Warren Allmand

[Criminal Code, February 14th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in the recent speech from the throne the new Liberal government promised to restore the court challenges program which had been cancelled by the previous Conservative government in 1992.

The court challenges program was originally established by the Liberal government of Pierre Trudeau in 1978 and it was expanded in 1982. Its purpose was to assure that Canadians could enforce their constitutional rights before the courts.

In 1981 we established a Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms which guaranteed certain basic rights to all Canadians, rights such as fundamental freedoms, equality rights, democratic rights, mobility rights, legal rights and language rights.

It is one thing to have these rights guaranteed in the Constitution, but it is another thing to enforce these rights in court, especially against big government or big business. One needs the funds to hire lawyers over a long period of time, very often in appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada. Without the funds to enforce your rights in court, these rights become meaningless. That is why a Liberal government established the court challenges program: to provide funds to individuals and groups who had important constitutional rights to enforce, especially where a precedent was involved.

During the life of the program the most important cases dealt with language rights and equality rights. In my constituency in particular there is great concern over the erosion of language rights. On several occasions there were important court actions taken against Quebec Bills 101 and 178 which were successful in knocking out repressive sections of those laws. There were similar actions in other provinces by francophones. The battle has not ended. There are still sections of those and other laws which must be challenged and citizens need help from the government to do that.

I would like to know today when the government will bring back the court challenges program as promised in the speech from the throne. I want a clear commitment that it will cover court challenges to legislation which restricts or rescinds language rights.

[Supply, February 10th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, in the hon. member's motion he suggests that the government strike a special committee of the House to examine public expenditures in light of the report of the Auditor General. He goes on to say that the deliberations should be open and transparent and that the committee should have the power to subpoena any witness.

Is not the hon. member aware that we already have and have had for many years the Standing Committee on Public Accounts which does that very thing? As a matter of fact that committee is chaired by an opposition member to assure that the examinations carried out are thorough and far reaching and to do all the things already in his motion.

If I understand correctly the hon. member is concerned with overlapping. It seems to me if the government set up this committee we would have much more overlapping and duplication than we already have. I do not really understand what this committee would be doing that the public accounts committee under an opposition chairman is not already doing or will do.

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I fully agree with the hon. member that there are provisions now in the Unemployment Insurance Act that are ridiculous and have to be changed.

One of them is the provision that we had historically that one had to be ready and available for work at all times in order to collect benefits. That meant that somebody who took a course was not ready and available for work because they were studying during the day. Those studies were essential in my view and in the view of many people to prepare that person for a job.

There were amendments a few years ago that allowed people to do study programs while they were on unemployment insurance but unfortunately one needs the permission of the unemployment insurance officials to do that. That permission is not always given. In my view it should be almost automatic.

I also said in my remarks that I am fully in agreement with taking steps to eliminate duplication between the provincial programs and the federal programs to get rid of waste in the delivery systems and so on. I would hope as a Quebecer that we could reach an agreement between Quebec and Ottawa to eliminate the inconsistencies between the federal unemployment insurance program and the provincial welfare system.

The elimination of the duplication is essential. The provinces should have prior jurisdiction in matters of education and training. That was the position put forward in the Charlottetown accord. Consequently we have to work out agreements that will satisfy the provinces in this matter and stop the fighting between the federal and provincial levels. We have to make sure that we have programs that are efficient and meet the situation that was put forward by my good friend from Longueuil.

[Social Security System, February 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the motion before the House asks the House of Commons and a committee of the House to study, analyse and report on Canada's social security system. As a matter of fact, it asks that we study the modernization and restructuring of the social security system with special reference to the needs of families with children, youth and working age adults. It is commendable

that we study, analyse and revisit our social programs, our income support and income replacement programs. However I want to remind the House and the minister that there are some things we should keep in mind. We will encounter serious difficulties in doing this examination of our social security system.

I want to remind the House that this was done with some intensity in the 1970s when the Hon. Marc Lalonde was the Minister of National Health and Welfare. A very serious attempt was made to rationalize and bring up to date our social security system. While some good improvements were made at that time, some of the simplistic approaches that were first suggested were found not to be workable.

We have different types of social security systems. We have those where the payment is universal and comes out of our general tax revenue, for example the old age security system. We all pay into it in varying degrees through our progressive tax system but at age 65 we all receive the same payment no matter what our income is. On top of that we have the guaranteed income supplement which pays additional amounts to people who do not have other sources of income, who do not have private pensions or RRSPs or whatever. That is one kind of social security support system where the payment is the same to all individuals. I am talking about old age security which is paid for through the general tax system.

We have other types of programs such as unemployment insurance and the Canada assistance plan. Depending on our income we pay in varying amounts. If we have lower incomes we pay in less. If we have higher incomes we pay in more. When we collect we receive more if we have paid in more and we collect less if we have paid in less.

The principle behind it makes sense. The highly skilled worker who pays the top premium because he has a higher income will have made commitments and entered into debt for homes, cars, household appliances. When unemployed he still has to meet those higher commitments so he gets a higher payment. But he has been paying in at a higher rate.

It is the same with the Canada pension plan. If we have paid in at a higher rate we get a higher payment at the end but it is usually because we have been living at a higher standard of living. Usually the rent, mortgage and other payments are higher and when we retire or are unemployed we need that.

When they tried to rationalize all these systems back in the 1970s they found that to put together a flat payment system with the systems that were based on varying contributions and varying payments was not an easy task. As a matter of fact they were not able to do it. I bring that to the attention of the House.

Some programs are geared to meet the types of debt and commitment we have made while we are working. When we become unemployed or when we retire or when we are forced to leave work because of injury or disability we need payments that will meet that type of commitment.

For example we do not want skilled workers to have to sell their homes simply because they are unemployed or because they are retired. To suggest we should have one payment for everybody no matter what they have been doing when they were working does not make sense. It could drive a lot of people into poverty and that is not what we want to do.

I want to refer also to the unemployment insurance system. There has been some suggestion that, and I do not know whether it goes that far, in order to collect unemployment insurance one should be obliged to participate in training programs or in some type of community work or whatever.

First let us deal with the training programs. It is a fact that a good number of our unemployed are highly trained already. They are skilled. They are machinists, electricians, architects, professional people and trades people with highly skilled trades. Their problem is not training, it is the lack of jobs. To suggest the solution to all our problems is to simply retrain or upgrade everybody is not correct.

It is true a large number of people cannot find work because their trades are out of date or they have no trade whatsoever or they are illiterate. Those are the people we have to train and make competitive with the people in the United States, Europe, Japan. I fully support that. However, let us not overdo it and suggest that the total solution is to retrain everybody. Many people come to my office and probably to my colleague's office every day who are trained but their problem is jobs, not training.

We hear another suggestion on the street. It is terrible these people are on unemployment insurance and they should be made to do some kind of work until they get a job. One of the major tasks of the unemployed person is to look for work. It is a time consuming undertaking. If unemployed people are serious, and most of them are, they spend a lot of time going for interviews, searching the newspapers and writing letters. They want to get back to work in the field in which they are competent.

Let us be careful so that this sort of work fair is not overdone. To put to work or in training programs as a condition for receiving benefits certain young people who are in good health but have no training is fine, but let us be very careful that we do not overdo it.

I want to remind the House and my own party that in the two previous parliaments we savagely attacked the Conservative government for the amendments it made to the unemployment insurance system, amendments that made it more difficult to qualify and amendments that reduced the benefits. In a previous set of amendments, it increased the penalty for those who quit or were fired without cause, as defined in the act, up to about 11 or 12 weeks. This was quite a considerable increase in the penalty.

In the last round of amendments in 1993 the Conservative government took away all benefits from people who had quit their jobs for serious reasons but could not meet the definition of just cause in the act. It was the same with those who were fired, according to the bosses for just cause, but which was very often in the mind of the employee not a just cause. It was simply a case of harassment or trying to get rid of those people with trumped up charges against them.

We questioned the minister at that time. We said: "Well you just amended the act a couple of years ago to increase the penalties from six weeks to twelve weeks"-or whatever it was-"and now you are completely eliminating any benefits at all. You are going to a very extreme penalty without ever really testing the penalties that you put into place a few years ago".

We attacked those sorts of things. We attacked the government for totally removing the $2.8 billion that the government used to contribute to the unemployment insurance fund. Prior to those amendments in the last Parliament, the Government of Canada always contributed to the fund after the unemployment rate went over a certain level. The other contributions to the fund came from workers and from employers. It was a three way contribution: the employers, the employees and the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada then withdrew its contribution of $2.8 billion and put the entire burden on workers and employers. The rates went up. They were another form of taxation. We were very critical of that. We said that was not the way to do it.

What happened is by doing these things to the unemployment insurance system, by cutting back the benefits, by making it more difficult to qualify, by throwing people out of work without any benefits whatsoever in some cases, it simply shifted the burden to take care of those people to the provinces and to the municipalities. When people do not have work and they cannot find work someone has to support them. We are not living in a cruel, inhumane society. We do not let people starve to death. What happened was the provincial social security systems had to pick up those people and take care of them. In Ontario and Nova Scotia the cities had to and they could not afford it. It was simply a shifting of the burden.

I am trying to remind the House and my party that I fully support this re-examination of social security. However, I am also reminding them that we have to be very careful in not overdoing it to the extent that we are cruel, inhumane, insensitive, unfair and unjust.

Let us study, let us recommend, let us save money if we can through a better delivery system, let us eliminate duplication. Let us not take benefits away from those who worked for years and years, built this country and contributed to funds, such as the old age security fund. Let us not take benefits away from those who worked and contributed to unemployment insurance. Let us not make our workers slaves of their bosses.

Let us be consistent, I say to my own party, with what we said in opposition. Let us be consistent with what we said in the campaign. Let us be credible. Let us be fair, just and compassionate in this country.

[Court Challenges Program, January 31st, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my neighbour, the Minister for Canadian Heritage.

In the speech from the throne the government promised to restore the court challenges program. I would like to ask the minister when this restoration will take place. Will this re-established program cover challenges to legislation which restrict or rescind language rights?

As the minister knows, language rights are essential to many English and French-speaking Canadians and individuals should not be prevented from protecting those rights in court due to a lack of funds.

[Speech From The Throne, January 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, a very interesting proposal which is now under serious consideration in many countries of the world is the fact that we share our employment more equitably among various people. For example, several European countries are now discussing the shorter work week or the shorter work day so that they could spread employment more fairly among a greater number of people.

In this modern age our production for the most part is achieved through technology, machines and robots, not simply by the sweat and blood of workers but by the use of their brains, their intelligence, their imagination and through high training.

As a matter of fact that is what will happen. There will be a greater sharing of work and there are many means to achieve that. I would hope the committee on human resources which will be established in the House in a week or so will examine that as one of the possibilities in looking at a better distribution of work and a better approach to income support and social security.

[Speech From The Throne, January 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I remember well the eighties. I remember the seventies, the sixties and the fifties as well. To attribute the interest rates of the eighties entirely to the federal government is an extremely simplistic approach. There were high interest rates in many western countries at the time. It was immediately after the OPEC oil crisis. Many other pressures were brought together in the world at the time. All governments were struggling to deal with the high interest rates and the conditions that were described.

If the member wants to remember periods of Liberal government, I remember the period of Mr. Pearson in the early sixties when we had 2 to 3 per cent unemployment for four consecutive years. As a student I can remember the period under Mr. St. Laurent when we had five to six years of full employment. I can remember the period under Mr. Trudeau when we averaged between 5 to 7 per cent unemployment.

I am saying that there is a role for government in our economy. I am not a socialist. I do not believe in a fully controlled socialist economy. Nor do I believe in the approach taken by the Reagans, the Thatchers, and the Mulroneys who believed they could withdraw altogether and just wish that things would go well.

I believe there is a role to play by governments with labour and business. Under those types of governments we had the highest eras of prosperity in Canadian history and Canada has become a great nation because of that approach.

[Speech From The Throne, January 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, before and during the election campaign we in the Liberal Party, and several other parties as well, criticized the Conservative government for promoting high unemployment and pursuing the wrong policies for debt reduction. We said that the government's obsession with inflation and government spending was wrong. The economy went into recession, we had record bankruptcies, unemployment soared to 11 per cent and the national debt tripled.

We said that while some expenditures had to be cut, especially wasteful and non-productive expenditures, the principal emphasis had to be on job creation and economic growth.

Under the Tory approach, people were put out of work, tax revenue declined, welfare and unemployment insurance payments increased, and the deficit grew.

Under the plan put forward by the Liberal Party, Canadians would go back to work, companies would make profits, both would pay taxes and there would be less unemployment insurance, welfare and bail-outs to certain companies, and the deficit would be reduced.

In the speech from the throne the Liberal government committed itself to these goals, and I quote: "The government attaches the highest priority to job creation and economic growth in the short term and the long term."

We have put forward our commitment for the municipal infrastructure program; the residential rehabilitation assistance program, which is a program to restore our older housing and thereby create jobs and leave us with a better bank of housing; the youth service corps, which will help young people build the bridge between school and the workplace; better access to capital for small business; the Canadian investment fund to develop new technology; more research and development; and improved training and retraining.

These are only some of the things that have been put forward in the speech from the throne. During this debate the various ministers have come forward to explain in greater detail some of those programs.

While I am a strong proponent of training, retraining, advanced education and lifetime learning, we cannot presume that this alone will solve the unemployment problem. Some people have suggested that a greater percentage of the unemployment insurance fund should be used for training. However, I must remind them and others that a substantial number of unemployed Canadians are already fully trained. Their problem is not training but the lack of jobs.

Furthermore, we must assure that the training programs are directed to the real economic needs of the country. On the one hand too often we are training people for trades that no longer are demanded by business and the public sector and on the other hand we have no courses for trades that are often in demand. I have seen that very often in my own city of Montreal where people are taking training courses. They finish the courses and there are no jobs available. On the other hand employers and businesses are looking for people to train and there is no one being trained in those areas.

In any case I welcome the review of income support and social security programs such as proposed in the speech from the throne to be initiated by the Minister of Human Resources Development. I believe we will be debating that proposal on Monday.

I would now like to deal with some of the objections that we hear with respect to the government's economic program to create jobs and stimulate growth. First we heard during the election campaign, and we still hear it today, that the infrastructure program is simply a large scale attempt to fix potholes and will not create any permanent jobs.

To begin with this program has the support of all the provinces in Canada and the great majority of all the municipalities. It is much more than fixing potholes, which is a very simplistic response to a very important program.

The minister and the Prime Minister have said that the interpretation of infrastructure will be a very wide one. It will apply to roads, highways, ports, airports, sewage systems, public transportation, communications systems, water treatment facilities, bridges, and so on. These public works will create direct and indirect jobs while being built. The indirect jobs of course are those which will be supplying the construction materials, all the materials that are needed in bringing about the renewal and building of such infrastructure projects. We also at the same time create a better environment for private investment in the renewed, better equipped cities and towns.

This is what attracts tourists, attracts business and attracts economic growth. Such a restoration of our infrastructure will also help restore confidence which is an important ingredient in stimulating investment and growth.

Another objection was raised in this House, and it was raised by several members of the Reform Party, but in particular by the leader of the Reform Party on the first day that we had a Question Period. I refer to a question which he asked of the Prime Minister. He referred to a question which had been sent to him by Dr. Dean Eyre of Ottawa who said, and I am quoting from Hansard :

The government proposes to spend $6 billion on infrastructure and create 65,000 jobs. Has the government calculated how many jobs might have been created if that $6 billion were simply cut from the taxes of individuals, property owners and small businesses?

To begin with, as I stated a few minutes ago, all our cities and provinces need up to date infrastructure if they are to operate efficiently and attract private investment. We need highways, we need railroads, we need canals, we need the St. Lawrence Seaway. Mr. Speaker, that was a great infrastructure program many years ago and it is very close to your constituency. We need airports, we need telephone and telecommunications systems, we need schools, we need universities, justice systems and police forces which are all part of what might be called in a broader sense our infrastructure. If we do not build and keep our infrastructure up to date we become a third-class nation.

As I said earlier not only do we create direct and indirect jobs in building and restoring our infrastructure, but once we build a modern infrastructure system we attract investment for still further jobs.

However there is a supposition in the question put forward by the leader of the Reform Party on behalf of Dr. Eyre, that if we return $6 billion to the taxpayers we would have even more jobs. There is certainly no guarantee of that. Every society has to guarantee that it has the essential infrastructure to operate as a modern state.

We are not at all what sure would happen if we simply returned this particular $6 billion to Canadian taxpayers. I want to make it clear that I believe a very good percentage of our incomes must be left to spend as we wish as individuals and as consumers. On the other hand, as a society we have to ensure that we have the social capital to exist as a modern state.

Some of the people might spend a good percentage of that money, if we returned it to them, outside the country either as consumers or investors. Some might use it entirely for consumption, for consumer goods. Some might use it for illegal cigarettes or other types of illegal products, drugs and so on. Some might put it in their drawer or their sock. No doubt there would be some investment. There would be some private investment if that money were returned to taxpayers.

However there would be no guarantee that it would be invested in jobs, while society through its government can ensure that it is used for basic essential infrastructure that will attract business and in the long run will put more money in the pockets of our citizens.

We in the Liberal Party believe in a mixed economy. The greatest eras of prosperity in Canada, the United States and Europe have been accomplished under mixed economies. Experience shows us that the extremes of socialism or the extremes of free market systems do not work as well.

That is the message in the speech from the throne. Jobs and economic growth are our highest priority. We believe the Government of Canada, along with the provinces, has an important role to play with business and labour in achieving these goals.

[Unemployment Insurance, January 27th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, during the last Parliament there were large demonstrations and intense opposition to the Conservative amendments to the Unemployment Insurance Act which denied benefits to persons who were obliged to leave their employment for serious reasons but who could not prove just cause as defined in the act.

I continue to meet individuals who were obliged to quit their jobs because they were exploited or harassed and who are now denied all benefits. Their alternative was to continue working as slaves.

Since this party at that time strongly opposed those amendments as being unduly harsh and excessive, I would urge the government to initiate amendments as soon as possible to correct this injustice.

[Cruise Missile Testing, January 26th, 1994]

Madam Speaker, on a point of order. In listening to this debate today I am becoming increasingly

alarmed with the use of the 10-minute period following the 20-minute speech. I refer to Standing Order 43 which says:

Following each 20-minute speech, a period not exceeding 10 minutes shall be made available, if required, to allow members to ask questions and comment briefly on matters relevant to the speech and to allow responses thereto.

On several occasions this afternoon I note that members are using the 10-minute period to make a new speech and to make comments which are not relevant to the speech that just came before them.

Many hon. members have talked about setting a new tone in this Parliament and respecting the rules of the House. I hope in future that the comments and questions as the standing order says will be brief and relevant to the speech that has just been made. It is not an occasion to make a new speech. It is supposed to be brief comments or questions relevant to the speech that has just been made.

I hope that the Chair will enforce that rule.