Debates of April 30th, 2015

Government Response to Petitions

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 36(8), I have the honour to table, in both official languages, the government's responses to two petitions.

Interparliamentary Delegations

[Gord Brown, Conservative, Leeds—Grenville, ON]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present, in both official languages, four reports of the Canadian delegation of the Canada-United States Inter-parliamentary Group.

The first report concerns the seventh annual conference of the Southeastern United States--Canadian Provinces Alliance that was held in Raleigh, North Carolina, United States of America, May 4 to 6, 2014.

The second concerns the 24th Annual Summit of the Pacific NorthWest Economic Region held in Whistler, British Columbia, Canada, from July 20 to 24, 2014.

The third concerns the National Conference of State Legislatures legislative summit held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America, from August 18 to 22, 2014.

The fourth report concerns the Canadian/American Border Trade Alliance conference that was held in Washington, D.C., United States, September 28 to 30, 2014.

[Joe Preston, Conservative, Elgin—Middlesex—London, ON]

Mr. Speaker, pursuant to Standing Order 34(1), I have the honour to present, in both official languages, two reports of the Canadian delegation of the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association.

The first report is respecting participation in the mid-year executive committee held in London, United Kingdom, April 28 to May 1.

The second report is respecting participation in the 60th Commonwealth Parliamentary Conference held in Yaoundé, Cameroon, from October 2 to10, 2014.

Finance

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

moved:

That the Eighth Report of the Standing Committee on Finance, presented on Wednesday, December 10, 2014, be concurred in.

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that I will be sharing my time with the excellent member for Welland.

I would like to talk about the prebudget consultations, since that is the subject of the report. I am in a good mood this morning, because yesterday we learned that the Rimouski Oceanic will be taking part in the Memorial Cup as the champions of the Quebec major junior hockey league. This will be their fourth time participating in 20 years, which is remarkable.

My good mood is a little tempered, however, by the content of the prebudget consultations. This is in no way a criticism of the chair of the Standing Committee on Finance, the member for Edmonton—Leduc, for he is doing an excellent job. I think all the parties in the House and all members of the finance committee recognize what a great job he is doing.

Although there are some interesting points in the prebudget consultation report, there are also some really troubling elements. We have no problem with some of the points, and we have supported them. Some of them even appear in budget 2015. Others, however, do pose a problem.

Until January, I was a member of the Standing Committee on Finance and had been for three years. Usually, the recommendations were a fairly accurate—though not perfect, by any means—reflection of the testimony we heard. However, the recommendations in this report, which was tabled in December 2014, make it more of a pre-election document for the existing government. Most if not all of the recommendations are from the Conservative side. Not a single NDP or Liberal amendment was accepted.

Annual prebudget consultations are an opportunity to hear from witnesses from many parts of Canadian society. Whether they are from the business sector, unions or civil society, their concerns deserve to be heard and properly reflected in the prebudget consultation report.

In this case, there are a number of problematic elements. Several recommendations in the report are nothing more than lip service. For example, recommendation 23 says that the federal government should consider new ways to increase support for the Canadian aerospace industry, but does not say how. This recommendation is akin to many of the other 47 recommendations in this report in that it says where the government wants to go but not how to get there.

That is a problem because other recommendations are more than just wishful thinking. They are blatantly a rationale for Conservative policies. In any case, the committee itself was not even able to unanimously agree on those recommendations.

When the government proposes to continue reducing tariffs, for example, it fails to mention that, overall, tariffs have gone up because it eliminated the general preferential tariff.

Prebudget consultations should be an exercise that reflects what was heard in committee, but in this case what we got seemed more like the Conservative government's shopping list to prepare for the next election. We think that is unfortunate because the Standing Committee on Finance should be the place where we can thoroughly examine all the policies that were adopted by the government. That also includes Conservative members.

A committee meeting is the only place where we can call members by name. The reason for that is that, in committee, they are not government members and they do not represent their riding. They are there to use their expertise to advise the government on what direction it should take. That is not what happened in the prebudget consultations. This time, the consultations were much more negative than previous consultations and reports.

We submitted a minority report, which is a supplementary rather than dissenting report. It is supplementary to the 47 recommendations presented by the government. There was consensus on some of those recommendations, but the two opposition parties voted against others.

One problematic issue that the government refused to address, even though it was mentioned a number of times during the consultations, is employment insurance. The report was tabled in December 2014, but at that time, we were already worried about the government using the employment insurance fund to balance its budget since we have seen that happen before. That concern is included in the NDP's supplementary report. We had no idea what the budget was going to look like, but we were worried about that happening because of what we had been hearing. This is what we wrote in our supplementary report:

The Conservatives are banking on surpluses in the EI Account in order to fund their return to budget balance—at the same time that they continue to restrict access through the implementation of their regressive EI reforms.

By “regressive reforms” we specifically mean all the measures that were adopted during the major reform of 2012. These measures have made it impossible for many Canadians to get employment insurance even though they contributed to it. Today, less than 38% of Canadians who contribute to employment insurance, who make their contributions expecting that employment insurance will help them, can get it when they lose their job. This does not make sense and, at the end of the day, it is very detrimental to regions like mine, like the Lower St. Lawrence, eastern Quebec, and eastern Canada. The economy in these regions has historically depended on seasonal employment, to a great extent, and still does. I am proud of the efforts my riding and my region have made over the past few years to diversify their economy and ensure that they are not as reliant on seasonal employment as they have been in the past. When we talk about seasonal jobs, we are talking mostly about jobs in the primary sector, the resource sector, the forestry or the fishery. We are also talking about jobs in the service sector, which for obvious reasons are only seasonal jobs, in the tourism industry for example. Going back to natural resources, there are also core industries such as agriculture. A farmer cannot harvest in winter. Maple syrup producers cannot do much of their work in the fall or winter either.

The government has failed to acknowledge this reality that affects several regions. We spoke out against this when the reform was introduced. Year after year, many witnesses have told us that the system is no longer adequate today. The EI fund has a surplus because of the increase in premiums imposed by the Conservatives. The government no longer knows what to do with it. One of the recommendations we received was to increase access to the program. The Conservatives completely ignored the recommendations. Instead they took part of the surplus and decided to give it to small and medium-sized businesses. That measure was passed last year. Small and medium-sized businesses were handed over $550 million of the employment insurance surplus with the hope of creating jobs. However, the House will remember that the Parliamentary Budget Officer's report stated that it would take over half a billion dollars to create 800 jobs, contrary to what the government was saying. Today, we find ourselves in a situation where the surplus in the EI fund, which we would like to be independent, has in large part funded the balanced budget that the federal government is boasting about.

The prebudget consultation report contains several interesting items. The work of the committee chair, the member from Edmonton—Leduc was impeccable. However, I would like to submit to the House the problems that exist in terms of the philosophy of implementing the prebudget consultations. The government is moving steadily away from taking the consultations into account and that remains a serious concern for us.

On that note, I will turn the floor over to the member for Welland, who is certainly going to continue in the same vein.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Mr. Speaker, there is a great deal of concern with regard to the budget and the manner in which the Minister of Finance has presented what I would suggest is a bogus balanced budget, not to mention its unfairness to the middle class on taxation policy.

This is a budget that does nothing for real tangible economic growth for Canada. The government does not seem to get it. It does not understand that it is the middle class of Canada that will be the driving force of our economy. Giving strength to our middle class will give strength to the Canadian economy. That should be the priority. Obviously, the minister was not listening when he canvassed and solicited opinions on the budget.

The question I have for the member is on the general behaviour of the Minister of Finance. For example, ever since the budget presentation, he has not stood in his place to answer any questions related to the budget. I am wondering if the member might want to comment on the facade of having budget consultations and then not even having the courage to answer questions on the budget after he has delivered it.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will start by answering the question about the balanced budget.

Indeed, a large part of the balanced budget this government brags about so much comes from sources that were not recommended in pre-budget consultations.

The first source is the EI surplus, which was about $1.8 billion. Since the surplus announced by the government is just $1.4 billion, it had to take the $1.8 billion from the EI surplus and add it to the consolidated revenue fund, even though the Finance Minister's predecessor, Jim Flaherty, had said that the government would never use the EI surplus to finance a balanced budget.

The second source is the contingency fund—not just this year's fund, which went from $3 billion to $1 billion, but the fund for the next two years as well. This measure was not recommended in the pre-budget consultations either. No one made that suggestion.

The third source is the early sale of GM shares, worth $3.1 billion. You have to add the $2 billion to this $3.1 billion. I said “early sale” because the government lost a lot of money on these GM shares. If it had waited just one more week to sell them, it would have made $100 million more.

At the end of the day, we are talking about nearly $7 billion taken from these three sources to achieve this balanced budget.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the people of Vancouver Kingsway have been very clear for a number of years about the kinds of issues they believe are important and which they really would like the federal government to address.

There is a crushing, critical shortage of affordable housing in Vancouver. People are extremely concerned about the lack of good quality, full-time jobs, the kind of jobs on which people can raise a family.

People are very concerned about the environment in Vancouver Kingsway. They are worried about climate change and protecting Canada's pristine environment. They want to make sure our children and our children's children can enjoy that.

I am wondering if my hon. colleague can comment on whether or not he feels that this budget has done an adequate job in addressing those major pivotal concerns of affordable housing, good jobs and protecting the environment.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Vancouver Kingsway for that very important question.

Affordable housing is definitely one of the biggest losers in this budget. Many organizations have condemned the lack of adequate funding. None of the recommendations coming out of the pre-budget consultations really address this issue in any meaningful way, despite the fact that we heard witnesses talk about the importance of investing in housing and express disappointment in the federal government's lack of interest in this issue.

Also, in our supplementary report, we specifically talked about how the government should take immediate action to address the affordable housing crisis facing Canadian municipalities by renewing social housing agreements and working to develop and implement a national housing strategy as proposed by Bill C-400.

Unfortunately, the government did not pay attention to that recommendation, which is a real shame because the affordable housing crisis is affecting the whole country and is not getting any real attention from the federal government.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to join this debate. I want to thank my good friend, as well as the other members of the committee, for all of their hard work. As he said earlier, I would thank the chair, the member for Edmonton—Leduc. I have worked with him in the past, and I have always found him to be an honourable gentleman who embodies the sense of trying to work in a non-partisan way, especially at the committee level. I appreciate all of his hard work.

I want to thank the members of our party, the New Democrats, who worked on that committee. These documents are not props, because they are documents that have been tabled and we can actually use them. This is the kind of work that goes into the prebudget consultations by a committee of parliamentarians. They go out and talk to people across the country, and people from all walks of life from across the country come to speak to them.

It is not just the financiers that folks talk to. Our members are absolutely passionate about making sure that folks from every walk of live have input, because that is what this place is about. This is their place. It is their House. It belongs to the common folk of the country, hence its name, the House of Commons. The greens out at the front are called “the commons”. They are the common place for all of us to come. That is what this document is meant to do.

It is unfortunate that when the people speak through their elected representatives the government does not hear them. It seems to turn a deaf ear to the folks who come forward and say, “Here are the things that we would like to see for us”. The “us” is not the members who are sitting in the House, but the folks across the country that we represent who are saying what things they would like to see, the things that they want us to work on, the things that they think would help them. What did we find? We found that basically most folks were ignored.

I found it fascinating. I looked at the supplementary report that was submitted by my good colleagues. One of the pieces was on employment insurance and what that should mean to those who are unemployed. Mr. Speaker, I know that your riding is in southwestern Ontario and, like mine, has come through a huge restructuring in the manufacturing sector. Literally tens of thousands of folks are unemployed and have gone on employment insurance.

When I first came to this place, I heard the government talk about what the previous Liberal government had done in raiding the EI fund. What it said, and I absolutely agreed with it and almost applauded it one day, was that it would never do what the Liberal government had done previously and raid the fund. What did it do to balance the budget? It raided the fund. When we have the highest youth unemployment that the country has seen in decades, instead of making sure that there is money for training, retraining, and job opportunities for young people and those who do not have work, the government took about $2.1 billion out of the fund and decided to balance the books.

Why did the Conservatives want to do that? It is an election year. They promised that they would balance the books, but they did not promise to balance the books on the backs of the unemployed in this country. That is not what they said they would do. They said that they were good, prudent, fiscal managers and they could manage to do it without doing what the Liberal government had done years ago. Well, they failed. They failed on that score. They put the test in front of themselves and they failed.

There are teachers in this place. I would suggest that when they give the Conservatives a report card, they give them an F, because that is exactly what they deserve.

On the other hand, what we had said was that the employment insurance fund belongs to those who are unemployed. It belongs to all of those who contribute, because it is indeed an insurance fund. I have said this many times before. If we buy insurance for our car and have an accident, the insurance should cover the car. Therefore, I have no idea why it is that the government seems to think that we should enrol in the employment insurance fund and pay the insurance, but people should not be able to collect it if they become unemployed.

There is one thing that is absolutely crystal clear, and the law has been this way since the mid-1990s. The rules changed and people cannot quit their job and get employment insurance. People must be unemployed and they must have been laid off by the employer, which means that the employer put them out of work and that they did not leave voluntarily. There have been some minor tweaks to the rules, such as if there was harassment or some other things that gave just cause, or some other things can happen.

Clearly, the government failed on this particular attribute, and it failed the youth of this country. We all recognize that this country has high youth unemployment. It is apparent here in the province of Ontario. It is apparent in the province of Quebec, and across this entire country.

One thing we talk about in this place is the human capital, the human potential of this great country, which is embodied in its youth. We continue to say that we need to ensure we have those folks in the future who will look after us, because we all get older. The one thing I can say about today is I am a day older than I was yesterday, but I am a day younger than I will be tomorrow. The bottom line is that we will all get older and at some point in time we may need those young folks to look after us. Some of us are older than others. I will not point any fingers. I could point a finger at myself, I suppose, because I am older than some, but I am also younger than others.

The bottom line is that if we do not invest in that human capacity, that human potential, all those young folks, when will they have the opportunity and when will they finally join in the capacity to make sure that when we need them, they will be there? The government has lost an opportunity.

New Democrats, on the other hand, would not have lost that opportunity. We would have made sure that opportunity was taken. We would make sure that young folks actually have an opportunity to go forward. If youth do not have the opportunity, then they are stymied, and we put them in a place where they lose hope. If they lose hope, there is no sense in going forward, so what would be the point? The very things we want to remove in the sense of impediments, we did not do, which is really unfortunate in this case.

That takes me to infrastructure. One thing that has to be built is capacity, because we need capacity for the economy. I am not an economist, but I am a Scotsman, so I can count. God knows, I count pennies. The bottom line is that if we are going to have an economy that functions, we have to be able to move throughout the economy. We have to be able to move physically as well. It is not all just electronic stuff. It is not a question of going on the Internet, pressing a button and shooting it through the air, through the wireless spectrum. The bottom line is that goods and services and people have to move. In order to move them, there has to be infrastructure. If there is no infrastructure, they are not going to move.

The investment in infrastructure that this budget proposes is lacklustre at best, and it is also down the road. I hate to tell the Conservatives about that road, but that road has a pothole in it. In fact, it has more than one pothole. It is going to be pretty tough getting down that road to get to where we want to go if we do not fix the potholes. I will not say everyone knows this, because the Conservatives decided to remove the long form census, so they do not really know what they need because if they do not have information, they cannot make firm decisions.

That reminds me of my days when I was a municipal councillor. I know a number of us in the House at one point had that career previous to this one. That information was of absolute value to municipal politicians in deciding whether to build a home for the aged or an arena for young kids. Without the data regarding the demographics and where things are headed, it is hard to know which one to build. What should we do? Should we flip a coin, hope for the best and spend hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure that sits vacant because the group we built it for no longer exists? It makes no sense.

We need information. We need hard facts to make decisions on what is going to be done. If we have those hard facts and data, we can build the infrastructure in the appropriate places at the appropriate time to make sure we are getting what colloquially is called a good bang for the buck, which the Conservatives always say. However, I would refer them to the Auditor General's report of yesterday, which really was quite shameful in the sense that the Auditor General said that when it came to antimicrobials, it took 18 years for them to do something, and they still have not done anything, which I find surprising.

It is unfortunate the Conservatives did not listen to the folks who came before committee, but that is par for the course, because they do not like listening to us either. Time and time again there has been time allocation in this place. Over and over there has been time allocation.

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That the House do now adjourn.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

In my opinion the nays have it.

And five or more members having risen:

Call in the members.

(The House divided on the motion, which was negatived on the following division:)

Vote #386

Committees of the House

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

I declare the motion defeated.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I move:

That the debate be now adjourned.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those in favour of the motion. will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Joe Comartin]

All those opposed will please say nay.

[Some hon. members]

Nay.