Charlie Penson

[Trade, May 16th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister likes to go on and on about page 22 of the red book, which everyone knows is another broken promise.

I would like to remind him of another broken promise on pages 23 and 24. This Liberal government promised to protect the steel industry, the pork industry, softwood lumber and other products. It said it would renegotiate the free trade agreement and NAFTA to obtain a subsidies code, an anti-dumping code and a more effective way of resolving disputes.

Would the Prime Minister admit that this was his first broken promise?

[Employment Insurance Act, May 14th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome that comment. This gentleman has identified an issue I want to explain.

I believe that when people are unemployed temporarily or on welfare, it is incumbent upon the people of Canada to look after them during a temporary time in their life and to make those adjustments. What bothers me is when it becomes a way of life. I do not think anybody wants that because it is not very good for the people involved.

I want to address the regional issue. If an area is not doing very well, we have to look at the reason. It is the job of the government to create an environment for business in order for people to invest in the economy and get it going. That has not taken place. For example, if we were to ask small businesses why they are not expanding they would tell us that the high cost of doing business and the high payroll taxes are deterrents. The fact that the

government is spending $10 billion more just on interest this year than it did when I was elected in 1993 tells us something.

Atlantic Canada is a perfect example of why we have to move forward. Prior to Confederation, Atlantic Canada had its main business contacts in the New England states. It was a good relationship, one which was north-south, a natural trading corridor. After Confederation that was changed. More east-west flow was encouraged. High tariffs encouraged more east-west flow of goods and trading. That was detrimental to Atlantic Canada.

Under free trade we now have the opportunity to say to Atlantic Canadians that we will open some doors for them in the future so that they can become real partners in Canada. It is incumbent upon the Government of Canada to remove impediments to trade and allow areas like Atlantic Canada to fulfil their true potential. I believe they have lots of potential.

[Employment Insurance Act, May 14th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to share my time with the member for Saskatoon-Clark's Crossing, to give as many people as possible the opportunity to participate in this important debate.

This debate is on the reform of the unemployment insurance program, a reform that has been anticipated for some time by Canadians. What Canadians want from an employment insurance program is some certainty that the program will provide help for those people who are unemployed through a time of crisis in their lives for a short period of time until an adjustment can be made to find a new job and make those adjustments.

Unfortunately, that is not what we have in this program. We do not have equality. We have different terms for different parts of the country. There are something like 62 different regions that all have different criteria. Some people are upset about that. They are upset that the same terms and conditions do not extend from one side of the country to the other. They are also concerned about the

dependency. I will talk about that in a moment. I believe they are concerned about trying to reform the unemployment insurance plan into a plan that conforms more to a true insurance plan in the future.

I want to speak about the regional inequities in this bill. Everyone wants fairness. I believe it was the member from Kenora who responded earlier when a Bloc member suggested that the people of Quebec were not being treated fairly in this legislation. It was astounding to hear the member from Kenora say: "We are being fair. We are giving $1.33 back for every $1 contributed by people in Quebec". That says a lot right there.

A dollar for a dollar. It seems that all parts of the country should be treated equally and the same standards should apply to all.

One part of the country is doing quite well, a lot of new jobs are being created. In the last six years 87 per cent of all new jobs created in Canada were created in Alberta and B.C. At the same time, through this bill we are trying to encourage people to stay at home in parts of the country where there is a net job loss and a low possibility of any jobs in the future. That flies directly in the face of common sense.

My grandparents and my mother lived about 40 miles south of here around 1912. They moved to Alberta, to new opportunity, to new farmland that was available. People have been mobile in this country for many years. It seems that is part of our Canadian society. We move to where the new jobs are. People generally do not want to collect unemployment insurance. They want opportunities.

In the Canada Employment Centre in my riding there was a time when we experienced about 4 per cent unemployment. As my colleague from Medicine Hat explained, this means no unemployment. It is only indicated because of the way we built this institutional reform into our unemployment insurance in 1971 when the Government of Canada became involved.

Last year, at a time when there was essentially no unemployment in my riding of Peace River, I met with a number of contractors. They said that they were having trouble getting trades people, yet the unemployment centre will not advertise Canada wide. We had a lucrative situation.

There were plumbers, for example, in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland who wanted jobs. They did not want to collect unemployment insurance, but there were no jobs available in their provinces. They were not even made aware of the opportunities in other parts of the country. The Canada Employment Centre was advertising in Edmonton and Calgary for the Grand Prairie area. Both areas were running quite well; there were no unemployed people. Therefore, they could not get experienced trades people. It was an intolerable situation.

Alberta and British Columbia are experiencing strong growth with many jobs being created. Out of the 443,000 jobs that have been created in Canada in the last six years, 345,000 have been created in Alberta and B.C. The largest four provinces in Canada have created 101 per cent of Canada's jobs which means that the rest of Canada has been losing jobs. We know where those areas are. Yet the reforms proposed by the government still encourage people to stay at home in those areas of net job loss to collect unemployment insurance. It is shameful.

The country has been broken into 62 regions. In Nova Scotia there are five regions with different unemployment criteria. That is simply not acceptable. We need national standards that are agreed to by all provinces.

I will take a moment to talk about dependency. That is an unfortunate part of the unemployment insurance program, especially since 1971. That is when the federal government intervened. It used a regional fairness scheme to try to engage in social engineering.

We are sending the wrong signals to Canadians. We are sending the signal that dependency is okay. We now have up to second and third generation families that have just graduated into this cycle of collecting unemployment insurance. Yet at the same time, parts of the country are crying out for workers.

What incentives are being offered which create this dependency? Twelve weeks to qualify in much of Atlantic Canada and in Quebec. It is 18 weeks in the rest of the country. Is that fair? Should a worker who is unemployed in my riding be treated differently from somebody who is unemployed in Newfoundland or Quebec? They should not. This creates that same dependency. People will stay at home and collect unemployment insurance.

This is not a true insurance plan. We need a plan which is administered by employees and employers. They would soon sort out the people who are ripping off the system. Their premiums are being used to finance people who are abusing the system.

Abuse is a very common factor in unemployment insurance. Payroll taxes reflect this. Employers and employees have had to pay higher amounts in the past several years which has resulted in a slush fund that the government will be using to buffer the deficit. Employees and employers are being asked to help pay down the deficit. That is unfair.

Payroll taxes in Canada are very high. Up until about 1971 you could take the unemployment figures from the United States and Canada, plot them on a graph over many decades and see that they were almost identical. In the bad times and in the good times the chart would show that unemployment figures in the United States and Canada were almost identical.

What happened in 1971 when the federal government intervened and became involved in the unemployment insurance fund? There has been a consistent spread of about 4 points in the last 25 years between Canada and the United States. Unemployment in Canada is always higher. That is the result of the institutional unemployment which has become part of the system because of these generous benefits.

We need national standards. We need a plan which is run by employees and employers. It could be done on a provincial basis which would enable it to be responsive to local needs.

The other part of the bill which really bothers me is that over two million part time workers will have to pay unemployment insurance premiums. These people have a tough time making ends meet to begin with. Often they are working at minimum wage. Now we are asking them to pay an unemployment insurance levy as well. I believe that will have the opposite effect. It will put many people in the position where they will say: "Why should I work? I may as well sit home and collect unemployment insurance".

We are moving in the wrong direction. What the people of Canada want is real reform of the unemployment insurance system, not something which is regionally based, not something which is unfair. They want all Canadians to be treated equally. They want to stop the abuse of the unemployment insurance system. They want to be generous enough to say to those people who are unemployed: "Yes, we are going to look after you through that time of your life when you are unfortunate enough to be unemployed".

Canadians are generous. That is why we pay our unemployment insurance premiums. We do not pay our unemployment insurance premiums so that individuals can live off the system from one year to the next. It becomes an abuse program which does not do much for our self-worth. I believe that most people need to work and to feel they are contributing to society.

We are not stopping the cycle of dependency which was started over 25 years ago. We are sending the wrong message to Canadians. I am opposed to Bill C-12. I will be voting against it. If we ever have the opportunity, we will make this a true insurance program. I look forward to that opportunity.

[Employment Insurance Act, May 14th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to be sharing my time today with the member for-

[Natural Resources, May 9th, 1996]

What about elected senators?

[Taxation, May 8th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, imagine for a moment that you have been working abroad for a number of years. You spent long periods of time away from your family and have endured many hardships. The only benefit to you was the overseas tax exemption.

Suddenly you find out there has been a big mistake. Even though Revenue Canada accepted your tax returns for all those years, it now turns out that your company and all of its employees did not qualify for the tax exemption. You owe back taxes all the way back to 1991, big time.

In my riding and all through Alberta's oil patch, there are people who now find themselves in this situation. These people should have been advised much sooner.

Revenue Canada was lax in its enforcement and lax in checking the credentials of the companies involved. Therefore, the minister must take another look at such circumstances which allowed this to happen. The minister must do something to offer relief to people who now owe thousands of dollars which they cannot repay.

[Canada Labour Code, April 24th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to follow up on some of the points made by my colleague, the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia.

With Bill C-219 the hon. member is trying to remove a clause in the Canada Labour Code which clearly discriminates against employees under federal jurisdiction on the basis of age. What we are talking about is clearly a matter of fairness.

My colleague has already pointed out that section 235 of the labour code allows a company to deny a terminated employee the severance pay which would normally be due him or her if that employee were not entitled to early withdrawal of a pension plan.

Let me read the exact words as they appear in section 235:

An employer shall be deemed not to have terminated the employment of an employee where, either immediately on ceasing to be employed by the employer or before that time, the employee is entitled to a pension under a pension plan contributed to by the employer.

Section 235 does not say the terminated employee actually has to apply for the early withdrawal of his pension, he only has to be entitled to do so. The terminated worker may have every intention of looking for another job and may not want to take a cut in the pension which early retirement would entail.

Most pension plans in Canada, 87 per cent, entitle an employee to early withdrawal of pension benefits at age 55.

In most cases under federal jurisdiction the age 55 is when an employer is legally entitled to terminate a person while saying: "Forget the severance pay. Forget the termination pay in lieu of sufficient notice and forget the gold watch for that matter".

I have to admit I am feeling a little bit uncomfortable right now, as 55 is not that far off in my case. I am just getting started in my view. I am not ready to be put out to pasture and I do not think many other 55-year-olds are for that matter.

Just because a plan states you can retire if you want to does not mean you are actually ready to throw in the towel. You might still have an awful lot to offer. I submit that most people do, even past 65 in many instances. I would guess most members of the House would agree with me on that issue. Some of us have just figured out how to get the best seating plan to get the camera angle, and so I would not want to have an early retirement at this stage.

Any employer in Canada can terminate an employee whenever he or she feels like it. There is no legislation that guarantees anyone the right to work. What an employer is required to do is give the employee a reasonable notice of termination of employment. Failing that, the employer is required to make a payment equal to what the employee would have earned had he worked for that notice period. This is referred to as pay in lieu of notice or termination pay. The employer is also required to pay any money, such as vacation pay, owed to the employee at the time of termination.

The federal jurisdiction of the Government of Canada and the province of Ontario are the only two jurisdictions in Canada that have a statutory provision for severance pay in addition to notice of termination requirements.

Ontario requires that employer, upon termination, give an employee one regular week's wages for each year of employment to a maximum of 26 weeks. Some may argue that is pretty generous. Perhaps that was put in by an NDP government in Ontario. In theory, if an employee earns wages of $1,000 per week that employee will be entitled to 26 weeks of severance pay, $26,000.

The severance pay provisions in a federal jurisdiction are not quite as rich as that. The employer must pay two days for each year worked or five days' wages, whichever is larger. The federal severance provision is less than half of what it is in Ontario.

However, it begs the question who might be affected by this draconian legislation? There are some 700,000 people in this category who are affected by the Canada Labour Code. These people work in the banking industry, telecommunications, transportation, grain handling, ports and broadcasting. We know full well that because of our changing environment in terms of how long people are employed at different jobs this will become a major factor down the road.

Some of these sectors, like many others in the economy, will be looking for considerable downsizing over the coming periods. That is fine. That happens. Companies need the flexibility to increase or contract a number of employees according to individual situations or as technology develops.

Private member's Bill C-219, by removing section 235 from the Canada Labour Code, will ensure all terminated employees in those sectors are treated equally. Employers will not be able to terminate older employees just because it is cheaper to do so. Whether a worker is 55 years old plus a few months or 55 years old minus a few months will not make a difference.

What we want is equality. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms states that every individual is equal before the law and has the right to equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination. This means government rules, regulations and programs must not discriminate or cause others to discriminate on the basis of individual characteristics such as age.

Section 235 of the Canada Labour Code is an anomaly which allows, in fact enforces, companies to discriminate on the basis of age. Age should be a factor here at all. I am sure members on the other side of the House will agree that section 235 is completely unfair. I have difficulty understanding why unanimous consent would not be given to allow this to be a votable motion. However, I hope some compromise can be reached such as what has been

suggested. This is an unfair section which needs to be reviewed and removed from the Canada Labour Code.

Any terminated employee entitled to a pension should also be entitled to receive severance and termination pay just like his or her younger co-workers or the younger former co-worker, as this case would suggest.

[The Budget, April 16th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for St. Catharines. I think we agree on a number of areas. I give credit to the government and the finance minister for tackling the deficit problem.

However, where I have difficulty is I do not believe they are going quickly enough to get to a balanced budget. That is the point I would have in debate with my hon. friend from St. Catharines.

We have to look at two experiences of where governments actually moved to balanced budgets and see what the consequences of those were, in Alberta and in New Zealand.

My home province of Alberta has tackled the balanced budget initiative in three years. In fact, it came out ahead of schedule and we are now starting to get the reward and the province of Alberta is beginning to pay down its provincial debt.

What happened during that time? How tough was the hardship? We heard a lot of concerns. I know that Ontario has similar concerns right now. If we ask the average person on the street what difference they felt and how severe was it three years afterward in terms of the cutbacks to their personal lifestyle or their operation in business, with the exception of health care in Alberta, most people hardly noticed it was taking place. In fact, many people felt it was long overdue.

There was a consolidation of school boards. For example, school boards which had been put in place in the 1930s during the horse and buggy era now were no longer needed with modern transportation and communication. One school board was consolidated from three or four and in fact was even more effective because it had a little more buying power.

We need to work quickly. We need some reward at the end. There needs to be a light at the end of the tunnel. By continuing to drag our feet on this we are feeling the pain because we are making all of these sacrifices to increase debt servicing.

The example I used was that $4 billion in spending cuts last year, which I compliment the government for but I believe should have been more drastic, were just eaten up by the increased interest on the debt.

If anyone is under the illusion of how severe this is, think in terms of the size of the interest on the debt and how quickly it is growing as a proportion of our budget. We should be alarmed by

that increase because it is threatening very important social services such as health care and old age security.

The hon. member has asked if we need more time to adjust. My assessment would be no. The Prime Minister of New Zealand during the time of the crash in 1982 advised to go as quickly as possible, because the faster we get there the quicker the rewards take place and then small business will be able to create jobs as confidence in the economy grows again.

[The Budget, April 16th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the House on the the 1996-97 budget.

The problems associated with federal overspending is what brought me and many of my Reform colleagues into politics in the first place. We recognized that the ballooning federal debt was to endanger the livelihood of most Canadians. If something was not done quickly it would endanger the programs delivered to Canadians who need them the most.

Canadians threw out the Conservatives in the 1993 election because they were fed up with the high spending legacy of the Mulroney Progressive Conservatives and because they were deeply concerned about our debt problems.

Imagine my surprise when travelling through Dallas last week. I picked up a copy of the Dallas-Fort Worth newspaper and I read that the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney was to be giving a keynote address in Fort Worth.

The introduction in the newspaper suggested the Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, former Prime Minister of Canada, will present the keynote address to Tarrant Export 40 awards. It went on to say

that Mulroney was a decisive Prime Minister credited with correcting his nation's disastrous economic course.

Imagine taking credit for something, the exact opposite of which he did, when he had the chance as Prime Minister. It seems that is why there is so much disillusionment with politics in this country.

Brian Mulroney and the Conservatives were elected in 1984 to clean up the mess that was left by the Liberals who had created some $200 billion of national debt. What did he do when he had his opportunity? He doubled that amount. Taxpayers were much worse off after the Mulroney legacy and not vice versa, as he would claim.

I am convinced that if it had not been for the presence of a number of new members in the House, Reform members and some Liberal backbenchers who were elected in the 1993 election, the finances of the country would even be worse than they are today.

We have had some cuts. I think we can take credit for that, those of us who came here in 1993. We were a breath of fresh air in Parliament.

I know that cuts hurt. My riding of Peace River has made quite a few sacrifices in order to reduce federal government spending. However, as painful as these cuts have been, it is tragic that absolutely nothing has been accomplished through them. The cost of servicing the federal debt has grown. We have had a lot of pain but we have not had the gain to go along with it.

As part of federal cost cutting measures in last year's budget there were a number of things cut back in the riding of Peace River. The weather service was cut. Twenty-one jobs at the Beaver Lodge agriculture research station were cut. Air traffic control jobs were lost in the city of Grande Prairie. We lost jobs and services. However, I think Canadians are prepared to make those sacrifices.

There was a real human cost. Nothing can make up for those personal sacrifices made by the people in my riding, but it would have been nice to know that at least the cuts were worth it, that their loss and the loss of people like them had made a real difference in turning the country around. All that happened was the debt grew and the cost of servicing the debt also grew.

Cuts in last year's budget amounted to $4 billion. That is exactly the amount the national interest on the debt increased by. It was all lost to increased interest on the debt.

Not only is Canada threatened by members of the Bloc who want to take Quebec out of Canada, the country is also threatened by the Liberal government. It is not being responsible in getting our finances in order. It is putting the country at risk.

If we look at a pie chart of the budget, the biggest part of the pie would go not to the poor, not to funding for our health care system, not to maintaining our educational institutions; it would go to the increasing cost of servicing our national debt. That is absolutely shameful.

Before the government came into power we were spending $38 billion a year on interest payments to service the debt. That has grown to $42 billion in the past year and under the 1996-97 budget it will rise to $48 billion. There has been a $10 billion increase in the interest on the debt during the three years the Liberal government has been in power. That is tragic.

I believe the picture could have been entirely different. There is an awareness in the country that the deficit and the debt must be tackled. I think the public is far ahead of the government on this issue. The deficit and the debt must be tackled quickly and decisively. Half measures will not do because increasing debt servicing will simply eat up the cuts that are being made.

Provincial governments have received the message. Provincial governments across the land have taken the fiscal problem seriously. They have set firm targets and dates for eliminating their deficits; not reducing them, eliminating them.

The federal government is now the only government in the country which has not set deficit elimination targets. The government talks about rolling targets from year to year. What is the date the government will have a balanced budget?

Without a goal and a target date the people of Canada who are bearing the brunt of the cuts cannot hope that the government will get to where it is supposed to be going.

I would like to speak about my home province of Alberta. The government there is trying through a survey to decide what to do with this year's budget surplus. That is something we have not heard much of for a long time at the federal government level. The Government of Alberta is trying to decide whether to cut taxes or pay down the debt. Soon provincial governments all over Canada will be in the same position.

Not the federal government. Instead it has offloaded its problems to the provinces by reducing block funding for health care, welfare and advanced education. In effect it is asking the provinces to do its dirty work for it.

What is the situation in Alberta? As I said, this year we have a budget surplus. We have growth in the economy. We have the lowest unemployment rate than any other place in the country and we are starting to pay down our provincial debt. This province has made a difference. B.C. and Saskatchewan are currently on the

same track and all provinces have recognized that is the road we have to take. Not only do we have to start reducing deficits and get to a balanced budget, we have to start paying down our national debt.

This is not the first time Canada has found itself under a staggering debt. Right after the second world war Canada had a debt larger in relation to our GDP than we have now, but there were special circumstances. That debt had been incurred because of the great depression of the 1930s and to finance the war effort. It took the Canadian people with their shoulders to the wheel 25 years, a lot of hard work and a lot of will, to pay off that debt.

We know this did not last very long, however, because the Liberals came to power and especially under Prime Minister Trudeau started another spending spree and the spiral started all over again. By the end of the Trudeau era we had built it up to $200 billion again. Unfortunately the current Liberal government is still adding to our debt.

On March 6 the finance minister tabled his third budget. Like his other budgets, it did nothing to address the problem of the debt which now stands at $578 billion. To service this debt Canadians will have to pay almost $40 billion in interest payments this fiscal year.

That sounds like a big number but I would like to put it into perspective. Fifty billion dollars translates into $4.2 billion each month which translates to $137 million a day in interest payments. The average Canadian taxpayer pays $3,700 a year just to cover the interest on debts. Taken as an average of their monthly cheques, it amounts to $309 million a year.

The third budget of the finance minister is no better than the others. It brings us the pain but no gain. We need balanced budget legislation. We need a firm date. It will happen only when in all corners of Canada where Canadians have made sacrifices they come to some kind of fruition through a government committed to a balanced budget and to pay down the national debt. It has to happen.

[The Budget, April 16th, 1996]

What area does not?