Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the fantastic member for Northumberland—Clarke.
Before I talk about the actual merits of Bill C-5, I want to set the stage a little. The so-called one Canadian economy act is being brought in allegedly in response to the threats from the south, from President Trump, but it is disingenuous, at best, to say that that is what this is about. The crisis that is facing Canada is really a result of the last 10 years of a pretty incompetent Liberal government, and I will just talk about a few facts to back that up.
Let us talk about housing. Housing prices have become completely unaffordable. Most young people do not believe that they will ever own a home in their entire lifetime. In Ontario, my home province, we now have one million people regularly using food banks. This is a shocking increase from what it was a mere 10 years ago, when the number of people using a food bank in Ontario was about 350,000. Over the course of a decade of Liberal government management of the economy, the number of Canadians who are using a food bank has more than tripled. It gets worse because, again, 10 years ago, the number of people who were full-time employed and using a food bank was about 8% of those using the food bank. It is now 25%, so that has also tripled.
This is the backdrop of what has been going on in Canada after 10 years of the Liberal government. The Liberals like to say that they are a new government, but in fact they are not. The government is almost entirely composed of the ministers who were responsible for the files that created the challenges that exist today.
Now, the so-called one Canadian economy act talks about labour mobility, which is a critical issue. For a tradesperson in Canada, it is very difficult to go from New Brunswick or Newfoundland over to Alberta, where there may be work, or from Alberta over to New Brunswick or Newfoundland, if they are looking for work. This is because there is no standard set of safety standards across the country. Each province has its own safety standards, whether it is about working in confined spaces or working from heights. People may have certifications in their home province, but those certifications would not be recognized when they move to another province for work. That is a problem, because it could take them three, four or five days to meet these allegedly different standards within their trade, and therefore people would be going three, four or five days without pay. I know. I have travelled across the country. I have met with skilled tradespeople in the unionized sector, and this is a huge problem. It is a big disincentive for people to actually travel across the country to go where the work is.
When the Liberals talk about how we need to remove these interprovincial trade barriers, labour mobility is a huge part, and there is a simple solution. It is one that we actually proposed in the election. We said we would create a blue seal standard for these things across the country, so if people are certified to work from heights in Ontario, if they met that standard, they could go from Ontario to B.C., because they would have met this new standard.
The problem that we have is that the government did not do that in this alleged labour mobility bill. The Liberals are not taking the real step. It is just another example of a lot of talk. It sounds good that they are going to improve labour mobility, but when we actually look at the bill, it would not actually do anything it says. It promises to improve labour mobility by recognizing provincial occupation certificates federally. That would not help the plumber who is trying to go from Ontario to B.C. for work. That actually would not do anything for them. It is the same thing with any other skilled trades. The Liberals had a real opportunity to do something to make the lives of working Canadians better and to make labour mobility easier, but of course they declined to do that, so this is a major miss.
When the Liberals are talking about how we need to get the economy moving, they should have taken real steps to improve labour mobility, especially in the skilled trades. Those of us who spend time meeting with our tradespeople, the people who build and maintain this country, know that there is often a boom-bust cycle to that. The projects may be booming in Ontario when they are not necessarily booming in Manitoba, so the ability to move from one jurisdiction to another in order to be gainfully employed is critical.
This is not a new issue. This has been talked about for almost a decade, but the Liberals have lacked the political will to actually create a standard that would be recognized by all provinces, a new federal standard in the skilled trades for those types of safety things, as I said, like working in confined spaces or working from heights. If the Liberals did that, they would open up labour mobility for our tradespeople at a time when they absolutely need it.
Projects that the Liberals say are going to be spurred along by this piece of legislation have been delayed for a long time; they are not moving forward. Many people in the skilled trades are finding it hard to be employed, but they could be employed if they could move from one province to another. This is an absolute failure by the government, which says it is a new government that will take on new challenges. The Liberals have absolutely walked away from the challenge of labour mobility with this piece of legislation.
While we talk about the challenges with people in skilled trades, I would be remiss, as the shadow minister for labour, if I did not talk about the Liberal plan for modular housing. The Liberals now tout this as the big solution to housing, which, of course, it will not be, but one thing it would do for sure is take away jobs from our skilled tradespeople, especially our unionized tradespeople involved in housing construction: the plumbers, the carpenters, the pipefitters. They are the ones doing all the work to build houses, and now the Liberals want to take that away and have modular houses built in factories where there will be no skilled trades. This is going to have a disastrous effect. We are not going to have Red Seal carpenters working in a factory to build modular homes. The members across are laughing, which displays their ignorance on how the trades work and the general disregard the Liberal government has had for trades, especially for unionized tradespeople.
This brings me to another point, which is that for the first time in Canadian history, there is no minister of labour. This is a pretty shocking discovery. The Liberals are going to say they have a guy; he is the Secretary of State for Labour. However, it is like the person who sits at the kids' table at the wedding. They are kind of there, but they do not really matter that much. They are not at the big person table, which is the cabinet table.
What have unions said when they describe this? Joseph Mancinelli from LiUNA said, “if the Canadian government wants respect from labourers, perhaps let's start with a Minister of Labour”. He went on to call it a “slap in the face”. This is what it has been described as. Even CUPE said that it is “not just disappointing, but frankly insulting.” When we look at the lack of labour mobility in the bill, which is allegedly supposed to help; when we look at the Liberals pushing for modular housing, which will push out the trades; and when we look at the fact that there is no minister of labour, people in the labour movement know exactly where the Liberal government stands. Do not even get me started on taking away the right to strike through section 107 referrals. This is a government that has absolutely no respect for labourers and unions in this country, and the labour unions know it.
Now, let us talk about the one aspect of the bill that I find particularly troubling, which is the ministerial designation. The minister would get to pick the proponents of these projects. How could we ever think this is going to go well from a government that was responsible for the green slush fund and GC Strategies? Now the Liberals would get to pick the people who get these billion-dollar projects.
Imagine the corruption and graft that will go on with a government that has been awash in nothing but corruption and graft for the last 10 years. This will be corruption unlike we have ever seen. The minister is going to say he is going to pick one company to do a project. Can members imagine the corruption that is going to go on? If GC Strategies was able to turn $60,000 into $64 million, what is going to happen with a $1-billion project that a minister gets to pick? The green slush fund was Liberal insiders giving money to other Liberals while the minister stood there and did nothing. Actually, no, that is not true; the minister got promoted. The ministers responsible for GC Strategies got promoted too.
What did the Liberals learn? It is that turning a blind eye to corruption gets rewarded, and now they say this is how they are going to create the one Canadian economy. Yes, it is going to be one Canadian economy for Liberal insiders who get to line each other's pockets with these big fat contracts, just as they did with the green slush fund and just as they did with GC Strategies.
The bill would unleash a tidal wave of corruption and graft that the Liberals will hand out to all of their friends. It is not what Canadians need. It is not what unionized workers need. It is not what tradespeople need. It is another big, fat failure by a corrupt Liberal government, not a new Liberal government but the same old Liberal government that is going to reward its same old buddies with these big fat contracts.