Adam Vaughan

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with what the member just said. Partnership is the solution. While I have heard criticism that EI benefits are not solved by the motion—and I understand the sensitivities that have been raised here—the reality is that job creation and the challenge of creating jobs is addressed by the motion and the support of the motion would create jobs and would create them in an effective and responsible way, and it is that partnership we are driving at and trying to achieve.

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, one of the fastest growing and most successful sectors of the economy in the riding that I represent is the high-tech sector. When we look at the opportunities for the high-tech sector to create jobs, it has a choice not just to create them inside Trinity—Spadina, but it has the choice to create them outside the riding and in fact outside the country. In order to create a favourable business climate to create a new job, a high-paying job, in a strong sector, we need to create the economic conditions that induce that decision being made locally.

EI premiums alone are not going to necessarily create that circumstance. No single-purpose bill in the House will ever do that. However, when we look at the structure of that business and at the cost of employment, when there is a way to reduce the cost of employment, it induces the creation of a job. The good news about the motion is that the tax cut does not just roll through because someone wants and hopes to create a job. Only if the job is actually created is the EI benefit reduced. We are not spending money in the hope of creating a job. We are compensating for the actual creation of a job and creating the environment in which to create jobs.

That is why I thought the motion would appeal to your party.

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, if the member had ever run a small business, he would know exactly what $200 means. To belittle that is to belittle the hard decisions made by small business owners right across this country day in and day out. It is quite often the difference between whether or not they feed their families.

The issue in front of us, and the proposition we have placed in front of the House, is to create it a situation where all jobs are met with this benefit. When new jobs are created in any business—small, medium or large—the benefit would kick in, and not the way the government's proposition stands, which actually is an inducement to cut jobs.

When I heard the official opposition members describe this proposition, they made it sound like this whole program would be voluntary. Let me assure the House that all businesses would qualify, not some, and second to that, they would have to create a job to receive the benefit.

This is where we differ from our colleagues across the aisle. All businesses would qualify and they must create a job in order to get this break in the fee they pay into the employment insurance program. Therefore, small businesses under our proposal would have the opportunity to grow, but it would not preclude medium-sized or large businesses from growing and creating jobs too. That is the difference in the position we have taken.

It puzzles me when I hear New Democrats talk about the program as being bad when it uses funds that workers have created to create more work for more workers. I do not understand philosophically what the problem with this concept is. Yes, one can be an economic literalist and say that every dollar paid into employment insurance should be paid out as a benefit. I understand that philosophy and have heard it espoused today. However, the trouble is that at some point the benefits run out. At some point the ability for the country and economy to generate the funds to pay employment insurance will have a hard limit.

Our proposal simply seeks to grow the pie, and in growing the pie, create the opportunities and possibilities for better and more secure futures for Canadians. I do not think that is fundamentally at odds with the philosophy of the party that sits on this side of the House with us. However, apparently, it is now.

The other issue that I think separates the approaches that we are putting in front of the House is that we believe as a party that it is not simply the market that is going to provide a solution and it is not simply government that is going to provide a solution, but it is a partnership that will provide the opportunities and the solutions.

I have heard official opposition members speak to us and say that when we were in power we took the surpluses and simply balanced our books. We did balance the books and put the government in this country into a surplus, but the investments we made through those budgets while we balanced the books created work. The gas tax was made possible by the balancing of the books and the use of EI surpluses, and that put people to work building and providing public transit in this country. The budgets that were balanced also provided the foundation for the kick-start and rebirth of a housing program. The money was also there for daycare and daycare also created work. It did not just provide care for children.

Therefore, when we talk about these partnerships and when we talk about the opportunity to work with all sectors of the economy and include the government as part of that program, we talk about solving problems, not simply describing them.

That is why I will be supporting our party's motion.

[Business of Supply, September 23rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, there are many members in the House who may remember me as a city councillor and may also have memories of me being a journalist here in the foyer outside of the House of Commons. What members may not know about me is that I also have run small businesses in the riding I represent. In fact, I ran a small restaurant and I know the fear, danger, trouble and opportunities around meeting a payroll that are part of every business decision.

The reason the party I represent is putting the motion forward in this way is that it is about job creation and helping small businesses create those jobs, but also making sure that there is a guarantee those jobs arrive. What confuses many of us who have run small businesses about the Conservative government's approach is that it creates an artificial threshold. This $15,000 seems to be pulled right out of the air and dropped in front of us as if it is some sort of magic threshold that is good or bad for small business and will or will or not create jobs.

The truth is that the employment dynamics in small businesses are much more fluid than simply that hard calculation of $15,000, which places a cap. When one hits that amount, one is in a position of having to make very tough choices and will or will not hire based on whether that threshold is met or not.

[Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, September 22nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, through the Chair, I apologize.

The member has identified that the legislation would attack the system of advertising these services. The legislation talks about the system of reporting to the police and the conversations that would be possible between people who have been trafficked and the law enforcement agencies. The member talked about a series of systemic approaches that need to be changed in order to change the culture around this issue.

However, when it comes to missing and murdered indigenous women, the same government responds to it as an individual situation, that there is no sociological or systemic reason there.

I would like the member, through the Chair, to explain to the House exactly why this is a systemic problem, but the other one is not; it is rather one of individual choices and individual situations.

[Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, September 22nd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, my question for the member opposite and to the proponents of this legislation is this. You have identified where you think this bill would be effective—

[Committees of the House, September 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to the list of programs, largely announcements that were made before my arrival in the House of Commons. If they were effective, we would not have a list with 1,200 names on it.

While the focus is clear that there is work to be done sometimes within the community that is affected, quite frankly, the dynamic is right across the country and exists on and off reserve, in rural Canada and urban Canada, in the east and the west.

Clearly, when there is a need for a new approach to tackle a problem which we have not solved, why is the announcement about response to a problem instead of the steps that are required to prevent this problem? Why are we falling back on a list of old programs that have failed rather than reaching out to find new programs that are clearly required to solve a dynamic that is absolutely, fundamentally unacceptable?

[Committees of the House, September 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, if there was ever an issue that should not be partisan and that should not divide members of the House, this is perhaps one of those issues. It defines a circumstance in this country that really challenges us.

The issue that is in front of us requires more than just simply trotting out a list of things that have been done and that have clearly left us short of a solution. It is a list of programs that have not delivered us the safety or even the security of our friends and family members. Rather, it is a list of programs that need to be changed if we are going to solve this challenge.

The question is, what needs to be on that list that is not on it? We do not have an answer to that question. I would like to know what other steps should be there.

[Infrastructure, September 19th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the City of Hamilton and its steel plants are facing a critical situation as a direct result of the failed economic policies of the Conservative government. Tax cuts do not solve every problem. What Hamilton steel plants need is new business, and they need it now.

Canada has a $400 billion infrastructure deficit, yet the government is cutting infrastructure spending by close to 90% this year. Investments in housing and transit drive demand for steel.

When will the government make the investments that cities need to build a stronger economy, stronger cities, and more importantly, a stronger Hamilton?

[Business of Supply, September 16th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's statement and my mind rolled over numbers that put a completely different picture to it.

In the very city that the member opposite represents, the waiting list for public housing has practically doubled since the current government took office and the number of children living in poverty has increased. The member's statement today, in fact, explained exactly how government policy from across the House is plunging seniors and people with disabilities who live in co-operative housing into poverty as rent subsidies disappear as a direct result of decisions by this government. Poverty is on the rise in the very city the member represents.

The concern I have is the perception that somehow a tax cut for a person earning high wages suddenly creates income or opportunity for people who are struggling. I recognize that the members opposite do not want to measure these things, but the measurements are there.

How does that work? Can he please explain it to me?