Mr. Speaker, the bill that the Liberal member has brought to us is an interesting one, because in many respects it feels like an admission of failure on the part of the government. The Liberals have been in power for more than 10 years. They have repeatedly ignored the needs of trades workers and treated trades workers, as well as the work they do, with utter disdain, and now a member of the Liberal government is saying that maybe it should have a framework to try to fix some of the problems confronting trades workers, including problems around labour mobility.
I will give the member credit insofar as his speech identified very real problems that are making things more difficult for trades workers trying to get certification, trying to move, trying to find jobs, etc. However, I think it is important to observe that the government did not need a private member's bill compelling it to introduce a framework in order to solve these problems.
The government could simply have acted to solve these problems that are, in many respects, of their own making. The government also could have proposed the framework without having one of its members propose a bill to require it to present a framework. Fixing these problems is within the power of the government, and the problems are ones that have emerged from the actions and failures of a Liberal government that has been in many respects negative and disdainful about the people who build this country.
Instead of fixing the problems, the government got one of its members to propose a bill that calls for the development of a framework that is kind of directed toward pushing the government to solve problems that, at the end of the day, the government should solve itself.
I appreciate the identification of the problems, finally, but what we would really like is for the government to change policies in order to reverse bad decisions it has made that are bad for trades workers. If we look at the history of the government, we see that there are repeated instances of criticism and disdain for our hard-working trades workers. Most notable was when the former prime minister said that major projects in this country require a gender analysis because male construction workers' coming to towns to build things might have gendered impacts.
The former prime minister never spoke about the gendered impacts of people in suits' showing up. Instead he was purveying negative stereotypes about hard-working men and women who travel from home to build the projects this country needs. He talked about how we should not be known for our resources but should instead be known for our resourcefulness. This was constant negative discourse from the former prime minister about hard-working trades workers.
Maybe we could have hoped that the negative discourse would change with the new Prime Minister, but things have gotten even worse under him. In particular, in the last budget, a policy was announced that effectively singles out people in certain vocations, including trades workers, to no longer be able to access student grants. Page 217 of the last federal budget explains the dynamic. It says that students at private for-profit institutions, which includes vocational schools where many trades workers learn their trade, would no longer be eligible for grants under the federal student loan program.
This means that if someone studies any program at a university, no matter how labour-market relevant it is or is not, they can get those grants. However, if they study at a vocational institution to learn a trade, regardless of how urgently our economy needs those workers, they cannot get those grants. University students get the grants. If students are studying in the trades or for other critical skills at vocational institutions, they do not get the grants. This was the policy of the Prime Minister in the last federal budget, effectively singling out these occupations, including trades workers, to be denied student grants.
This policy is going to exacerbate existing shortages in these critical areas, because it sends a message to young people that the government is going to support them more if they go through the one door than if they go through the other door. In fact what we should be doing is trying to magnify the signals of the labour market to young people. We should be offering, as Conservatives proposed, more generous student grants to students who are pursuing studies in in-demand fields.
Instead, the Liberals are discriminating based on the institutions that students apply for. Just today, the government announced some further details of this planned policy. It announced some exceptions for certain kinds of vocations that people might study for at private institutions. The exemptions are better than nothing. We have done a lot of advocacy around this work and it feels like we are pushing the needle a bit. The exemptions were for nursing, dental hygiene, early childhood education and paramedics. It should not be a policy of exemptions. We should just eliminate in general this discriminatory policy that the government has proposed.
What I notice about these exceptions is that none of them apply to trades workers. Therefore, the government's policy continues to be that if someone is studying to become a tradesperson, and in many cases that training is offered at private institutions, then they cannot get a student grant. It is mind-boggling to me, in this time when finally even the Liberals are paying lip service to the fact that we need more trades workers, that they are still pursuing a policy that attacks trades workers by denying grants specifically to those who are pursuing careers in the trades.
The Conservatives have been doggedly pursuing this issue. We are defending trades workers, defending those who are trying to pursue critical skills at vocational institutions. In many cases, these are skills that are simply not offered at public or not-for-profit institutions. We have pushed this issue at the human resources committee and we were able to get the human resources committee to adopt a unanimous report encouraging the government to reconsider this policy. Even Liberals on the human resources committee at the time voted in favour of asking the government to reconsider this policy.
Then, this week, we put the motion before the House of Commons on Tuesday, and every single Liberal member voted against our motion to reconsider this policy. Every Liberal member present voted in favour of this Liberal policy to discriminate against trades workers and others pursuing vocational training at private institutions. The member who sponsored this bill and just spoke about the importance of trades workers voted in favour of the Liberal policy and against our motion to reconsider it. The Liberal member who put forward this bill earlier this week voted in favour of denying funding to students specifically and uniquely in the trades at private institutions.
The member for Markham—Unionville, who previously as a Conservative worked with me on this issue, called out the Liberal policy change for being systemically discriminatory because of its attack on those studying traditional Chinese medicine. He called this Liberal policy discriminatory and then, after he crossed the floor, he voted in favour of the policy that he said systemically discriminates against his own community and others. It is pretty baffling, to say, “This is systematically discriminatory against the community that I represent, and now I am going to vote for it.” Every Liberal member of the human resources committee who initially voted in favour of this motion to reconsider the discriminatory Liberal policy reversed their position when the motion came to the House. It is unbelievable. We have this situation of “say one thing and do the exact opposite”.
There are members in today's debate, I am sure, eager to pay lip service to the value of trades while attacking trades workers by targeting them with the removal of funding through these student grants. They cannot deny it because every one of them voted for it. Not only did they vote for the budget, but we had a stand-alone vote on this discrimination against trades workers. Every Liberal who was present, including the sponsor of this bill, voted in favour of that discrimination. They cannot get away with saying, “We are going to attack trades workers. We are going to insult them. We are going to deny funding that is available to every other stream, but then we are going to have a framework to study trying to fix these problems in the future.”
It is time for the Liberals to put their money where their mouth is on this issue, to put actions behind words. The Conservatives will always stand with, and stand up for, the hard-working trades workers who built this country. It is a pity that the Liberals are attacking them while hypocritically pretending to care.