Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to stand in this place representing the good people of Davenport in the great city of Toronto on an issue that is incredibly important to many workers in the city of Toronto, in fact to many workers across the country.
I have been listening with quite a lot of interest to the debate today and the nitpicking from the government side about the need for a federal minimum wage. I find it particularly interesting that I have not heard a single member of Parliament from the Conservative Toronto caucus talk about the fact that Toronto has a youth jobs crisis.
Young people are working in federally regulated industries such as the telecommunications industry and broadcasting, and many of them are making far below the proposed federal minimum wage. Many of them are working for free as unpaid interns with no protection under Canada's Labour Code against sexual harassment in the workplace, no protection around the right to refuse unsafe work, no protection in terms of the ability to cap the number of hours that an unpaid intern in a federally regulated industry can work.
Now the government is arguing that we do not need a federal minimum wage.
I am sure the hon. member across the way remembers the time when young people could graduate from high school and get a job in this country, a job that was good enough to raise a family, a job that came with a pension at the end of it, a job that they could keep for the rest of their lives. They would graduate from high school or university and get a job and keep that job.
Sometimes the government seems to think we are still in that era, those happy days. Those happy days came and they went. Today people are working from contract to contract. They are working multiple part-time jobs. Some are freelance and as it becomes more and more difficult to land a full-time job, more and more are looking to do various jobs as self-employed people to fill the gap.
To round all of this out, as I have mentioned, we have unpaid interns and we have young people graduating with record student debt as Ontario students face the highest tuition fees. Then these young people are landing in a labour market where youth unemployment is twice the national average, where they are unable to find jobs in their fields of study, and where all too often the perceived solution is to work for free.
It is worth noting in this place that there are estimates pegging the number of people working as unpaid interns. There are many good unpaid internship programs out there. However, especially in federally regulated industries, highly profitable and quite powerful Canadian companies are availing themselves of free labour from young people who are just desperate to get a toehold in the labour market.
Young workers across the country face dauntingly precarious work realities. Housing is too expensive. Post-secondary education is too expensive. Public transit is inaccessible or inadequate, and oftentimes too expensive as well. Training programs are often tied to employment insurance, but when a person is working multiple part-time jobs or on a short-term contract, he or she cannot access that training.
I have not heard a lot of talk today from members on the other side about barriers for newcomers, which are even higher. Newcomers are desperate for Canadian work experience. This is the work experience they need so that they can get the job that Canada essentially said would be available to them when we invited them to Canada. They are desperate to get that job. They will work for free as unpaid interns. They will work at a temporary placement agency where the take-home pay is oftentimes lower than the provincial minimum wage.
Workplaces are becoming fundamentally unequal. New workers, young workers, racialized immigrants, and aboriginal workers can expect much less than older workers at the same workplace. In the very same workplace, some workers have defined benefits pensions, others not. Some have extended health benefits, others not. Some have job security and others not.
When asked by The Toronto Star what the greatest issue facing Canadian workers is, Maureen O'Reilly, president of the union local representing Toronto's library workers—she is the union boss for librarians, just so they do not get too afraid over there on that side of the House—said:
Precarious work is one of the greatest challenges facing workers in [Toronto], particularly in the [library system]. Library workers are...predominantly female...with about half of them part-time. We know precarious workers make less and have limited or no benefits or pensions. We need good jobs in our community especially for our youth so that all Torontonians [and I would extend to all Canadians] can share in a bright future and contribute to our local economy as both neighbours and taxpayers.
In all the chest-thumping we hear so often from the government side of this House, the Conservatives never describe the jobs they are purportedly creating. They never talk about whether these jobs are good jobs. They never talk about whether these jobs are jobs that come with a living wage, benefits, or a pension. They never talk about whether these are jobs that a young person can imagine for starting a life, starting a career, and starting a family and becoming the kind of active, engaged citizen that only a generation ago was just the obvious thing we would become. That is not happening anymore.
SEIU's Sharleen Stewart represents hospital, long-term care, and home care workers in Canada. What she said is a very important point when we discuss what this actually means for Canadian workers. She said, “some of the people doing the most meaningful work [in Canada] are the lowest paid. And the workers are predominantly women”, especially in her sector among the workers she represents.
Increasing the minimum wage is an important step towards closing the income gap and creating a fairer economy. The federal government could take a leadership role and encourage the provinces to increase their standards, thus improving wages across Canada.
Indeed, in 2006, the Federal Labour Standards Review Commission recommended that the government reinstate the federal minimum wage and that it be benchmarked to the low-income cut-off established by Statistics Canada. The commission suggested that the minimum wage be high enough that someone working full time would not live below the poverty line.
What should fully engage this place is creating an economy where workers can make a living wage. That is the crux and the foundation of the debate we are having today. It is the question the government members must answer. Do they believe that in this economy, Canadian workers deserve a living wage? If they say yes, that Canadian workers deserve a minimum wage, a working wage, a living wage, they will support this motion.