Bob Nault

[Department Of Human Resources Development Act, March 28th, 1996]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to have the opportunity to speak to this motion.

I will start out by asking where the member has been. She must have been away for the last number of weeks since the speech from the throne and the budget which outlined the commitment of the government as it relates to negotiations with the provinces in areas of provincial jurisdiction, for example in training and education. Not too many days ago we sent every member of Parliament a copy of a letter that we sent to every province which indicates what we would like to get into negotiating about as it relates to these agreements which help men and women get back to work.

It seems passing strange that the Reform Party presented the previous amendment under the first grouping which dealt with the issue of trying to save money. Its argument to get rid of the Minister of Labour and the Deputy Minister of Labour was that they were a waste of taxpayers' money.

Under the next amendment, the Reform Party wants to create a whole new bureaucracy under the lieutenant governor in council. This means that some committee or group of bureaucrats being paid by the provincial governments will have to get together to review every single agreement, which are in the thousands, by the human resources development department that we enter into with agencies in provinces across the country.

I am not quite sure I understand where the Reform Party is coming from. That party believes in the elimination of duplication and overlap. That party asks why it is taking so long. Reformers keep telling us: "You take so long to do anything no wonder we do not get anything done". The Reform Party wants us to be very quick about what we do and then it presents an amendment that would take us months and months to try to get any discussion going on an issue. Obviously, this adds another step to the process and I hazard a guess it would be a very lengthy one to negotiate certain agreements on almost every issue. The member should clarify this.

We said in the speech from the throne, and the Minister of Human Resources Development has been very clear in his letters to the provinces, that we will be entering into framework agreements. These framework agreements would be for those who are not in the labour movement and who may not have had the opportunity to enter into an agreement that has a broad general consensus of the provinces and the federal government to deal with issues and either transfer the responsibility to the province or to allow the federal government to enter into an agreement with agencies on an ad hoc basis based on a particular framework agreement.

That is what we are proposing to do. That is how we save money. That is how we allow governments to work more efficiently. If the member and other members of her party are suggesting that we will create a whole new bureaucracy and a whole new level of duplication because of somebody's mystical belief that the federal government is trying to shaft the provinces or does not care, that it

is trying to get political mileage out of an issue, I do not think they have been listening to the debate.

I really want to emphasize that I am having difficulty today listening to the Reform Party's arguments. As mentioned before, the first amendment said that we should get rid of some of the costs and the Minister of Labour, that he does not do anything. We know how important he is to the overall workings of government and to the Canadian men and women who fall under federal jurisdiction.

Then we get an amendment that suggests we should put a whole pile of money into a process which there is no need to have. Once we are finished negotiating with the provinces-and we agree that each province will be different and we accept that-then we will get on with the job we have been given, which is to help people get back to work, to give them the tools and abilities to be successful.

I want to emphasize that we enter into literally thousands of agreements every year in every province with different agencies. Imagine the kind of bureaucratic nightmare the Reform Party is suggesting we create with this amendment. I suggest we totally reject the amendment.

The fact remains that the speech from the throne and the letters that have been written by the Minister of Human Resources Development to the different provinces speak for themselves as to the intent of the federal government in regard to its relations with the provinces. We do not need another level of bureaucracy to help us do that job.

[Department Of Human Resources Development Act, March 28th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I enter this debate to talk a little about Bill C-11 and what it means for the government's labour programs.

I will deal with it right off the bat because the main thrust of the Reform Party's amendments is that there is no need for a minister of labour, that the role of a minister of labour in the Government of Canada and in the overall lives of people in the country who relate to federal jurisdiction is not important.

Members have probably heard me say this bill will allow us to take giant strides in helping Canadians with the employment challenges the entire country currently faces. It will combine the human resource functions of several departments under one roof, the Department of Human Resources Development.

There is the Minister of Human Resources Development at the helm to control and lead the new department. It might seem puzzling to some that there also needs to be a minister of labour. After all, the department of labour is one of the departments being integrated into HRDC.

Let us look at the duties of the Minister of Labour before we suggest or accept the amendments proposed by the Reform Party. These duties are described in clause 4 of the bill: "A minister of labour may be appointed by commission under the great seal to hold office during pleasure". Clause 4(2) states: "The minister of labour will be given all the powers, duties and functions related to labour matters under federal jurisdiction".

This means that one of the main responsibilities of the minister is the Canada Labour Code. The code governs industrial relations, occupational safety and health and labour standards, but only in those areas under federal jurisdiction.

The code is an important part of Canada's economic fabric. It affects the working lives of 1 million Canadians. It applies to train engineers-I have to include conductors in that because that is what I was in my previous profession-longshoremen and truckers, to grain handlers and telephone operators, to the persons who cashed people's cheques at the bank today. These people turn to us for stable industrial relations, for safety and health and for fair and productive workplaces.

Applying the Canada Labour Code is an important responsibility but the Minister of Labour also has other pieces of legislation. One of these is the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Act. The centre produces and disseminates occupational health and safety information and helps to protect the lives and health of Canadian workers.

There are many different pieces of legislation that fall under the responsibility of the Minister of Labour, acts which deal with security, justice, equity and other matters. All of this was under the old department of labour. Not much has changed there. Except for the program for older worker adjustment, the Minister of Labour holds on to all the same responsibilities and might even add a few.

Everything the Minister of Labour needs to do, the job can be found within the framework of restructured, unified and effective organization. This keeps costs down without depriving the Minister of Labour of services or facilities needed to tend to important matters. Remember, these matters include the Canadian union movement, labour management relations, conditions in the workplace, equity for all workers and many more.

That is a lot for anybody's plate but the Minister of Human Resources Development has an even fuller plate. Therefore it makes sense to have somebody dedicated full time to such a tightly defined set of issues. This bill sets those definitions and makes those distinctions.

If anything, the past year has shown that there is more than enough work there to keep the Minister of Labour very busy. The minister is working to better harmonize federal occupational health and safety legislation and regulations with those of the provinces and territories. The minister has also been very active on industrial relations.

Last May the minister appointed an industrial inquiry commission to study industrial relations in longshoring, grain handling and other federally regulated industries on the west coast.

In June the minister established a task force to review the part of the Canada Labour Code which deals with labour relations. This is part I, but the minister also wants to modernize the other two parts of the code, and work is continuing in that regard.

The minister is reviewing the labour program so that it works better and is more cost effective while at the same time working on a North American agreement on labour co-operation.

As members can see, the restructuring has not interfered with the labour program. I would argue that the restructuring has energized the labour program. We have seen a healthy continuity between the new and the old. We have also seen how an integrated approach can lead to improvements in the economic and social well-being of Canadian citizens: industrial relations, job creation and training. All of these issues are related and all should be considered within the same holistic framework.

Removing the labour program from HRCD would therefore be a very serious mistake. After all, the Department of Human Resources Development has been with us since 1993 and we know it works. We also know the labour programs work. The department saves money. It offers a cohesive vision of Canada's human resources needs. At the same time, when technology changes almost everything we do, we need that kind of vision more than ever.

I am not asking my colleagues to leap into the unknown when I ask them to support this bill. Instead, I ask them to believe the evidence before their own eyes. I am asking them to understand the importance of a minister of labour in the overall scheme of things.

It is a very shallow argument by the Reform Party that because the government did not have a minister of labour for the first two it obviously did it for political reasons. My argument is that after two years it realized, as governments do, that it made a mistake and it did need a minister of labour because that area of expertise is very specific and needs to be looked after on a daily basis by an individual whose main job is to look after the rights of workers in the federal jurisdiction.

I applaud the Prime Minister and the new Minister of Labour. We now have gone back as far as the 1900s to one of the first four departments created by the government, the labour department. We have recognized over the years that labour is very important. We recognize that a minister is very important.

I recommend to members that they reject out of hand the opposition's suggestion that there is no need for a minister of labour in the Human Resources Development Department.

[Canada Transportation Act, March 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to speak against this motion for some very obvious reasons. The NDP are still stuck about the 1920s. Its members do not seem to have been able to take a good look at what this bill intends to do.

The bill is intended to take the public interest out of a mode of transportation. It treats railroads just like truckers or shippers or anybody else. That is not to suggest that the agency is the final arbitrator of the public interest.

The legislation states that if there is something in the public interest it can be taken to members of Parliament. They are there to fight for a particular rail line if it is being subsidized. It will be a transparent subsidization that will be dealt with based on the merits of a certain region.

To send it to a non-elected body which on the one hand looks at the commercial side of issues but on the other hand what Canada's public interest is and what the beliefs are of the government of day, suggests to me that it is skewing the whole process of having successful transportation systems.

Section 48 permits the minister to enter into support agreements for the continuation of rail passenger service. From my experience and knowledge, that is what has been done in northern Ontario. I take offence at the member's suggestion that all of a sudden the government is going to leave northern Ontario in the lurch.

The other issue is one I have mentioned before. I believe the people who should deal with the public interest are those of us in the House. The agencies are there to make sure that the transportation system functions and runs properly. That is why the public interest scenario has been taken out of the bill.

I suggest to members that we get into the modern age and understand what is the intent of a rail transportation system. It is to get product to market as quickly and as cheaply as possible. Rail transportation, as far as passenger service is concerned, is a different issue and should be dealt with in a different arena which happens to be this one here.

[Canada Transportation Act, March 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to speak to the amendment by my colleague from the NDP and to the support he has received from the Reform Party.

This is an important discussion. I sat on the committee and from my railway experience I can say that this is obviously something that has stacked up against the railways for a number of years. If we are going to have a successful railway industry and a transportation sector which will deliver the services required, there must be a significant balance.

In 1987 when the Tory government brought in the NTA, it brought in some regulatory changes but stacked them on top of each other. Because of that stacking there were some problems with the act which these amendments are trying to change. The rationale is that if we are going to go to a more commercially driven transportation sector, the process must be in place for it to be successful.

Most intriguing is that on the one hand the Reform Party has continually said that governments should not get in the way of free market enterprise and allow companies to make decisions on their own. We all know that commercially fair and reasonable means that agencies are given the objective of making decisions on behalf of two complainants. For instance when a shipper disputes what the railway would like to charge there must be some form of criteria laid out in order for them to make decisions and arrive at a result. The process in the amendment the minister has added which affects all parties is intended to make sure that the parties are relatively successful in Canada.

One thing the opposition has failed to bring forward so far in the discussion but which came forward in committee is that since 1987 the line rates and the cost to the railways have increased 30 per cent. In fact railway companies in this country have had significant problems in making a profit. I know the NDP are suggesting this but I am quite surprised that the Reform Party is in agreement. If they are suggesting that the government bail out the railways every time they do not make a profit, we can then go back to the regulatory system which is in place now.

People would go to the agency only for one reason. The agency would make a decision on whether it is fair and commercially viable for the railway to up its cost per commodity. Under the present system, that has not taken place and therefore, there have been problems with it all along. The intent of these new regulations and changes is to put the balance back where it belongs. It is the same argument with labour-management relations. If there is not a good balance then it does not work. The same thing occurred with the 1987 amendments. Of course, the grain farmers and shippers in

western Canada are opposed to this. There will be stronger, businesslike discussions and debate which will go on before they go to the agency.

I reiterate that when I was in committee not everybody agreed that this was a bad thing as the member who spoke previous to me suggested. There were different groups of thought. If we go to a commercially based industry and system and if the government stops subsidizing the railway industry, it would have to have the means and the capability to be successful. That is what this rebalancing does.

The amendment the government has proposed will prove over the years that this is good for Canada in the long run. It is not going to be successful if we use the short term arguments of the opposition. We will be revisiting this as we did in the 1920s, in the 1940s and in the 1970s and bailing out railway industries because we have not allowed them the tools to be successful. That is why this amendment is so important to the overall viability of the industry itself and of course to all of us who need to get our products to market.

[Criminal Code, March 19th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I take great pleasure in having the opportunity to comment today.

As a unionist myself, one of the problems I encounter on a regular basis is which hat does Bob White really wear? Does he wear the hat of the CLC or does he wear the hat of the NDP? That is probably one of the reasons union movements in Canada today are in such disrepair and have so little time for governments to listen to them. We do not really know whether they are part of the NDP movement or part of the real union movement, which people are looking for.

The issue of the union's lack of interest and solutions was brought up again today in committee. One of the affiliates of the CLC made a presentation of the ideas the member talks about. The conclusion of the ideas was to scrap the bill.

From my experience when I organized anything that took place in the union movement, the whole objective was to make sure we had our voice heard, that we had recommendations and ideas to put forward. From there we would want to meet with somebody.

What Mr. White has done, and I agree with the minister, is he has not given us any ideas to this point. He is just interested in playing politics on the backs of a lot of people who are very concerned about the EI changes.

If the member wanted to be helpful he would say to his friend Bob White, the executive of the NDP, that he should give us some ideas and some recommendations, come to the committee with them instead of what we heard this morning from one of their affiliates to simply scrap the bill. Anybody in their right mind knows that is not any idea or recommendation. A lot of Canadians have had a problem with the CLC for a long time. Those of us in the

union movement can say we are tired and are not willing any longer to put up with people like Bob White.

I recommend to the member and I say to the minister that he should condone those individuals. He should not stop saying the things he says because there are a lot of people like us out there who believe Bob White is doing a disservice to working men and women.

We will be having the CLC come forward in the next couple of weeks to make recommendations. I hope they are recommendations, not just political rhetoric, which is what we heard so far.

If the member thought the orchestrated demonstrations by union leaders in Atlantic Canada were being helpful and that they would make changes based on that, he should look at what happened in other jurisdictions as far as the union movement is concerned.

Nobody is paying any attention to labour because of comments like that and comments by Bob White. I hope they will change that approach and that we get back to doing business in the labour movement with governments no matter which stripe they represent.

[Supply, March 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, what the hon. member asks is very similar to what I always ask when I stand up in the House. I come from a region very similar to his in a lot of respects. It is not part of the Torontos of the world or the Montreals; it is in the outlying regions.

The hon. member might not have had an opportunity to read the bill in its entirety. There are two areas I want to ask him about.

There is the $100 million investment program to create jobs at the local level. There is also the $300 million job fund for high unemployment areas such as his and mine. I think that will be very valuable in helping us create jobs or put together programs and policies of a local nature.

If he looks at the bill very closely he will also note there are five tools over which the local areas will have control, including the one he represents.

Another aspect of the bill is very important to the hon. member because he signalled that UI is a problem but social assistance is probably a bigger problem. In the new bill 45 per cent of the social assistance population will be eligible for re-employment initiatives. It never existed before that people on social assistance could qualify for measures which would help them to return to the workforce.

Does the member not think these are major improvements for his region, which has high unemployment and a large population on social assistance, similar to my region?

[Supply, March 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for Gaspé a question as it relates to the gap. That is a very important issue. He has many fishermen in his riding who work different portions of a season and therefore have a gap.

The minister has made it very clear there is some concern in various regions based on that issue. He has signalled to all members of Parliament, especially to one member who spent a lot of time on this issue, the member for Fredericton-York-Sunbury. We call it the Scott proposal because it was made by one of our members.

The proposal is basically structured like this. Instead of allowing those gaps to exist, people on UI would be allowed to go back 26 weeks. In any one of those 26 weeks they would find 12, 14 or 16 weeks in order to qualify for UI.

This proposal has been bounced around by some members as a solution to the gap. So far we have not found anyone except for that member who has done that amount of work on the gap.

I ask the member for Gaspé if he has any proposals or if he thinks the Scott proposal would deal with that problem in regions like his, particularly in industries like the fishing industry where there are significant gaps.

What we are saying is if you needed 12 or 14 weeks to qualify you could go back 26 weeks to find those weeks and it would not matter if there was a gap of 2 weeks in between, and then you found another 4 or 5 weeks.

The interest I have in this is that the minister has signalled that we are looking for solutions to this. I want to make it quite clear to the opposition and the public that there is no intention of throwing the bill out and starting from scratch.

A significant amount of work has been done on this bill. There are a lot of good parts to this bill. There are a few problems we are trying to deal with. One is the gap.

I want to know from the member for Gaspé whether he agrees with the Scott proposal or whether he has one of his own that could help with that problem, which he suggests is one of the reasons we should scrap this legislation presently in front of the House.

[Supply, March 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, under the EI changes and the family supplement some 350,000 claimants and low income families will be guaranteed a supplement. That works out that all claimants and low income families with children will average 7 per cent more in benefits.

I ask the member if he thinks that is a bad thing for low income Canadians and whether his party agrees that is a necessary step under these legislative changes. Does he think we should scrap that

as well and leave low income Canadians to drift in the wind, as some of the issues he put forward today suggest?

[Supply, March 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the member did a great job of dancing around the question. I can understand his reluctance to try and deal with it. I am aware that his party is trying to dance between two interest groups, one which is in favour of the hourly system and another which is not. Let me put it to him based on questions from some women in his caucus over the last couple of days relating to women's issues.

The vast majority of part time workers are women who do not fall under the present system and do not get any benefits. I happen to know some of them. Some are related to me, very close family members who work part time and do not have benefits because of the present system.

Is the member of the Bloc telling me that his party's position is that the vast majority of women who do not come under the present system should not be able to pay into the system and get benefits when they need them because his party has a couple of union friends who do not agree with the hourly system?

[Supply, March 12th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in the speech made by the hon. member's leader, the comment he made was that the Bloc is opposed to the new system of every hour counting, what we call the hours based system.

The present system is based on weeks where one has to work so many weeks in order to qualify. With a system in which every hour that one works counts, some 270,000 workers will now qualify for an additional three weeks of benefits because they will now be given full credit for all the hours they work. About 45,000 workers in seasonal industries not eligible for UI will now qualify for EI. I would like the member to explain to the House why the Bloc is opposed to moving to an hourly system where every single hour counts.

In a region like mine and a region like yours, Mr. Speaker, this affects every single member. Members are trying to suggest that seasonal workers are fishermen and foresters. This country's biggest seasonal industry is construction and construction workers work long hours when they can. It is just the way it is in the construction industry. They work 16 to 18 hours a day when it is nice out, when the sun is shining and it is not raining. Every single hour an individual works will qualify. He may only work eight

weeks but is working 60 hours a week during those eight weeks. He will qualify under the new system but will not qualify if we stay with the old system.

I would like an explanation as to why the Bloc is opposed to the hourly system. Everyone I have spoken to thinks it is a tremendous improvement for the average worker in Canada.