Brian Masse

[Supply, June 2nd, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member did a good job of touching on women and the collection of employment insurance. I remind everybody in this House this is something that workers pay into as well as employers. This is not a handout. This is something that is actually deferred to have an insurance program. For example, under the current system, similar to women, less than 30% can actually collect. Imagine having an insurance policy for one's home where one basically spins the wheel and only has a third of a chance of actually recovering despite paying into a system.

I know as well persons with disabilities who, for example, cannot work a certain amount of hours per week and choose, because of their limitations, to work a shorter amount of hours week and then lose that job. They cannot collect any benefits. How fair is that when they are doing the responsible thing by working to the fullest extent of their abilities?

[Supply, June 2nd, 2005]

Madam Speaker, since being here I have enjoyed debating with the hon. member, learning about his region. It has been very important to get an understanding not only about the complex array of issues he deals with but also the social environment that the hon. member represents.

He was a little critical of our party in terms of Bill C-48 and getting changes to the budget and not including this measure. I remind the hon. member that the Conservative Party did not even vote on the first budget. Had the Conservatives voted against the budget, there would have been an election. They chose not to vote at all. A couple of members may have broken from the party ranks. They did not vote at all. Their leader went outside this chamber and praised the budget as being a Conservative budget. However, it had no improvements of significance for workers. They are supporting that budget bill right now but not our amendments.

We admit that our amendments are not complete, but there are only 19 of us. We did our best to at least get a few issues resolved to make a better budget.

I would like to ask the hon. member right now if he is going to be supporting this very important motion. It is a modest motion that actually creates an opportunity. We do not have to go back in time and debate things. We could make a difference right here today by passing this motion. Could he convince his leader and other members of his party who are speaking against it here today to support it? Would he be able to convince them that we could effect the changes right now and not bicker about what happened in the past?

[Textile and Clothing Industries, June 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I have heard a lot in the House, but I just cannot believe that this is the best government response that can be canned and delivered.

Here is what happened. We had an understanding on phase 1. The province was on side, the federal government apparently was on side and the city was on side to move $82 million worth of projects along. Let me tell members right now that some of the funding has not even been released by this government for those projects. It will not release the funding for them and they are consensus items.

Those government members get up and talk about how much money is coming. I think every community across this country can probably appreciate the fact that Liberals go into their ridings and announce money, but the communities never actually see it delivered. This is a common experience.

Why was it that the ministers came to our community with the province of Ontario people and made announcements? The city was not on side. They had to have the photo opportunity instead of sitting at the table and working on a solution together. They should be embarrassed at doing this again.

[Textile and Clothing Industries, June 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak once again, as I often have in the House of Commons, on the Windsor--Detroit border. This relates to a question which I asked recently. The Prime Minister, who claims he is from Windsor, refuses to get up in the House of Commons and actually answer questions about the border. It is something which I think should be done. The Minister of Transport answered the question. I will read the question I asked:

Mr. Speaker, many of those jobs are at risk because of Liberal inaction at the Windsor-Detroit border. In fact, the Prime Minister promised in the last election that he would support a made in Windsor solution. He also promised cold hard cash. I would like to know from the finance minister how much of this weekend's announcement is cold hard cash to fix the Windsor border and protect Ontario's economy?

Previously, I have asked questions of the Prime Minister. I asked the Prime Minister a question this week and he refused to answer. The answer from the Minister of Transport was interesting. He said:

I want to tell the hon. member that the cash is there for the projects that have been agreed upon with the province of Ontario by the Government of Canada. We hope to take the city onside. The cash is there and we are ready to spend it anytime.

The fact is that the federal government came to Windsor with the province of Ontario for a photo opportunity. The province decided to put money on the table but the federal government did not. That is counter to everything the Prime Minister has said.

I want to review a few of those remarks. It is important to note the history and the verbal commitment by the Prime Minister which has not translated into actual funds to solve the problems at the most important border crossing in North America. It is a very important border crossing for the community as well.

In January 2004 the Prime Minister promised “cold hard cash” for the people of Windsor when they presented a plan. That was done through city council and the Schwartz report. It was presented to the federal government. The government has yet to issue a statement on its support of that plan.

The Prime Minister said, “The thing is that there is no doubt that the crossing here is the single most important crossing in Canada. And it is a priority”. Here is another quote:

--we are not going to do this unless it really conforms to what the people of the city want....So, now we've done this, now it's a question of determining what exactly, how the city wants to see us do it. This is not going to be imposed. That is an absolute guarantee. This is not going to be imposed.

That was the response the city received after sitting down and developing a plan and presenting it to the federal government. The Prime Minister has not followed through on it. That is discouraging because he promised to listen to the city's residents. They delivered a report and there has been no action of any significant magnitude.

I can point to specific things that are not even controversial. One is the Detroit-Windsor truck ferry. The government makes it pay for customs officials and the location of them, whereas the Ambassador Bridge and the tunnel do not have to pay. The ferry actually is a border solution that the residents and the people of the community support. It takes international truck traffic off our roads and is actually one of the safest crossings in the nation. It cannot advance because it faces unfair business practices because of the federal government.

All the government did in its recent announcement was propose to study the problem. The problem is that they have to pay for things that others do not have to pay for, so how can they compete? This is a good example of the bad behaviour that has been happening at our border.

The Prime Minister also said:

I think that whatever we can do to keep that free flow open between Windsor and Detroit, we've got to do.

The first thing is to start listening to the people in the area. We know how to get trucks off our streets and the economy running.

[Textile and Clothing Industries, June 1st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleagues for allowing us to split our time on this very important issue. The member for Winnipeg Centre has been working on this issue for a long time. It is important to have the personal touch related to ones constituency involved in this.

As the industry critic for the New Democratic Party, I would like to give credit to the Bloc for bringing the motion forward. Sectorial strategies are very important. There are approximately 93,000 workers employed in this industry which stretches from coast to coast to coast. It is one that is important to recognize in terms of a manufacturing base.

There has been a lot of preoccupation in recent years with the idea of moving to higher technology. Technology is seen as the panacea to moving a business forward. The automotive base is located in my constituency of Windsor West, and it is one of the most important industries in Canada in terms of its history and its future.

However, we need our manufacturing industry to survive for a number of reasons. It provides good employment and opportunities. It also leads to other industries and development, including the high tech industry. It feeds into a whole different area of development, whether through design, or newer technology and computerization or training opportunities so people can move into further employment. That is why sectorial strategies are important. In my opinion the government has missed this.

I want to mention some testimony that was provided in 2003 at finance committee by the president of Western Glove Works. In 2003 the company employed just under 1,300 Canadians. A year later that number was down to 587. Those people had good jobs. They made a decent wage and had a decent standard of living. Those jobs are gone now. We cannot get them back.

Some countries we compete against use all kinds of advantages, whether it be tariffs, or environmental or working conditions that are unfair to our Canadian workers. Our workers are proficient. They are well trained, but unfortunately they have to compete in an unfair market.

I was recently in Washington doing some parliamentary work with other members of Parliament. I was sitting in the office of a Republican member from California who told me that he regretted voting in favour of letting China into the WTO because of fair trade. Being a New Democrat that comment nearly floored me. He asked me how workers in the manufacturing industry in California, Michigan, Ohio were expected to compete when post-end production in some of these other countries was deplorable?

When I say deplorable, I am talking about some of the environmental and waste management subsidies not used because of the lack of scrutiny and regulations conducive to a better environment. How do we compete with those factors?

When the government enters into trade negotiations, it has a responsibility to ensure they are fair. The United States said China “lacked legal grounding” in some of the things it was doing. The States has been pressing this issue as well.

The government does not have a good comprehensive plan. I want to point out one thing in particular. The government has provided $50 million in additional funding to encourage restructuring of the textile industry, which is the 10th largest manufacturing industry in Canada. That is peanuts. When that $50 million is broken down, of the 3,900 businesses, it amounts to $13,000 per establishment. It could hire a part time janitor to help with the restructuring.

There has to be a better comprehensive plan and an ongoing commitment from the government for a comprehensive strategy. The motion is a step in the right direction.

[Canada-U.S. Border, May 31st, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the American billionaire who owns the Ambassador bridge and literally has his hands on the throat of a third of the Canadian economy announced he wants Canadians to pay for him to relocate, set up and staff customs booths on U.S. soil to guarantee that he will control the next new crossing and the Canadian economy

The government has allowed private business interests to dictate the terms of Canada's most important border crossing in the U.S. where 42% of the nation's trade is crammed along two kilometres of waterfront.

Will the Prime Minister show some leadership and end this nonsense and support a new public border crossing in Windsor like we have everywhere else in this country? Will he commit to a public border crossing like we have everywhere else?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 17th, 2005]

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to ask a question of my colleague about the budget and the upcoming initiatives that we hope will benefit Canadians sooner rather than later.

One thing we negotiated with Bill C-48 is the elimination of large corporate tax cuts for the immediate budget. Does the member believe that instead of having those large corporate tax cuts in the future, we should invest in infrastructure, for example, to rebuild the trade routes and the ability for our economy to move via rail, sea or roads and highways as a priority as opposed to a general tax cut that has seen our infrastructure deteriorate over the years?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, the issue of trust is really being flushed out with the member for Newmarket—Aurora. At least as New Democrats we negotiated a deal as a party position under what we stood for as Canadians but Conservative members are now crossing the floor to join cabinet positions. We stand by our principles in terms of the things that we fought for at election time to make a better Canada. We are very pleased with what Bill C-48 does.

The fact is that this is a better balanced budget and it is also one that is very reasonable. We were very pleased, for example, to take the opportunity to extract corporate tax cuts to the largest corporations and redirecting that elsewhere. We think it will be very successful for the economy. For example, we think there will be a housing boom for many of the different construction industries. We do know that many people need affordable housing which will then put that money back into the system as opposed to having to pay rent at a higher level which makes it difficult for them to be able to sustain families. We believe it is very much a family issue.

The government has historically over the last 12 years, via major surpluses, underestimated the budget, so we are quite confident. Our party did due diligence with different economists, those in the party system and outside of our party system, to ensure what we were doing was reasonable and was achievable. That is something that we believe will see fruition and that is important for Canadians.

When we went to the break week, while the leader of the official opposition said that he would talk to Canadians about whether to go to an election and then consider voting against the budget because his party did not vote against it when it first came forward, we did not sit around and wait to see whether the Conservatives and the Bloc would team up to bring this country to an election or, alternatively, live with a bad budget. We voted against it because we believed it did not represent the views of our constituents.

We sought to make changes to make Parliament work. We negotiated something that is of benefit to Canadians, something that makes me comfortable as an individual and something that is above board. We did not do it in a way that was disrespectful of the House. When we came back from the break we had a position that we could now support. As New Democrats, that was better than sitting around waiting to see if the other parties would bring this to an election or have to eat a budget that did not suit the needs of Canadians.

This budget still has a lot of holes in it and is not as good as we would like it to be but it is balanced and fair. It is a compromise for some of the things that we have asked Canadians to support us on. We will be proud to hopefully get those achievements into our communities to have a better Canada for all of us.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2005, May 17th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-43 and to talk about some of the things that are important to Canadians with regard to this budget. We want to make sure that there is some stability in this country. Moving forward on this budget is important. If a potential election is looming, this country should at least have a budget before that. The New Democrats have been working on Bill C-43 and Bill C-48, the amendments that we proposed, to make sure that Canadians do not go without a budget.

I want to touch on a couple of topics. One of them is a specific reference to students.

My constituency of Windsor West has thousands of students because of our great St. Clair College of applied arts and technology and the University of Windsor. Those two institutions have been at the forefront of training and educational opportunities for young people. Those institutions have been important not only to the growth of their students' knowledge in specific areas related to the arts and humanities but also in terms of training. One example would be with respect to the automotive industry, through research and development at CARE, the Centre for Automotive Research and Excellence. St. Clair College has specific programs, such as the Ford Centre for Excellence.

Students have been moving successfully through a process to obtain skills and abilities that lead the way to ensuring that our auto industry has trained professionals that will contribute very much to the economy in the short term, but also in the long term to be progressive with some of the newer technologies. The automotive industry is the single most important industry that contributes to the coffers of this nation. It also provides stable employment for thousands of people across the country, be it through the initial manufacturing and assembly process or through servicing the vehicles later on. We need to protect that stable economic pillar of Canada.

The two budget bills, Bill C-43, now amended through Bill C-48, are not perfect by any means. Certain things give me some concern. There are some things that are being done now but not to the degree that I would have wished. However, it is a better budget . I will be supporting it because the students at the university and the college in my riding will be receiving some type of an offset in terms of tuition. This is a very important part of our future progress.

The government has downloaded educational costs over the last 12 years to students. Not only does it affect them, but it affects the country because literally, students are leaving post-secondary institutions with tens of thousands of dollars of debt. They are also graduating later in life. Not having the opportunity to start their careers earlier leads to a couple of problems. When they leave university with such massive debts, they are not likely to purchase vehicles and other manufactured goods, and they are not able to purchase new homes or renovate old homes. Servicing such massive debts is a major burden for them.

It also hampers something else which I think is overlooked. They leave school later and therefore, they start their families later in life. For example, my wife and I wanted to service our debts first. We decided to wait a little longer before starting a family. Many delay having their families. The consequence sometimes is there are smaller families because people do not start them until later in life.

One thing which young people face today and which is a major shift and is really critical is that they have less pensionable earning years. They are servicing these massive debts in their late twenties and it is taking them until their mid-thirties to erase those debts. They are delaying purchasing things, whether it be a car, a house or other things they need because they are paying massive interest. They are delaying economic growth. Their pensionable earnings are condensed because of the current types of employment. Getting a pension is very difficult and having the same job over one's life cycle now is more difficult.

The colleges and universities in my community are setting up programs and services that will allow people to go back to school and upgrade their skills and abilities. Previously more support was given to individuals to get those skills and abilities through their employer or through some type of program training. This is now being put on the backs of students again. Having student relief in the budget is important. The last 12 years have been extremely negative in terms of our educational system by placing the entire burden on the backs of students.

People in my constituency are giving up on some career and educational opportunities because they do not want that type of burden placed upon them. As a result we are eliminating some of the new people we need to contribute to our economy.

We can apply the same thing to the automotive industry. Newer technologies are out there now and our party has been pushing for a green auto strategy, something that David Suzuki has supported. We have proposed a number of different positive initiatives that would get newer vehicles on the road.

The government has claimed that this budget is a green budget. It is certainly an improvement but I think more could be done. One of the things we could do to clean up our environment would be to get some of the older vehicles off the road. This would not only be good for the environment, but it would be good for the automotive industry itself.

Older vehicles, even though they could be compact cars, often have higher emissions than some of the newer vehicles on the road today. This is a result of the different standards that are in place now and the way they operate. Getting those newer vehicles on the road would improve our environment. We need to ensure that the government's commitment to the automotive industry is stronger.

This budget is a good step toward giving students some basic relief. Students delay purchasing vehicles because they are servicing a massive debt load. Constituents have told me they would like to purchase some things but cannot afford to because of the financial burden they are facing. That financial burden gets worse as people go to the next level of post-secondary education where they are looking at graduate degrees or looking at specific training because they already have their under-graduate degree.

In terms of continuing to expect people to have a higher degree of education and to have the skills and abilities required for the workforce, we were faced with the issue of putting the entire burden on them. I think this budget is the first step in the right direction.

I hope the government takes my message strongly that other industrialized nations have been reducing the cost of tuition. In fact, some countries actually do not have tuition fees, which is what we could do here in Canada. The issue is not always about how much money is actually put into a budget.

One of the things I would like to see changed is the policy relating to interest rates on student debt. Why is it that an individual can get a car loan or a couch loan at a lower rate of interest than a student loan? This predatory practice of having high interest rates on student debt is something that could be adjusted and it would be very worthwhile. It would generate that income back into the economy and allow people to pay off their debt quicker as opposed to the predatory basis of having them borrow money and the government making a profit off the backs of individuals who want to improve their educational and vocational stature.

I will be supporting this budget. It is the first step of many toward ensuring that our young people leave college and university with a lower debt load while at the same time having the skills and abilities necessary to make Canada a competitive nation for the upcoming challenges.

[An Act to Authorize the Minister of Finance to Make Certain Payments, May 10th, 2005]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to Bill C-48.

It is important to recognize that we have had a significant change in policy here because of what happened all within a matter of weeks. We were waiting for the Conservatives and the Bloc to bring down the government without a budget or decide whether they may or may not do so but we New Democrats did not wait to see what might happen.

Quite frankly, the Conservatives did not vote in the last budget and we did not want to sit around and wait for them to decide with the Bloc to bring down the government. That could have happened. We could have had a situation where we would be back in a vacuum. That is why we want to see the budget move really quickly through the House of Commons.

We have been very much at the forefront of the housing element and in calling for a program that would bring Canada more in line with other nations. In my area of Windsor, Ontario, there is a great housing need that has been pent up from the lack of action. This is the first time we will see something in modern times.

I would ask the minister to comment in terms of southern Ontario on what type of impact we expect to have on housing and how soon we can actually expect the projects to be unveiled. I know we are looking at a two year window of a commitment to move the projects along. I would ask him to see that the proper policies are in place so that we will not be delayed. People need housing right now, not just the homeless but also working Canadians. Working Canadians cannot find employment with sustainable incomes. I ask the minister how quickly we can expect to see some real results.