Ron MacDonald

[The Balkans, December 4th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I want to commend the member for Cambridge for his remarks.

Sometimes in this place, although we are all equals, some remarks from some members perhaps carry a little more weight. Certainly the member for Cambridge knows of which he speaks with his heritage and culture from that area, from the former Yugoslavia. Also he has been extremely active in forming an association within Parliament for the Canada-Croatia-Bosnia society.

I commend the member for his work in this area and for his fostering an understanding among parliamentarians like myself of the complexities of the situation in Bosnia-Hercegovina, as well as all of the other states in the former Yugoslavia.

I would ask for his comments about the positive aspects of the Canadian presence in Bosnia-Hercegovina as well as in Croatia. What has been the impact of the presence of Canadians while the war was still going on with respect to the people of Bosnia-Hercegovina? Can he tell me what the impact has been and perhaps that will help explain why he is so adamant that the presence should continue?

[Atlantic Canada, November 28th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on November 17 a group of maritimers met in Truro to discuss the concept of economic and political union of the maritime or Atlantic provinces.

Business people, academics, labour leaders, and even a few politicians agreed that union is an old idea, going back to 1807, whose time has finally come. We must join together to eliminate wasteful duplication and provide lean government with cohesive policies for all Atlantic Canadians. We must join together to create new economic opportunities for our region and renew a sense of pride in our people. We must join together so that our voice is truly heard at the national level and our concerns are understood and respected.

The Truro meeting is only a beginning. An Atlantic union must be driven by the people of Atlantic Canada, not the politicians. The Prime Minister has shown that Confederation is not static. Changes can and must be made to improve the operation of our institutions and the quality of life for our people.

Opinion polls over the last number of years show that the people of Atlantic Canada consistently support union. They are ahead of the politicians on this issue now, as they have been in the past. We would serve them poorly if we did not make every effort-

[Atlantic Canada, November 22nd, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, on Monday in a particularly hallucinogenic episode the member for Vegreville visualized himself and his party as the deliverers of freedom and democracy for the poor oppressed souls in Atlantic Canada.

His reference to the politically oppressed people of P.E.I. was just the latest and greatest example of why the Reform Party was not, is not and will never be anything but a bizarre footnote in the history of a short lived, radical, ideological party.

The Reform Party should have no illusions about sucking in the good people of Atlantic Canada. The people of Prince Edward Island and the Atlantic provinces have shown great maturity in the decisions they have made through the political process.

The statements made on Monday by the hon. member for Vegreville and in the past by those from his party only strengthen the case that the people of Atlantic Canada made the right decision on October 25, 1993 by completely rejecting the Reform Party and giving a resounding vote of support to the Prime Minister and the Liberal Party, the only national party that speaks for Atlantic Canadians.

[Supply, November 21st, 1995]

Madam Speaker, I listened with a great deal of interest to the comments made by the member opposite.

I commend the member for his deep interest in the Canadian Armed Forces but at some point we have to fish or cut bait. I am not exactly sure of the position of the Reform Party with respect to procurement policy for the Canadian Armed Forces. I have listened many times and I have heard the Reform Party talk about the wholesale cutting of departments, that what the government has to do first and foremost is to tame that debt and deficit monster. That means wholesale cuts across the board to departmental expenditures.

The member opposite knows full well that out of the non-statutory expenditures of this government, the previous government and the government before it, one of the largest envelopes of non-statutory expenditures is in national defence. What I am trying to ascertain from the member's comments is whether he agrees there should be new expenditures in national defence. If that is the case it may go contrary to what his party said particularly during the last election about going in and cutting those departments.

Is the member in favour or not in favour of the EH-101 contract and its process? Does the member believe and advocate that the government of the day go forward with further expenditures in defence procurement? In particular, I am speaking about the replacement program for the Sea King helicopters. The member mentioned quite correctly that some of the search and rescue and Sea King helicopters have had some difficulty because of their age. Unfortunately there has even been loss of life as some of those helicopters have gone down. I am not necessarily convinced it was because of the age of the helicopters.

I want to seek something clear and unequivocal from the member. Is he in favour of further defence procurement spending, yes or no? If the answer is yes, does he wish to see this government accelerate its procurement policy with respect to new helicopters? Would he and his party support the government spending billions of dollars for the replacement of the Sea King helicopters?

The hon. member talked a great deal about open procurement policies. What he said during his comments was that far too often these things are knee-jerk. Is the member not aware that a House of Commons committee travelled and came up with a report dealing with the future of the Canadian Armed Forces? In response to that report the government came out with the defence white paper which clearly outlines the government's policies with respect to national defence. Last, he says that before these big procurements are finalized they should be debated in the House. Is he an advocate that House time should be spent debating each and every procurement contract of the Government of Canada?

[Regional Rates Of Pay, October 23rd, 1995]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should consider abolishing the Regional Rates of Pay, now in force for certain federal government employees, in accordance with its stated policy of pay equity.

Mr. Speaker, it is a good way to start off on a Monday morning, dealing with an issue that is not just temporal or philosophical. This is an issue that fundamentally affects far too many public servants right across our country.

I do not know if it is luck or what it is, but this is the third time in two Parliaments I have been lucky enough to have my motion drawn for debate. The first time was in the second session of the last Parliament, in June 1990 and again in the third session in September 1991 a similar motion was also drawn for debate.

It is an issue that is near and dear to my heart. It is an issue that has affected, over the years, tens of thousands of federal employees. And it is an issue, once again, that I believe should be brought to the attention of the people who are elected to represent these public servants. As members of Parliament we are supposed to be affirming in the House the equality of employees, the equality of individuals, the equality of opportunity and the equity of people's labour.

I will talk a little about the regional rates of pay so that people understand exactly what they are. In years gone by, the federal government through the collective bargaining process, came to an agreement with its federal public employee unions that there should be regional rates of pay.

This was done at a point in time when the economies were much different than they are today. It was done at a time when one could argue that there were vast differences in economic conditions in various parts of the country, say in Winnipeg, in Halifax, in Sydney and St. John's, Newfoundland.

As total or global packages were negotiated it was agreed that there should be regional rates of pay. It meant that employees of the federal government who did a similar or identical job would get paid at a different rate based on where they lived.

As time went on, initially the rates grew in numbers. With the development of our economy, with the genesis of the economy and the consolidation of transportation infrastructure across the country, it became increasingly apparent that to continue a discriminatory wage practice based solely on a single factor of the employee living in a certain area was clearly discriminatory.

Over the last 15 years through successive collective agreements each and every time there has been the global negotiation, the number of regional rates has collapsed.

They have gone from a high of 35 or 40 down to today where only 8 or 9 regional rates of pay are left. That is solid recognition that individuals' pay should be based on their qualifications and the job they do and not on where they live. Their fundamental wage package should not be based on where they live any more than it should be based on their language, colour, gender or culture. It is discriminatory. Today it still stands as a discriminatory practice. What does this mean? It means quite a bit to the people who are affected by these discriminatory wage rates.

During the 1988 federal campaign one of the big issues in the Halifax-Dartmouth area was dealing with the general trades and labour group at the ship repair unit in Halifax. Its members were in a legal strike position. Treasury Board and the Tory government of the day in their haste to go to the electorate forgot to designate

them as essential employees. Therefore for the first time ever the potential was that those employees might be in a strike position.

One major stumbling block for those unionized workers in the negotiations going into the campaign was the regional rate of pay. They were doing the same job at the ship repair unit in Halifax as was being done in British Columbia. They had the same job classifications, the same jobs and were working on the same classes of ships, but in some cases the wage differential was as high as 28 per cent.

The regional rate of pay was made an issue in the campaign, that it was a discriminatory practice. They were not seeking a commitment from the government of the day to collapse it all at once. They wanted a commitment that it would be recognized over the next one or two collective agreements that the rate should be collapsed.

In 1989 a ships crews strike tied up the St. Lawrence Seaway. The government was not concerned until there was a freeze-up and the possibility that commerce going up the St. Lawrence Seaway would stop. At that time the ships crews strike caused legislation to come before this place to break the strike and put them back to work.

What was the issue that caused that ships crews strike? It was the wage differential between the two regional rates. There was a west coast rate and an east coast rate and the dividing line went right down the middle from the Arctic Ocean. Conceivably, if a ship was in trouble in the Arctic it could be responded to by ships crews from either the east coast or the west coast. If they both got to the troubled ship at the same time, there was as much as a 20 per cent or 25 per cent wage differential. They were doing the same jobs on the same ships on the same high seas, sometimes in 15-metre swells. They were going out to save lives and there were two different wage rates which were based on where they lived.

How much money did they get? This whole strike was caused because the ships crews from the east coast region were making between $19,000 and $21,000 a year. They wanted their pay package to go up to what it was on the west coast, about $22,000 to $23,000 a year. That was what caused the strike.

When it went to binding arbitration after the legislation passed the House, the first thing that happened with the tripartite panel was that it collapsed the regional rate of pay. It saw it as discriminatory. The panel then went on to other non-monetary issues. The history with the last three or four cases that went to binding arbitration where the regional rate was an issue is that it was immediately seen as discriminatory and was collapsed.

The east coast ships crews after they saw what happened at the tribunals told me: "The next time we are not going to bargain in good faith. We will just tie it up and hope it goes to binding arbitration because the binding arbitration process will find the rates discriminatory and will collapse them".

There is a principle here which we should listen to carefully. It is the principle of equal pay for work of equal value. That is it, straight, clean and simple. Some will argue that if you live in Halifax you should get paid less than if you live in Winnipeg. If that is the case, why are 91 per cent of federal employees in Canada paid under national rates of pay? That means that while the ships crews or the ship repair unit charge hand in Halifax get paid up to 28 per cent less than their west coast counterparts, other employees of the federal government are working in the same area and are getting identical rates of pay as their counterparts who are doing identical jobs in Toronto, Sudbury, North Bay, Victoria, Vancouver and St. John's.

It does not make sense. It cannot be argued that a regional rate of pay has to be maintained so that it does not disrupt the local private labour market when at the same time 91 per cent of the employees are on national rates of pay. It simply does not make sense and is discriminatory.

The government of the day of which I am a member will say that we are in a period of restraint. I understand that. Collective bargaining was suspended in the 1994 budget. That was not something I supported then and it is not something I support today. It is wrong. I support the collective bargaining process. I said it when that legislation came forward in the House and I will say it again today.

The government indicated that once it got beyond its $900 million or $1 billion in savings which it was trying to accommodate by the wage freeze and the suspension of collective bargaining, any further savings would be reallocated back into the pay packet. It would perhaps talk about the increments but certainly it would look at some of the pay equity issues.

I implore the government today to see this not as one of those issues that affects just a few people. This is an issue of pay equity. Just as the government has committed itself at the earliest opportunity to address those inequities in pay equity as it is traditionally defined, I ask the government today to also extend that definition to regional rates of pay.

What does it mean? The best numbers I have are from September 1994 and they have changed. In September 1994 there were 211,823 employees on the federal public service payroll. There were nine groups that were still under regional rates of pay which amounted to 23,233 people. That means 9 per cent of the Public Service of Canada is being discriminated against based on no other factor than where they live.

Should we tell the charge hand down in Halifax who is being paid 13.7 per cent less than the west coast charge hand that he should work only 86.3 per cent as hard as the individual on the west coast? Should the general trades and labour individual who is paid

13.2 per cent less work 13.2 per cent less hard? No. The performance evaluations they face are exactly the same no matter where they live. I submit that their pay rate should also reflect that similarity.

How much would it cost? To completely eliminate regional rates of pay in one round of negotiations would cost the government less than 1 per cent of its total pay envelope. It would cost less than 1 per cent to stop discriminating against 9 per cent of its federal employees.

As the government moves toward a time when it can reinstate collective bargaining, when it can start treating public servants with the type of respect they deserve, one of the number one priorities is pay equity. One of the number one priorities within pay equity is addressing the discriminatory practices of regional rates of pay.

Looking around the Chamber there are members from all over the country. There are members from the west coast, from the great province of Quebec, from New Brunswick, from Saskatchewan, from Ontario. There are members from every province and territory in this place. All of us are paid the same based on the job we do for the people of Canada, not based on the place we represent.

I close by urging members of the House to agree with the motion before us. Tell the government it is imperative that the horrendous discriminatory practice of regional rates of pay must go and must go quickly.

[Excise Tax Act, October 17th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with a great deal of interest and sympathy to the comments by the member from Calgary Centre. I believe the tax system is so broken that it cannot probably be fixed and that a new and innovative approach to the whole area of taxation has to be undertaken.

The member mentioned two very interesting points. One, a partial conversion I hope on behalf of the member of the Reform Party, was with respect to cuts. Throughout the election campaign and shortly after this Parliament was convened all we heard from the other side was to cut, cut, cut. What the member has said today, however, and it probably comes from having been in this place, understanding the complexity of some issues that we do not quite

get to understand on the campaign trail, is that cutting is not the answer.

Governments must do everything to ensure that each dollar spent is spent in a manner that is prudent, focused and that maximizes our wish to attain certain goals as a government and as a Parliament and as a people.

On the revenue side I agree with him. I am one of those individuals on this side of the House who believes the taxation system, albeit attempting to be fair, is inherently unfair to many. Each time we try to fix this monster created by dozens of amendments in this place by this and previous governments, it makes it even harder to attain our goal.

He mentioned single taxes and flat taxes. I agree that is a direction we have to go in. My colleague from Broadview-Greenwood in the last Parliament and this Parliament continues, and sometimes I know he must feel he is alone, to promote a different system of taxation. It is a system I supported in opposition. It is a system I supported during my campaign and it is a system I will continue to support on this side of the House.

The member wishes the Standing Committee on Finance would be specifically asked to review this. I do not usually wait for somebody to tell me what I can do. If there is an opportunity for me to work with other members to build a consensus across party lines, across this aisle which is only a few feet but many times feels like miles, I will rise to the challenge.

I ask the member not to wait for the mandarins at finance or for the government or for officials of his own party to say the time has come for parliamentarians to work together in a non-partisan fashion to come up with solutions. We all know what the problems are. We all try in our respective roles in opposition or government to put the best solutions forward we think can be implemented.

I throw a challenge out to him to work with me and other members on this side. I will work with him and other members on that side to look at what can be done, real tax reform, single tax, flat tax, to work together to put a challenge not just to the government but to all parliamentarians. I am prepared to put the time in. I ask the member if he would be prepared to put the time in. Canadians are looking for those types of solutions from Parliament and I think they are looking for them now.

[Governor General's Award, October 17th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, it is a real pleasure for me to rise in this House today to acknowledge the contribution to Canadian life by Carolyn Thomas, who is an outstanding Canadian and who is a constituent of mine.

Mrs. Thomas, from the community of East Preston, yesterday was the recipient of the 1995 Governor General's award in commemoration of the persons case. This is a particular honour for me because I have known Mrs. Thomas and worked with her and her husband since I was elected to this House in 1988. In that time I found her to have dedication and determination practically unrivalled in my community, not only pertaining to the betterment of women, but for the betterment of her community of East Preston, the oldest indigenous black community in Canada, and for Canadian society as a whole.

In addition to her work in the struggle for equality for women, over her lifetime Carolyn has been a visionary in her struggle for human rights and better race relations. She was a founder of the Human Rights Commission in the province of Nova Scotia and continued her good work with them for 23 years.

I ask that my colleagues here in the House and the people of the great city of Dartmouth and-

[Employment Equity Act, October 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know what the members opposite do not get. This is a very simple piece of legislation. There is a history to this legislation. It is an amendment to an existing act. I cannot recall anybody contacting my office in the last seven years and complaining that the federal government through the existing employment equity legislation was excluding anybody qualified from participating. I have not had that and I have a lot of public servants in my area.

There are many people who do not get a job and run out and say there was a black hired and they must have been hired because they were black. There are plenty of minorities, black, linguistic, there are many women who in the past have not been hired not because they were not qualified but simply because of who they were, because they were females, because they were black, because they were immigrants or because they spoke a different language as a mother tongue. That is the reality.

This is not about quotas. I do not support a quota system. However, I will not as a federal legislator shirk my responsibility to pilot policy for the public sector which we are responsible for to indicate that it appears there is a discrepancy in the hiring patterns and policies of many government departments.

Either one subscribes to the the fact that people of colour or women are unable to attain certain standards, which is why they are not hired, or one can encourage the setting of targets whereby the organization or the private sector company will examine whether its employees are reflective of the mix of the labour market it can draw from, and where it is not reflective to encourage that employer to set forth a plan to get participation by the labour market as close to the mix of the labour market by qualified candidates.

I do not agree with quotas but I do agree that we will get nowhere by going into denial and pretending there is equity in the workplace. There is not. This bill will help to establish that it is a priority for Canadians and for the government. I am proud to say I am a part of the government that has taken the initiative to put this back on the public agenda.

[Employment Equity Act, October 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his question. I believe it is a legitimate one.

I want to make two distinctions right off the bat. This bill is not about quotas. I do not support a quota system. It is not the right way to go. What I do support is a legislative framework that tells employers in the federal section, crown corporations and federal government departments that there is a reality out there. There are many members who are still in denial about the reality of barriers to participation in the labour market. They are real.

This direction in legislation I hope would never say someone has to be hired who is not qualified for the job. That is not what it is about. It sets in process a conscious mechanism so that a business, department or crown corporation can make sure that if there are no natives employed but they are 22 per cent of the population, that there must be some barriers to participation somewhere. If the barrier is simply that no native has been hired, then by setting targets for the participation of native employees sends out a signal.

But no, I do not agree. I would not support a bill that tells an employer to hire someone who is not qualified for the position. The member knows as well as I do, if you are dealing with an entry level or mid-level position, many times the minimum qualification for the job does not mean the applicant has to be a rocket scientist but may require a grade 12 education, someone able to lift a box, punch a typewriter or a keyboard, or operate a furnace. I do not know.

This bill does not compel anybody to hire an individual based on gender or colour.

It compels the corporate sector within the federally regulated area and the federal government to ensure that where those inequities are identifiable they have conscious programs to try to encourage the participation of qualified minority candidates.

It does not do anything other than that and if the member thinks it does I feel sorry for him. I would ask for him to reread the legislation because I think he is off in a direction not consistent with the goals of the bill.

[Employment Equity Act, October 5th, 1995]

Mr. Speaker, I want the record to show that this hon. member has not alluded to anybody in the House and indicated that he or she was racist or bigoted. I am not trying to impugn the motives of members of the House. I want the record to show that the reality is in Canadian society today. Although we have come a mighty long way, there is still a mighty long way to go.

It is well within the responsibility of good government to continue to push that agenda item, the envelope as it were, to ensure the standards that Canadians want in the private work place and in the government work place are continuously upgraded and pushed forward.

I merely want to tell anybody in the House who does not know or does not understand that inequality has been a fact of life since European settlers first came to Canada. That is the reality.

It does not mean that society in and of itself is racist. It does mean that sometimes the majority in society have to understand that there may be built in barriers to participation by minority groups. It has to be understood that those barriers may be systemic and that even people from those groups, if we open the door to full participation, may not feel that the door is open.

What this bill seeks to do is not to recast the dye. It seeks to build on the original legislation that was passed in the House to include more industry in the private sector and the federally regulated area. That is all it does.

It says to employers that there may be an imbalance in the labour market. We do not want them to set quotas or numbers because I do not approve of that. Minimums become maximums in this game. It seeks to establish that there is a problem and that industry can solve the problem themselves. That is all it seeks to do.

If members come to my area or the area of the member for Halifax in our part of Nova Scotia, there are real barriers to participation to a whole variety of groups. A company should not say it wants a black with a university education, and it does not matter what the grades are, any more than it should walk in and say that it does not want a black with a university education.

It means that we should look at the labour market in the area we are in. If it is obvious there are visible or invisible barriers to participation in that labour market, that we seek as a conscious policy effort to remove those barriers. That is it. There are no quotas. There is nothing nefarious in this legislation. It simply states that the federal government believes that wherever inequality exists, it has to consciously work to remove that inequality. That is all that it says. In areas of a federally regulated workplace that is what it says.

I am not one of those individuals who believes there should be quotas because inherently it is wrong. Many times individuals are hired or are put on a board because of a quota system, either an official or unofficial quota. They could be the best qualified persons for the job, but their co-workers will not see them as a qualified individuals. They will see them as individuals that was put there simply because the number had to be filled for that particular race, gender or whatever.

We seek to break those borders down. This legislation goes in that direction. It states as a public policy that employers should work toward making sure, wherever possible, that their labour component is reflective, as best as it can be, of the mix in the labour market. In areas of large populations of blacks, indigenous blacks in Canada, the federal public service has to work toward making sure that they apply for those jobs and, if qualified, that they are hired.

Most of all, it should be seen that if they do apply for the job that they will be considered. The reality is that in many non-traditional roles for females in the public service, women do not apply any more because in the past they have been turned down so often.

If the employer is a crown corporation or a federal department and has a policy of encouraging the greater participation in the labour market of women, for instance, it sends a signal out that, yes, if the woman is qualified she can apply and should have every reason to believe that she will be judged based on her qualifications and will not be excluded based on her gender.

It is the same when dealing with blacks and it is the same when dealing with native Canadians. Go to some of the ridings where there are high numbers of natives in the population. Do the numbers in the population respond to the participation in the federal workplace? In some cases, yes, but in some cases they do not. This bill seeks to recognize that in areas like that where these factors are a reality, that a plan be put together to encourage individuals in minority communities to participate. That is it. It does not do any more than that.

It does not say we have to hire three white people who have Gaelic ancestry. It does not say that we have to hire 15 women. It says: "We want you to be conscious in the way that you run your operation that you should try to encourage participation from minority groups who traditionally might have been excluded". It is nothing more than that.

I am going to conclude my remarks because I know the member from Halifax is waiting to speak. I want to encourage this House to tone down the rhetoric a bit. I know I have been pretty upset today. I watch what I say in this place because I have a great deal of

respect for the chair that I occupy. I may have certain strong opinions but I try to temper them when I stand in this place.

I have a great deal of difficulty after seven years here to look across in this place and hear people put things on the record that may incite, maybe not by design, but may add to a lack of understanding and a lack of conciliation among all Canadians and may take away from the desire of Canadians to be fair and reasonable.

The hon. member opposite who spoke before me indicated that this law means that we are going to see colour, that we are going to have to look for colour, we are going to have to look for language, we are going to have to look for gender and that in the past that was not the case. Unfortunately he might have been right. In the past nobody saw colour when he hired because he did not hire people of colour. Nobody saw gender when he hired because in many cases he did not hire women. Nobody saw linguistic groups because in the past he did not hire linguistic groups.

I look forward to the day when we do not have to worry about those factors. The reality is the problems are caused by the fact that those factors have been overlooked in the past. The only way we can rectify it is by public policy. This bill goes in that direction and I support it fully.