Debates of June 11th, 2014

Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. There is just way too much noise in the chamber. If members are having difficulty listening, I suggest the members step out of the chamber. Otherwise I would ask everybody to maintain a reasonable level of decorum. I am having difficulty hearing the member for York South—Weston.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in this particular situation the individual in question's parents have renounced their American citizenship. They no longer have to file U.S. taxes. However, the U.S. government refuses to accept their son's renunciation, so they have to do it on his behalf because he is mentally disabled. The U.S. government has decided that he does not know what he is doing and therefore it will not accept it, so his parents must still file taxes on his behalf and pay U.S. taxes because our tax treaty with the U.S. does not cover the disability tax credit. Therefore, receiving the disability tax credit is of no benefit to this individual because he has to pay the money back to the U.S.

In addition, he was never in the United States in his life. He was born in Canada. His parents happen to be Canadian citizens as well but were born in the United States. The U.S. government has decided that these children are now captured by FATCA, so this individual would have his personal tax information, personal banking information, and the contents of his bank accounts reported to the U.S. for the purpose of its tax compliance, not ours.

That is a horrible example of what would happen as a result of this bill. It is a horrible example of the way the government has negotiated deals with the U.S. First it was the softwood lumber deal; it has not managed to update the tax treaty; and now it has this FATCA deal that would allow the U.S. government access to tonnes more personal information on about a million Canadians, some of whom were born here and have never lived in the U.S., but the U.S. government considers them U.S. citizens. U.S. persons, I think is its terminology. Therefore, the Conservatives opposite do not understand all the implications. Perhaps they think it is a big joke, but it is not a joke to that individual or his parents who are trying to comply with the law and who have discovered just how expensive that is, in addition to the thousands of dollars they have to pay to accountants to figure out the U.S. tax obligations.

In addition, there were a number of promises made in two budgets, both 2013 and 2014, that we have still not seen.

Seniors in my riding who do not have Internet access are still paying $2.26 a month, and in some cases $3.39 a month, in order to pay their bill by getting a bill in the mail. As I recall, there was considerable hoopla by the current government about how it would end that practice. It has not ended. It is not in this budget. It was not in the previous budget. It was in the budget statement, but it is not in this budget implementation bill. My riding is made up of individuals who do not have a lot of money in the first place. They do not have enough money in many cases to be able to afford the Internet, so they have to get their bill in the mail. They get their bill in the mail and have to spend an extra $2.26. I say 26¢ because that is how much tax is paid on that extra bill that those individuals get for wanting to get their bill in the mail. The government has done nothing about that.

In addition, the former minister of finance suggested in the 2013 budget that the government would be implementing legislation that would ensure that, if it were spending federal infrastructure money on infrastructure in this country, apprenticeships would be part of that spend. That has not happened. One of the most difficult things we have not been able to sort out is that we have a skills shortage in this country, according to the minister opposite who deals with this kind of thing, yet we cannot train people because we cannot get apprenticeships for them. We cannot get apprenticeships because we are spending money and having to hire temporary foreign workers. It is a crazy system. The former finance minister got it and he suggested the solution, but nothing has been done.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, when I gave my comments before, I said that one of the unfortunate things about the FATCA part of it is that people are confusing the need to file a tax return in the U.S. with the requirement that we have under FATCA. The situation that the member raised, as troubling as it is, does not change with FATCA, because that is a tax compliance issue that the individual and his family have.

If we look through FATCA, assuming that we start with $1 million, as I went through the numbers here a while ago, every account with less than $50,000 would be non-reportable. All registered accounts would be non-reportable. Between $50,000 and $1 million, there would be an electronic scan. If there are no U.S. indicia, guess what? It would be non-reportable. Most people have never given that on their bank account, whether it be an address or taxpayer identification number. The only amount that we get into a real challenge with is over $1 million, where there would have to be a manual check.

I am just encouraging the member to clarify the comments. There is a difference between the tax compliance and filing of this issue and the FATCA and, more importantly, the intergovernmental agreement that we signed to protect Canadians.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it would not protect Canadians' personal, private information. That is part of what we are talking about here.

I am sure there are many Canadians out there who do not understand what U.S. indicia are. I do not think it is defined anywhere in the budget document to explain exactly what U.S. indicia are.

The whole point of my comments was that there are a number of problems between this government and the U.S. government regarding tax compliance. FATCA makes it worse. FATCA would actually distribute a whole lot of information to the U.S. that the U.S. is not entitled to have.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague is absolutely right. The terms around FATCA are not defined.

The intergovernmental agreement, the so-called IGA between the U.S. and Canada, has not been ratified as a treaty by the United States. We are treating it as though we have treaty obligations. The U.S. has not ratified it. We have been warned by the leading lawyers in this country, including Professor Peter Hogg, our leading constitutional expert, that this FATCA would violate section 3 of the charter. We have been warned by Professor Christians, who is the Stikeman Chair at McGill, that this FATCA would not need to be implemented to protect our banks from U.S. retaliation, that the U.S. would not have an automatic legal right to pursue sanctions against the banks based on something that is as outrageous as the extraterritorial application of U.S. law, treating Canadians citizens now in two classes. Those two classes would be those who have some contact with the United States and those who never did.

I ask if my hon. colleague would agree with me that we will see this FATCA before the Supreme Court of Canada where, once again, one of the current administration's laws will go down to defeat.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, yes, this is yet another bill that is likely to find its way to the Supreme Court at some point and be ruled ineffective and that it is not possible to have this bill, particularly the FATCA portion of it. That is something we face, apparently, almost on a daily basis. The government brings forward laws that are in violation of Canada's charter and Constitution and, in fact, of other laws that the government supposedly wants to uphold, like privacy laws.

We just cannot continue this way. We cannot be bringing forward laws that are not in compliance with the other laws of this country.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my esteemed colleague from York South—Weston for agreeing to share his time with me.

Once again, the Conservatives have imposed time allocation, and they should be ashamed. This move was completely arbitrary and shows disrespect for the Canadians we are here to represent.

The government is abusing its majority, and it is not shy at all about doing so, which shows its contempt not only for the legality and constitutionality of the measures set out in this omnibus bill, but also for common sense and the basic social convention of mutual respect. These values seem completely foreign to the Conservatives' way of thinking.

As the member for Beauport—Limoilou, I am going to take the time that I have been given to come back to a very specific aspect of this bill that is buried somewhere in its 350 pages. This aspect affects the Comité vigilance ferroviaire Limoilou, which is a group that was created by individuals, parents of children who attend an elementary school located just a few metres away from a major railway line that connects the Port of Québec to the rest of the province. The goods that are received at the Port of Québec are shipped to other locations across Canada and the rest of North America.

This committee was established by the people who are considered to be its spokespersons: Xavier Robidas and Sébastien Bouchard. They were very active last March. As soon as I saw the announcement about this committee starting up, I got in touch with these parents, who were legitimately worried. I would like to tell the House about the very simple objective of this watchdog committee. Members can read it for themselves on the committee's Facebook page.

It says:

The [committee] wants to ensure that rail transportation is safe, that stakeholders communicate [with the population] and that they do so with transparency.

It is very simple and is based on common sense. After the Lac-Mégantic disaster last year, this very credible and legitimate request has been voiced across North America by Canadian and U.S. citizens and even by people from other parts of the world.

With the exception of some very particular extremist elements in our society, people generally agree that we live in an environment where dangerous substances, among other things, are transported. That is part of life. It is a risk that we accept when it happens within safety parameters that allow people to be demanding, and rightly so.

We would have expected the Canadian government to do something about this fear and the legitimate desire for minimum safety standards and, above all, to ensure that information is provided so that people know what to expect with respect to the transportation of dangerous substances by rail.

Aviation fuel and a number of chemical products—not to mention solid bulk, including the famous nickel, an issue I have been working on for almost two years already—are transported through Beauport—Limoilou on the railway line monitored by the members of the Comité vigilance ferroviaire Limoilou.

Coal and all kinds of potentially volatile substances, such as petroleum coke, are transported as well. An awful lot of dust can get stirred up into the air and then settle in the area, contaminating the residents and nearby school grounds. There are four schools near the rail line.

This is something that we must take on and manage. My colleagues and I have a responsibility to listen to concerns, reflect on the situation and propose constructive solutions. That is not what is happening with Bill C-31.

Unfortunately, if Bill C-31 passes all the stages, the government will be able to amend and repeal numerous rail safety regulations without even notifying the public. That makes no sense because, currently, people are able to find out about any existing regulations that have been amended or eliminated, and they can do that through legitimate and perfectly transparent means. It will take a majority to support this monster bill, and the Conservatives are the only ones who would dare blindly support it.

If Bill C-31 is passed, cabinet decisions about changes to safety standards related to the rail transportation of dangerous goods will now be kept secret. I hope that some of my Conservative colleagues will wake up before it is too late.

We are familiar with the culture of secrecy that exists, particularly within the PMO, but there are limits. Considering what the people of Beauport—Limoilou are demanding, with good reason, and for that reason alone, I will be voting against this bill.

Moreover, because of these amendments, not only will citizens not be informed, but subject matter experts will not be able to provide their opinions to the minister before the amendments take effect. God knows how little anyone listens to them anyway, considering what I have seen at the Standing Committee on Finance, the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights and the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology.

In other words, the government will pass measures in the dark, the experts will then have their say, and the minister will be free to ignore them. This is a familiar refrain. I have asked questions about activities at the Port of Québec and nickel dust contamination so often that I am not really surprised that they are still doing things this way.

Unfortunately, despite my interest in just three or four clauses in this bill, which contains nearly 500, for the fourth time, as my colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques pointed out, the government has forced us to deal with a monster, an omnibus, a hodgepodge of different measures that have nothing to do with the Minister of Finance's mission.

Once again, the government is demonstrating its total lack of respect for all Canadians, including those who support the Conservative Party. It is imposing its will while carefully maintaining its cult of secrecy—its favourite way of doing business—and avoiding any display of the courage it takes to have a real debate.

I am glad I was able to once again discuss the gaps in rail safety and confirm my steadfast opposition to this government's way of doing things.

[Hélène LeBlanc, NDP, LaSalle—Émard, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Beauport—Limoilou for his speech, and especially for reminding us, once again, that this omnibus bill is hiding a multitude of sins. It must be acknowledged, however, that the NDP would support certain aspects of the bill, which was the case with previous bills. However, when everything is placed in an opaque envelope full of measures we oppose, it is simply not possible to vote blindly for this kind of legislation.

I mentioned that I am the critic for co-operatives. Co-operatives make a very significant contribution to the Canadian economy, especially the Quebec economy. I would like my colleague to tell us more about what is missing from the bill, and what we would like to propose in terms of creating jobs that would support the local economy.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from LaSalle—Émard for her excellent question. I must pay tribute to her obsession with the co-operative movement, which she advocates fervently.

This brings me to another specific aspect of Bill C-31, specifically greater openness to demutualization. As a parallel with the co-operative movement, both mutual insurance companies and co-operatives, whether they be financial, labour or housing co-ops, are avenues for economic activity, job creation, and wealth creation. Mutual insurance companies are a very viable option that make it possible for people to get proper insurance and get around situations where the more traditional for-profit insurance companies often exclude them, preventing them from getting insurance.

These particularly important economic alternatives must be supported, as they make people more accountable and give them an opportunity to control their own lives.

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

Mr. Speaker, I had a conversation with my colleague earlier, during the debate, about housing.

When it comes to first-time home buyers, it seems to be that the magic is to lower taxes on a marginal level. There is more to it than that when it comes to first-time home buyers.

This bill lacks the vision to create more programs for first-time home buyers, to make it easier for them. I was one of the people who took advantage of a program, and it had very little to do with the tax rate of the day. I wonder if my colleague could comment on that, please.

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

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor for his question.

I will mention the rather surprising fact that my Conservative colleagues have remained seated, with their bums glued to their seats, instead of participating in the debate. I do not know why they refuse to rise.

My colleague pointed to another important aspect: providing measures for the middle class, or for all Canadians, so that, in turn, they can improve their lot. Buying property is but one example among many others. We could also consider implementing measures to reduce banking transaction fees, which we have supported for a very long time.

There is no mention of measures to support our workers and small business owners, who currently are not being properly compensated for their efforts. This is probably the most scandalous aspect of the situation in Canada: the large number of people who are being left behind, or, in fact, middle class Canadians, who are no longer entitled to receiving what is owed to them.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Minister of Employment and Social Development and Minister for Multiculturalism]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to enter into the debate on these important measures.

I will begin by saying that we are proud of this government's economic record. I recently attended a conference in Europe with leaders of international companies and heads of government from the developed world. I was struck by how impressed these people were by Canada's economic record. Everyone I met said that, to them, Canada was a model for the rest of the world when it comes to prudent policies and economic growth. It is true. Here people criticize us, which is normal in a democracy. We are aware of our weaknesses and the areas we can improve on. However, sometimes we have to go overseas to see how others look at Canada, how our country is perceived internationally.

According to the World Bank, Canada has one of the strongest fiscal and economic frameworks in the world. The World Economic Forum has said for six straight years running that Canada has the most stable banks in the financial services sector. The OECD just today published its Canada annual country report, which was filled with praise for our country's record on a number of things, including the progress that we are making on skills development. The IMF has singled Canada out as having struck the right balance.

By the way, I was very touched by the preface in the report issued today by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, written by the director of the OECD. It was a preface of praise for our late colleague, the hon. Jim Flaherty. The head of the OECD credited Mr. Flaherty for his prudent leadership and strong fiscal management. I mention that at the outset to say that we are, indeed, regarded around the world as something of a model.

There remain challenges. While we have seen the creation of some 1.1 million net new jobs since the height of the global economic downturn, while we have seen relatively strong economic growth, while we are on the cusp of a balanced federal budget, while federal taxes are at their lowest level as a share of our gross domestic product since 1965, while we have all of these things, the truth is that there remain challenges. For me, one of the great challenges is what I call the skills gap, the skills mismatch.

It is interesting that in the report issued by the OECD today, it confirmed what this government and I have long said, which is that while there may not be general labour shortages in the Canadian economy, there are clearly sectoral and regional skills shortages. None of us should put our heads in the sand about that. Every major business organization in the country predicts that by the end of this decade, there will be a significant shortage of workers in its respective sector. Indeed, The Conference Board of Canada most famously issued a report several years ago projecting that by the end of this decade, Canada would be facing a shortage of some one million workers in various fields.

What I find interesting is that we have a very well-educated population. As the OECD report demonstrates yet again today, Canada has the highest rate of enrolment in tertiary education. That is, essentially, to say university and post-secondary academic education. Therefore, about 52% of our youth are enrolled, participating in university level academic formation. That is a very good thing.

It means that effectively we have one of the best-educated populations in the world right now.

However, I must add parenthetically that there are at the same time some worrying signs on the dashboard. Last year the OECD issued a very disturbing report that demonstrated a slide, a decline, in basic numeracy and literacy for young Canadians vis-à-vis our international competitors. Asian countries, such as Korea, are skyrocketing ahead of Canada when it comes to results, particularly in the STEM disciplines of science, math, and the like.

Our primary and secondary education systems have to keep pace. It is not good enough to have a high rate of tertiary post-secondary enrolment.

However, one of the problems that vexes all of us is the continued stubbornly high level of youth unemployment. About 13% of Canadians between the ages of 15 and 25 who seek employment are unable to find it. This is clearly too high. Youth unemployment is about twice as high as general unemployment in our economy.

We see other cohorts in our population with similarly unacceptable high levels of unemployment. Recent immigrants, those who have been in Canada for less than five years, face an unemployment rate between 13% and 14%. There are some 800,000 Canadians with disabilities, according to the ministerial advisory Panel on Labour Market Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities, who might be willing to or are interested in working but who do not have work, and we also have completely unacceptable levels of unemployment among our aboriginal people.

While our economy is generally prosperous and our labour market is doing significantly better than in most developed countries, these are areas that we all need to focus on. I invite creative ideas from all parties on how to address the challenge of youth unemployment, for example.

However, here is the paradox for me: we have very high levels of university enrolment, the highest in the developed world, yet very high youth unemployment as well. What is going on here?

Well, at the very same time, we see a boom in the commodities sector, the extractive industries in oil and gas, and in mines, in a huge swath of northern Canada from the offshore oil projects in Newfoundland and Labrador to Muskrat Falls hydroelectricity to iron ore developments and other mines in Labrador.

I am also thinking of all the mining projects in northern Quebec.

There is the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario, and projects all across the northern span of the Prairie west. My friends from Provencher and Brandon—Souris know very well the huge growth as a result of the Bakken reserve in southwest Manitoba that extends into Saskatchewan. Saskatchewan, of course, has huge uranium and potash developments, as well as oil and gas. There is bitumen in northern Alberta, which has the world's second-largest proven oil reserves.

There are energy infrastructure projects, such as Energy East and perhaps Keystone XL, with potential pipelines to our coasts. There are all of these huge projects.

There are also mines in British Columbia, a modest renaissance in the forestry industry, and huge mining potential and developments across the three northern territories.

In February, I had the opportunity to go to the Yukon, the Northwest Territories and Nunavut and see many of these projects at work; I wanted to find out how we can hire aboriginal workers to help train the workforce so that they can take part in these projects in northern British Columbia and in all these regions.

With all of those projects together, we have what some people are calling a new industrial revolution, and we ought not turn up our noses at it.

There is in some perhaps elite policy circles a view that Canadians should be ashamed that much of our economic history has been characterized as “hewers of wood and drawers of water”. The truth is we are a highly advanced, extremely well-educated, diversified, and increasingly urbanized economy with value-added industries, with remarkable research development, science, technology, and high tech, with a very robust service industry. All of those are great things. We should never be ashamed.

I look at my friend from North Bay here, my friends from New Brunswick, my friends from all different corners of the country, whose livelihoods in those communities are dependent on forestry, mining, extractive industries, these things that have been the spine of the Canadian economy for 200 years. We have a new renaissance.

Here is the challenge. While increasingly technology drives those industries, we also need skilled tradespeople. We need the people who can actually build those mines, develop those energy projects, build the offshore platforms, build the hydroelectric dams, and so forth. We are talking here collectively about hundreds of thousands of future jobs in, not exclusively, but many of the skilled trades and related technical vocations.

Here is the big challenge I see. For the better part of 30 years our education system writ large has not been preparing young Canadians for those vocations, for the trades, for construction-related vocations, through apprenticeship programs. Instead, we as a society, all levels of government, the primary and secondary school systems, parents, the culture generally, have been sending all sorts of cues in creating multiple incentives for young people to go into tertiary academic university education. Typically the results of that kind of formation are very good. Typically the results are very strong. Typically incomes for young people with university degrees are significantly above the average.

But here is the truth. If we dig below the numbers, dig below the superficies, we will see that there are many young people going to university, incurring debt, graduating with hope that they will be able to work in their field only to find that there is no employment, perhaps for people with degrees in international relations or communications or people who have graduated from our education faculties with teaching degrees. A growing number of those young Canadians find themselves either underemployed or worse, unemployed. Many of them find themselves frustratingly stuck, as they would see it, in the service industry at close to minimum wage. At the same time, here is the paradox. We have a growing demand for people in skilled trades and technical vocations. What is going on here?

There is another challenge. The public sector, federal and provincial governments, spend more collectively on skills development and job training than virtually any other developed economy in the world. The private sector companies in Canada spend less as a share of our GDP on skills development than virtually any developed economy. One way of looking at that is that employers have been getting a bit of a free ride on taxpayers' spending in skills development.

These are all reasons why I have said that I see the key part of my job as Minister of Employment in addressing the paradox of an economy that has too many people without jobs and too many jobs without people.

Let us be clear. Again, we do not face general skills shortages. There are about 6.5 unemployed Canadians for every job that is being listed and unfilled. Clearly, there is a surplus of unemployed Canadians. That is what the aggregate labour market information tells us. This is why we do need substantially better, more granular labour market information. We need to know what is going on in particular regions and industries, which is why it was announced this week that our government will be launching two new robust labour market information surveys through Statistics Canada.

One is a quarterly survey on job vacancies that will get us very granular data by sector and region, and another is an annual survey on wage rates.

This will help us to much better inform policy and to communicate to young people where the best opportunities are. For example, later this year my ministry will be launching online, downloadable apps for smart phones, et cetera, that will help young people to establish what they are likely to make, in terms of salary, through different kinds of training.

They will, for example, be able to find out that someone with a political science bachelor of arts degree, on average, makes $52,000 five years following graduation, but that someone who has completed a Red Seal certificate journeyman's program as an electrician, on average, is likely to be making $63,000 five years following certification.

I am not sure high school counsellors are giving our young people the information that they can make more in the trades. In Britain—and this is remarkable—graduates of apprenticeship trade programs make, on average, the equivalent of a $750,000 Canadian more over their lifetimes than university graduates do in the United Kingdom.

What I want to do is get similar comparative data in Canada that can help to inform the choices young people make. As a Conservative, I believe in maximizing human freedom. I do not think the government should tell young people what kind of formation to take, what kind of job they should be interested in, but what we must do is stop sending cues to young people that suggest they are not fulfilling their potential unless they go into an academic university program. That is wrong.

This is why in March I led a delegation that included many of Canada's major business and employer organizations, some of our largest unions, and five of our provincial governments to Germany and the United Kingdom to study European models of skills development and vocational education.

I must say I was struck by how effective some of those systems are. In Germany, Switzerland, and Denmark, for example, the so-called Germanic model of vocational education training sees on average about two-thirds of their young people at age 16 go into paid trade apprenticeship programs. On average, these programs last for three years and result in their getting a certificate at age 19, a certificate that is considered by everyone in those societies as having the same social and economic value and merit as a university degree.

I know that to the Canadian ear, that might sound a bit disingenuous, but the truth is that everyone we met—government leaders, union leaders, business leaders, and academics—said that there is what they call “a parity of esteem” between skilled trades and professional occupations, between trade apprenticeship programs and university academic programs.

They do not, as we too often do, denigrate or diminish or devalue basic work, vocational training, trades, and apprenticeships. They regard those things as essential. They encourage them. They reward them. They invest in them. They value them. We must do the same here in Canada.

That is why one of the elements of the bill before us is the creation of what I think is the most exciting part of the budget, the Canada student apprenticeship loan. For the first time, we will now be providing interest-free loans of up to $5,000 to an estimated 2,600 apprenticeship students during their block training so that they can help to finance that training.

Right now there is a big opportunity cost when they leave their paid apprenticeship to go into their unpaid block training. This loan would give them a little more financial flexibility. Just as importantly, we are sending a symbolic message that we value apprenticeship training and trades and vocational education just as much as we value university or college academic education.

That is a very important message we are sending in this budget, and I look forward to continued discussions on how we can continue to produce results.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby—Douglas, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed parts of that speech, but I have a big problem with the minister's commitment to understanding a labour market. It results from looking at Treasury Board figures on how many people have been fired from Statistics Canada. Over the last three years, there have been over 2,000 employees fired from Statistics Canada. In the early 2000s, there were about 8,500 employees at Statistics Canada. Now there are about 4,500.

The Conservatives have been chopping and chopping away with their ideological attacks, getting rid of the long form census, and cutting out labour force surveys. Now they are saying they want to have a great handle on how the labour force works, and again, are relying on things like Kijiji to fill the holes.

These folks at Statistics Canada are some of the best trained statisticians in the world. I want to know when he will repopulate the labour force within Statistics Canada so we can understand what is going on with our labour force in Canada.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, Statistics Canada is one of the best resourced national statistics agencies in the world. It is a professional organization that produces very high-quality data and that we support with investments. Its budget is certainly several hundred million dollars a year.

I know the following comment is kind of alien to our friends in the NDP, but we have to balance the budget. Unlike New Democrats, we want to balance the budget without raising taxes. That requires prudent spending management. The only sensible way--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

Order, please. I am having a hard time hearing the minister's response.

The Minister of Employment and Social Development has the floor.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there is a lot of caterwauling about the notion of balancing budgets without raising taxes.

We could have balanced the budget without raising taxes, the Liberal approach, which would mean slashing transfers for health care. Instead we decided to compress spending in Ottawa's own administrative spending. That required small spending reductions in all agencies and departments.

Having said that, we want to get better results in labour market information, which is why I announced this week that we will be implementing immediately, through StatsCan, two major new labour market information studies at a cost of $14 million: the quarterly vacancy survey and the annual wage rate survey.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the minister for his speech. I listened to it carefully. I must say, I enjoyed it. It was very thorough and he did it without notes. We have to give him credit for that.

From my own experience where I come from, one of the greatest exports we have, beyond the fish, beyond the wood, beyond the iron ore, and beyond the oil and gas is not so much the hewing of the wood and the drawing of the water; it is the hewers and the drawers. In other words, it is the people who own the skills. It is our talent. It is the people who have now become our greatest asset. They have gained an intellectual capacity such that they are becoming the greatest assets we have. They are building the economy through the revenues they earn, and they are making serious money. By doing this, they are creating our communities and the capacity for out communities to deliver services.

They do not go to the traditional workplace anymore. They leave Newfoundland and Labrador. They go to Russia. They go to North Africa and Norway. The pattern continues, and it is becoming incredible.

What I worry about, though, is the mix of certifications across the country. I find that there is a breakdown in communication between provinces about certification for these jobs and also some of the programs that are available to them, especially federally, and how they mix provincially.

I do not have a lot of time. I wish I could get more into it. The nub of this is that I am worried that the government, instead of starting a conversation about this, is starting an argument, and that is not going to help us at all.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the member raises excellent points. Of course, I do not agree that we are starting an argument. To the contrary, I co-convened the first meeting of the Forum of Labour Market Ministers in five years, which I think is ridiculous, last November in Toronto. We are having our next one in July. We want to have a regular, at least semi-annual, series of meetings to get collaboration between the federal and provincial governments.

The provincial ministers would tell the member that I worked very closely with the ministers and showed enormous flexibility so that they could sign up to the Canada job grant and the renewed labour market agreements, the Canada job fund, giving them the flexibility they need and getting our objective of greater employer investment in skills development. That would ensure that the training dollars actually go to creating real jobs and not to training for the sake of training.

If the hon. member talks to my provincial counterparts, he would find that I have really tried to be collaborative. We need to, albeit we are going in the same direction together, which is why I invited the provinces to study the European system with me. I totally agree with him that we need to do much better by knocking down the remaining provincial exceptions under chapter 7 of the Agreement on Internal Trade.

There is no reason why, in this federation of 13 jurisdictions, it should be more difficult for tradesmen or professionals to move from one jurisdiction to another than for someone to move within the 27 member states of the European Union. That is ridiculous. It should end. We need to eliminate those exemptions, and that is one of the reasons, by the way, we are practically supporting programs for the harmonization of apprenticeship systems to encourage mobility.

[Mike Allen, Conservative, Tobique—Mactaquac, NB]

Mr. Speaker, as the minister indicated in the budget, the apprentice loans piece of this is very important. Combined with the jobs grant, it puts some business money in the game with respect to employing these people.

When we were going through our youth employment study in the finance committee, one of the comments made by some of the post-secondary schools, especially the community colleges, was the need, as part of the transfer of their dollars, for reporting success metrics, which they were required to do.

I wonder if the minister would comment on maybe what some of those other jurisdictions are doing on that basis, because if we cannot measure it, we cannot manage it. I would like his comments on that.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the Province of British Columbia for actually taking the lead on this through what they call their initiative to, quote, “re-engineer” secondary and post-secondary education to do a radically better job of aligning those systems, in which billions of tax dollars are invested, with labour market outcomes. They are now saying basically to universities and colleges, “Show us. We are going to start surveying how many of your graduates in various programs end up getting employed in those disciplines or where they end up in the labour market”. They say that they are going to begin directing subsidies to support those programs that are actually producing results and whose graduates are getting jobs for which they are trained. That is the kind of accountability we need in our education system.

I am encouraging the provinces to do that, and I am trying to work with them to upload information on labour market outcomes for post-secondary graduates to our labour market information system so that we can say that a psychology major has, for example, a 10% chance of working as a psychologist and what maybe their average income is.

We need that information. We need to give it to young people. Yes, young people should choose their future, but it should be an informed choice.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. minister's speech ranged widely and interestingly over a number of topics, not necessary confined to the bill before us, but I want to pick up on one of the aspects of the presentation.

We talk a lot about pipelines as though they will inevitably create jobs for Canadians, but I remember espying, with some concern, a comment in The Globe and Mail that Enbridge was of course in partnership with PetroChina, and PetroChina would likely bid on any possible twinned pipeline between Kitimat and northern Alberta. The Globe and Mail business pages nodded sagely in the direction of the competitive advantage PetroChina would have in bringing its own workforce.

I wonder if the hon. minister has any thoughts about how Canada would deal with that sort of scenario, when so many Canadians want work.

[Jason Kenney, Conservative, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have been absolutely clear in saying that the labour market model of certain foreign state-owned enterprises used around the world will not be replicated in Canada. Our rules will not permit, and we will not tolerate, airlifting entire labour camps of people into this country to work on projects like that, period.

I will be releasing a package of robust reforms to the temporary foreign worker program that will make it absolutely clear to those investors, to potential state-owned enterprises, to all Canadian employers, that the temporary foreign worker program must only and always be used as a last and limited resort. That will be absolutely clear. I share the member's concern. We will not tolerate what has happened in Africa and other countries with respect to the imported labour model of some of those state-owned enterprises.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup.

We are talking about Bill C-31, An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on February 11, 2014 and other measures. We have heard a lot of talk by all members of the House today about Canada's economy and our fiscal performance over the years.

It is appropriate to start my speech by going over some metrics, some actual numbers that tell Canadians what the performance of the government has been since Conservatives took office in 2006 until the end of 2013, which is where we have our most recent numbers.

The amount spent by the Conservative government on advertising since 2009, touting its economic action plans, is $113 million. The national unemployment rate in Canada in 2006, just before the government took office, was 6.6%. Today it is 7.2%. The national unemployment rate of youth in 2006 at the time the Conservatives took office was 12.2%. Today it is over 14%.

Among 34 OECD nations in employment creation in the 2006-13 time period, Canada ranks 20th. The number of annual consecutive deficits filed by the government is six. The number of budget deficit targets hit by Conservative finance ministers since 2006 is zero.

The amount added to Canada's national federal debt since the Conservative government came to power in 2006 is $123.5 billion. The portion of total federal debt that we have in Canada today, accumulated just since the government came to power in 2006, is one-fifth.

The per cent increase in the real average hourly wage of Canadians in 2006-13 is zero. The percentage drop in productivity, that is the GDP per employee in our country from 2006-13, is negative 1.9%.

In terms of trade, which is the area of my responsibility to watch and critique the government on, when the government came to power in 2006, Canada had a current account surplus of $20.4 billion. That is the total of all goods, services and investments going in and out of the country. At the end of 2013, we had a deficit of $60.4 billion. That is an $80 billion swing to the negative in the last seven years, over $10 billion of lost goods, services and investment in our country for each and every year that the government has been in power.

The merchandise trade deficit that exists in Canada today is a staggering $110.4 billion. That means that we import $110.4 billion more of manufactured items, the kind of items that characterize modern industrial economies, than we export. That is not surprising because under the current government, since 2006, the percentage of Canada's exports that are raw resources has gone up by 50%.

Quantitatively and qualitatively the trade performance of the government has been a disaster, no less a figure than former Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney said that the single biggest drag on the Canadian economy had been the government's underperformance in trade.

My hon. colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley, who is our finance critic now, talked about 2008 and what the real state of affairs was then. I happen to be fortunate enough to be sent here by the good people of Vancouver Kingsway at that time, so I was in the House in October 2008 as well, and I campaigned in that election.

I remember the Prime Minister, who was touted as an economist, during the campaign in September 2008 when asked if there was a recession coming, said that a recession was a “ridiculous hypothetical”.

I was in the House with many other members in October 2008, when the finance minister tabled an economic update that projected a surplus for the next year and projected an austerity budget, only to be hit within a matter of weeks with the biggest recession to hit this country since the Great Depression. Neither the Prime Minister, through his economics training, nor the finance minister, with the full resources of the Department of Finance, with all of the tools at their disposal, could forecast that Canada was headed for a massive recession.

I want to talk about the deficit position of this country. When the Conservatives came to power in 2006, they inherited seven consecutive budget surpluses that averaged $12 billion. From 2006 to 2008, the government cut the GST by two percentage points. With each percentage point cut, federal government revenue was reduced by $6 billion. With that one move alone, the government had essentially eliminated the budgetary surplus, and it would have put Canada at balanced budget with just that one move.

However, the Conservatives did more. They made a policy decision to carry on with the Liberals' orgy of corporate tax cuts to go from 27% down to 21%. The Conservative government took corporate tax rates from 21% down to 15%—