Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time. Perhaps the member for Kings—Hants will even be nice enough to finish my speech.
I am honoured to rise today to speak about our government's strong commitment to fairness for Canadian workers in the face of a very hypocritical Conservative leader who is determined to weaken the labour movement in Canada. The member for Carleton is trying to wax poetic in the House today when he talks about workers, but make no mistake: The only workers' right he supports is the right of Canadians to work for less.
In contrast, it is an honour for me to talk about all the progress that has helped Canadian workers and their families have a fairer, more prosperous future.
Instead of standing up for workers, the Conservative leader now uses them as unwilling props in his latest parliamentary temper tantrum.
Let me tell members what the member for Carleton proudly supported. He supported two anti-union bills, Bill C-377 and Bill C-525, which sought to make it harder for workers to organize and undermined the ability of unions to fight for their members. We repealed those bills.
There is also the Conservative Party policy declaration that states it, “supports right to work legislation to allow optional union membership”.
On the other hand, the Liberals have been there for workers from day one. On this side of the House, we stand on our record, not empty slogans. We have made sure that federally regulated employees have access to up to 10 paid sick days per year. That helps nearly one million Canadians.
A growing share of Canada's workforce is now comprised of gig workers. Gig work can offer many benefits, such as flexibility and more freedom at work. However, these kinds of work arrangements can also deprive workers of the rights, protections and entitlements they deserve. Therefore, on June 20, we brought legislation into force to better protect gig workers in federally regulated industries against misclassification.
Last year, we announced five new clean-tech tax credits. We are investing $93 billion over the next decade in tax credits for carbon capture, utilization and storage; clean technology adoption; clean technology manufacturing; clean hydrogen; clean electricity; and EV supply chains. However, to get the full extent and benefit of four of those five tax credits, companies have to hire union workers or pay workers a prevailing union wage and create apprenticeships.
After question period and after the votes today, we will have the opportunity, myself or my colleague from Kings—Hants, to go into deep detail about the positive progressive record of this government for unions and workers. We will not be talking about things like the Conservative leader talks about, that the union contracts that pay workers a decent wage result in, “pointless”, “unnecessary inflation of costs that non-union firms with lower wages are good for competition”.
The Conservative leader is pretending. It is fake. We will have more to say later.