Peter Adams

[Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, it will be a comment, then, if that is all the time I have. I do want to caution the member when he is talking about Ireland and Finland, which I think he mentioned, because we have considerably more in post-secondary education than either of those two countries. We also have a significantly higher percentage of the workforce engaged in the workforce, or in other words, a potential workforce engaged, than either of those two countries. I am extremely wary of tests of the type that he describes. I think there are better ways of doing that, and in particular, better ways from the point of view of students from disadvantaged families.

[Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, the point my NDP colleague made about the disconnect from reality concerns me.

I am as critical as anybody of the system of higher education that we have in Canada but we must never forget that we have the highest percentage of post-secondary graduates in the world. With all our problems, some things are being done right and, by the way, increasingly right.

He talked about cutbacks. I have been here longer than he has and it certainly was a very stressful time when we took out of the system, not any money that was there, but $42 billion per year of borrowing. The government of day and governments of the previous 30 years had been spending roughly a quarter more than the money they had for years and years. It is easy to say that we made all these cuts but they were being paid for by borrowing $42 billion. One can imagine if we had to borrow $42 billion this year.

Earlier today I heard one of his colleagues talking about spending the so-called surpluses. We have a national debt accumulated in those years of about $500 billion and we have a surplus of 5%. If we were to put all that so-called surplus on to the debt it would take us 50 years to pay it off if we had that much every single year to pay it off. I think the member should be careful about what he is saying and who is disconnected from reality.

I truly do share the concerns of my colleague for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, and, I suspect, in most areas, but I what I liked about my colleague's speech was his focus on what we now call lifelong learning. He mentioned lifelong learning and skills development but they are the same thing.

In lifelong learning we are talking about quality early childhood development, quality elementary and high school, quality college or the trades, quality university and, by the way, we are talking about childhood literacy and senior literacy and all of the things that are involved. Our purpose in debating today is to make the federal government more effective in dealing with those things.

I know my colleague is from the Halifax-Dartmouth area, which is an extraordinary centre of college and university life. The area has a range of colleges and universities which one would rarely see in such a small area. I know he has a particular interest in colleges. I wonder if he could comment on some of the developments he has seen and is watching in the Halifax-Dartmouth area with respect to the colleges and universities.

[Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I am a bit surprised by my colleague's remarks and his condemnation of the bill. I truly appreciate his interest in housing and in homelessness. However, we are discussing a bill which is designed to reform and I hope to improve the federal system.

In the standing committee, which studied the matter of the old department of HRDC, the Bloc voted in favour of the division of that department. That division is what the government has proceeded to do and that is what the House is seized with the present time. This was unanimously supported by the House of Commons, including the Bloc.

On the matter of homelessness, if that is where my colleague wants to focus his attention, first, does he not think this smaller and more focused entity would be more effective in the area of housing and homelessness than the cumbersome predecessor that the Bloc voted against the last time? Second, if that is not so, as Bloc members voted in favour of dividing the old HRDC, have they any suggestions as to the way it should have been divided?

[Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to what my colleague had to say. He is a very thoughtful member of Parliament and I suspect we share many common values, but we do disagree on one important matter. This is the federal government and we are functioning in what is arguably the most efficient and decentralized confederation in the world.

We have to think about what are the appropriate roles of the federal government. I try to go to some trouble to point out that I have no wish to move into areas of provincial jurisdiction. However, in a confederation each partner--and in this case there are three, the municipalities, which my colleague also mentioned, the provinces and the federal government--should be strong. We should protect our own rights and responsibilities, but we should all contribute and ideally cooperate together.

The value of a confederation over a very centralized state is that all sorts of diversity can exist within the same unit. We have the possibility therefore to capture diverse best practices or to avoid worst practices going on. We can capture these things very quickly. One of the reasons we are doing so well as a nation at the present time is just that. Wherever creativity occurs in the country we are able to seize upon it.

We can look at different parts. My colleague knows I greatly admire what Quebec has done in the area of child care. I greatly admire the fact that the CEGEPs are free; there are two free years of college. Those are two examples of best practices. However in the province of Quebec the students pay the highest non-tuition fees in colleges of anywhere in the country. I think that is something which people from Quebec and the rest of the country should note.

I am just giving examples of best practices and less good practices. Quebec is the only province in which university enrolment has levelled out.

British Columbia has a very interesting system of colleges, university colleges and universities. It has very good linkages between the different levels of post-secondary education. I think we should learn from that. On the other hand tuition fees in B.C. are going up in a way that they have not in Quebec. The province of Alberta is an example in apprenticeships. There are these advantages out there.

Does my colleague not think that the new arrangement--and the department existed before but it is now being divided--will not allow us all, including Quebec and Alberta, and other provinces and territories which I could have mentioned, to see what is being done well in one part of the country and take advantage of it, and to see what is not being done so well in another part of the country and to avoid those problems? Is that not a role for the federal government in a system like ours?

[Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my colleague, and I must have lost the logic somewhere. The department of HRDC, which both the speakers on the other side dislike so much, was set up by a Conservative government. It was set up in a way which did not involve clear legislation, as we have here, showing how the old federal departments were being amalgamated into one huge whole, to the point where it left four or five different privacy arrangements within the same legislation. That is one aspect that my colleague chose to ignore.

The other point is the decision to make a change, and I suppose I have to accept this, did not come from the government or the cabinet; it came from the House. The standing committee conducted hearings for several months and listened to witnesses from all over the country. It was not a Liberal majority or a something else majority pushing it through. The committee unanimously recommended that this very large, overly diverse department, which had been set up by the Conservatives, be divided. What is happening now with the legislation is that the House of Commons itself is dealing with recommendations which it actually made.

My colleague made some disparaging remarks about Canada's higher education and the state of its training. I think most people in the House believe that we have a way to go in terms of lifelong learning. I want us to go further and faster to deal with this matter. It is very urgent. However, Canada has the highest percentage of students in post-secondary education in the world. We have some limitations in other areas of post-secondary education, but that certainly is not one.

We have the world ranking economy at the present time. In any way we look at our economy, it is either first, second or third by the various economic measures. That is not by accident. That is because we are an efficient, highly qualified and diverse workforce already. He should be very careful when he is criticizing these things.

My question is on transparency. Let us take the area of privacy alone, privacy of information provided by Canadians to the federal government. Does the he think the regime of four or five different privacy codes, which were set up by the Conservatives in the old HRDC department, is an advantage? Does he not think that streamlining, and there is other streamlining in the legislation, alone is worth the effort of the House at the present time?

[Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague mentioned EI and the money going into general revenues. On the one hand, it seems to me that he is interested in the change in HRDC because of a report of the Auditor General. However, as he knows, in the 1980s the Auditor General said that the EI moneys should go into general revenues. Does he believe that in this case we should overrule in some way the Auditor General?

[Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I know of my colleague's interest in these matters. First of all I want to congratulate Memorial University in Newfoundland and the colleges in Newfoundland on the extraordinary grassroots work they have done in education and training over the years.

The answer to his question lies in the parts of my speech about partnerships. My hope now is that this coherent and unified department will be more sensitive to the real partners. He heard me mention cooperation with provincial ministers of education. Ministers of education in the provinces and the territories are among the most powerful ministers in their jurisdictions. We must have a single voice working with those people, and then the special needs which my colleague describes in his riding will be automatically taken into account and met.

The tragedy which my colleague described in Newfoundland was one of the drives to make the whole federal effort in the area of lifelong learning more efficient. As he knows, it is particularly difficult in rural communities. We are going to need distance education, special grants, and special programs for students in rural areas. By the way, whatever age they are, these are essentially students with special needs and we should focus on them. No one should be left out. I do believe that as this new, very powerful department gets going, it will help in improving these situations.

[Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I have made a note of my colleague's questions.

His first question was about why these two departments are being split. We should know that the previous department of HRDC was by far the largest department in the federal government. In the very early 1990s, in fact before I was elected, that department was created. I might be exaggerating if I said six, but somewhere between four and six old federal departments were put together in one. In some cases those old departments continued to work well and in some cases they cooperated, but in other cases that was just not the case.

Really what we had was a very large department. Its budget, as I recall, was $60 billion, which is a great deal of money even in this place. That was one dimension. It was one department answerable to one standing committee and responsible for $60 billion.

Much more significant was the point I tried to make in my speech. It was this question of cultures. In that department were public servants who were very keen on their individual mandates. There were people involved with employment insurance, for example, and people involved with the Canada pension plan, all in the same department, but if people moved between parts of the department, the culture was very different. The culture in EI was very different from that of the Canada pension plan.

An interesting example, which I also mentioned in passing but which is dealt with very carefully in the new legislation, is that there were four or five different privacy regimes. My colleague will understand this. This is the question of protecting information provided to the department by Canadians. The department needs information. One can well imagine that Canada pensions cannot simply be given out; personal information has to be gathered in order to be sure the money is going to be well spent.

There were four or five different regimes, each of them good, each of them secure as far as the privacy commissioner was concerned, but the fact was that they were different within the same department. I think that is just one example of the need to take this large department and divide it carefully, so that, for example, Canada pensions are now with Social Development Canada and EI is with HRSD, the legislation which we are considering.

I would also add, though, that they are not completely divided. For efficiency's sake, for example, the human resources management of the two departments is going to be conducted jointly. Another example is with respect to services to Canadians. Canadians going into HRSD offices in ridings, for example, will not see a difference at the public counter. They will go to the window and they will be dealt with sometimes by social development staff and sometimes by HRSD staff, but that side of it will not be divided.

“Why Parliament?”, my colleague asked. First of all, I know he believes that Parliament is very important and so do I. I think it is often necessary for the governor in council, that is, the cabinet, to do things and often to do them quickly. They are done well and they are done legally. That has certainly been the case here. There is very rapid movement.

In the end I would say to my colleague that the House should seize itself of what is going on. We can do this when we debate this legislation. We are now at second reading.

The other thing is that we are, and again I would use the example of privacy, changing regimes which are enacted. There is legislation dealing with these different privacy issues. In order to change these four or five different privacy regimes, we need to come back to the House of Commons.

I appreciate his point about having a federal champion for the community colleges. There are roughly 1,000 community college campuses, which are very important for education and lifelong learning of all sorts across the country. They are very important for apprenticeships, for aboriginal people and so on. We do need a champion.

I made the point as an example that the federal government has started funding research in colleges. The granting councils are very conservative institutions, and that is not a word that I use lightly. They are only coming around to the idea that in particular cases community colleges should be funded for research. The Canada Foundation for Innovation, which was established by the government and provides money for research infrastructure, has consistently provided money to the colleges, as I think my colleague knows, and does so very explicitly.

When I asked the question of the granting councils that my colleague has asked of me, they said they do give money to the colleges but the qualifications of the people who apply are not high enough. That is a very chicken and egg argument. They say if the proposal is good they will receive it.

I do believe that the case of the northern colleges, the territorial colleges, should be special. As my colleague said, in Nunavut, the Northwest Territories and Yukon there are no universities except the University of the Arctic, which is an international organization. All the granting councils and all federal departments should treat those three colleges in a very special way.

[Human Resources and Skills Development Act, November 22nd, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for allowing me to speak on this bill to create a Department of Human Resources and Skills Development.

This is particularly gratifying to me as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, since it allows me to speak about such topics as the importance of helping Canadians access the skills development and lifelong learning opportunities they need to make their own special contribution to our country, and also how this new department will make this goal a reality.

On December 12, 2003, the government announced the reorganization of the old Department of Human Resources Development into two new departments: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, HRSDC; and Social Development Canada. The Department of HRSDC was created by a series of orders in council approved on that date. This was done within the statutory framework of the Public Service Rearrangement and Transfer of Duties Act, a statute which allows the governor in council to reorganize the institutions of government to address priorities and public needs.

Since then, HRSDC has been subject to the Financial Administration Act, the Public Service Employment Act, the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act. Parliament is now being asked to consider legislation that formally establishes the department and sets out the powers, duties and functions of the Minister of HRSDC and his mandate. The legislation also sets out the powers and duties of the Minister of Labour, as well as his mandate.

Let me inform the House that we are proposing as part of the legislation to include a uniform set of privacy provisions governing the disclosure of personal information. These provisions would apply to all programs and activities of the new department.

Since December 2003, HRSDC and Social Development Canada have been working together to ensure uninterrupted services to Canadians. That working relationship will continue as the departments jointly provide services to Canadians on behalf of each other, a fact which will be duly reflected in the draft legislation.

With this legislation we are confirming our improvements to date and building on them by giving the minister and the new department the legal means to fulfill their mandate. The mandate as we have set it out in the proposed Department of Human Resources and Skills Development act is to improve the standard of living and quality of life of all Canadians by promoting a highly skilled and mobile workforce and an efficient and inclusive labour market.

In my opinion, having a department focused primarily on skills development and learning tells Canadians that we are ready to address the profound changes that face our economy and society in coming years, including skills shortages due to the aging of our workforce and an increasingly global and knowledge based competitive environment where having good skills and access to lifelong learning opportunities are key to finding a job and having enough skilled workers are the difference between business success and failure. They are also sound bases for a high quality, fulfilling life.

These profound changes make it vitally important that we have a department in place that can focus on enhancing Canadians' access to skills development and lifelong learning so they can fully benefit from the many opportunities being created by our economy every day and working closely with its partners to share ideas and resources and develop common approaches to preparing our citizens for this very challenging future.

That is where the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development comes in. With a mandate to foster a culture of lifelong learning, where people at every stage in life can pursue lifelong learning opportunities and acquire the skills they need for career success, as well as personal fulfillment, and organizations can find and access the highly skilled workers they need to take on the world.

Access to learning and skills development involves making sure students with the ability and desire to pursue some sort of post-secondary education can get the financial help they need to make their dreams come true. Statistics point clearly to the changes demanded by an increasingly knowledge based economy. Some 70% of all new jobs in Canada will require some form of post-secondary education and 25% will require a university degree.

With that in mind, the Government of Canada already provides considerable assistance. The Canada student loan program helps 360,000 students every year and last year provided $1.6 billion in loans. Some 90,000 students in financial need have been awarded $285 million per year in the Canada millennium scholarship program.

Canada study grants worth over $70 million annually have been awarded to approximately 50,000 students. The Canada education saving grant program has provided almost $2 billion in grants since its inception, leveraging over $13 billion in private savings. To date, some two million children between one year old and 17 years old have benefited from that particular program.

We all know that access to post-secondary education is a work in progress, so the new department will have to find innovative and better ways of improving service and responding to emerging needs. For example, we will need to work with our provincial and territorial government partners to find new ways of enhancing the access and affordability of post-secondary education so Canadians can pursue learning opportunities throughout their lives. This cooperation will be vital in implementing the enhancements to the Canada student loans program contained in the 2004 federal budget.

We will also need to work with our partners to improve assistance to high need students, such as those living with disabilities and those from low income families, to help them overcome the barriers they face.

The 2004 budget announced a new grant and improvements to an existing grant that will help these students as they pursue a post-secondary education. For disabled students that involves a grant of $3,000 each year in college or university.

Finally, the department will need to improve the uptake of RESPs and the Canada education savings grants by low income families to enable more families to start saving early for their children's post-secondary education. This will involve introducing the new Canada learning bond and enhancements to the Canada education savings grant to kick-start savings by low income and middle income parents. The legislation includes informing low and middle income families of the importance of saving early for their children's education and providing assistance to help them access these benefits.

For those reasons I would encourage all members of the House to join me in supporting Bill C-5, the Canada education savings act, which is currently at committee stage, which would enact the provisions that I mentioned in the 2004 budget. Among other things, interestingly enough, Bill C-5 has built into it cooperation with one of our key sets of partners, the provinces and the territories, in the RESP program and the RESP grants program, which is proposed in the act.

Many or these initiatives will involve areas of provincial and territorial responsibility and will have an impact on key stakeholder groups. Therefore the department will continue to work closely with all its partners, including other levels of government, the private sector, educational and training institutions, financial institutions and other stakeholders, to ensure their needs are represented and addressed.

This is exactly what this new department has already been doing from the beginning, through its participation and support of a number of working groups. For example, the intergovernmental consultative committee on student financial assistance brings together federal, provincial and territorial officials at the director general and director level to develop common approaches to post-secondary education and student financial assistance.

Again, the national advisory group on student financial assistance allows colleges and universities, student groups and representatives of the full spectrum of post-secondary institutions to make their views known to the Government of Canada on federal assistance to post-secondary students.

Another example, the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada helps provincial and territorial ministers of education to develop common approaches and cooperate with national educational organizations and the federal government on educational issues.

It is my personal view that the new department should become, as it were, the federal government's designated hitter to the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada. This does not mean that HRSDC should be the only federal department involved in lifelong learning, far from it. Departments like Justice, Corrections Canada, Defence and Indian and Northern Affairs will, for example, continue to deliver literacy programs which are part of lifelong learning. However the Minister of HRSDC, fully briefed, can become a consistent link between the federal government and the provincial and territorial ministers of education in the Council of Ministers of Education of Canada. This will strengthen the partnerships that must exist between us and the provinces and territories in the area of lifelong learning.

I chaired the standing committee that unanimously recommended that the former Department of Human Resources Development Canada be split. This bill is, in a very real sense, the enactment of the clearly expressed will of the House of Commons at the time that HRDC be split. The committee recommended the division of that department, not only because it was a very large department but also because it was too diverse to be manageable.

When HRDC was formed by an earlier government, several former federal departments were simply rolled into one. They never really reconciled their different cultures. The bill addresses this directly. It brings together different but related regimes under one set of rules and procedures. As chair of the standing committee that considered these matters, it gives me special pride to speak to the bill today.

Also, speaking personally, I believe strongly that in addition to its formal duties within the federal system, the new Department of HRSDC can become a valuable point of first contact for all federal departments in matters related to lifelong learning and training.

Those are some of the challenges facing the new department to be created by the bill. While addressing these issues may be challenging, the rewards Canada reaps will be enormous. By improving access to post-secondary education and lifelong learning for all Canadians, we will go a long way toward ensuring that no Canadian gets left behind and that businesses and organizations will be able to find the skilled workers they need to compete and thrive in the global economy. This represents a win-win situation for all Canadians.

For most of my time in this House, I have worked with the government caucus on post-secondary education and research. This is a group of MPs and senators who have followed, all the way through from the middle nineties, the various roles of the federal government in higher education and research. It is a group that has a very active interest in those matter, but which has made it clear from the very beginning that we have no interest in the federal government encroaching on the roles of the provinces and territories. Quite rightly, in our Confederation the operation of the elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities are provincial and territorial matters, which is the way it should be. It produces across our country a network of related but different educational systems that are extremely productive.

This is not to say that the federal government and other governments do not have responsibilities in those areas. I can give very direct examples where, very badly in many cases, the federal government organizes elementary schools on the first nations. Some of them should be changed very quickly. We have a used computer program where we give the high schools used computers, and it has worked very effectively. When they get to the end of high school, the millennium scholarship program is a federal program that helps high school students.

We work with the community colleges of Canada. They are, in many ways, a rapid response system that helps Canada keep its economy current.

For example, it was this government that first flowed research moneys to community colleges, recognizing their role in applied research and their role in the commercialization of research. We still work with the community colleges in all sorts of ways. Aboriginal education is a really good example. English and French as second languages are other examples. The federal government has important links with them, as it does with the universities, and has moved the public funding of research, largely in the universities, from being 14th or 15th in the world to perhaps 5th or 6th.

These are all examples of the ways in which the federal government, and not just one department of the federal government, is involved in higher education. Let me say that the Department of National Defence runs a university, the Royal Military College, where one can get degrees in engineering and so on.

The federal government has these roles. One of its roles is to capture the best practices. If in Quebec, Nova Scotia or Nunavut there is something going on which the whole country should know about, it is the federal government that can capture it in higher education.

My enthusiasm for the legislation is that the federal government is going to have a new department, a very large and powerful department, which will be focused on these matters of lifelong learning. It is my hope that, first, it will perform very important functions itself, but second, that it will become a point of contact for all federal departments that work in the area of lifelong learning and that it will also become a key point of contact with the provinces and territories.

I believe the new department represents a win-win situation for all Canadians.

For this reason, I intend to support this bill and urge all members to do likewise.

[Agriculture, November 18th, 2004]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to thank the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food for taking the time to meet with farm leaders of Peterborough county. We particularly appreciated the minister's time within a week of the birth of his son, J.D. Our congratulation to J.D. and his parents.

The minister discussed the BSE issue and other matters with farmers representing the beef, dairy, sheep and bison sectors, all hard hit by the closing of the border. He was presented with a proposal for a regional abattoir and suggestions on designing help for BSE affected sectors in such a way that the sectors would be fully sustainable when the border problem is resolved. He received a brief on the CFIA. The minister was commended for his efforts to diversify markets for Canadian products, especially in Asia.

The BSE crisis is an ongoing tragedy which cannot be solved by Canada alone. We are glad we have a Minister of Agriculture who listens. We urge all parties to support him in his efforts on behalf of Canadian farmers.