at the Moose Jaw Regional Hospital.

Thanks to all organizers with a special mention to Ken Hawkes, the volunteer coordinator. Beyond the Radiothon, Ken has been an integral part of the volunteer community in Moose Jaw for decades. I am proud to be part of this community that recognizes the importance of giving back, and did just that.