Cheryl Hardcastle

[Business of Supply, February 4th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, when I saw that the Conservatives were tabling this particular motion on their opposition day, part of me wanted to laugh and the other part struggled to fight off a deep frustration and a deep despair. Sure, the motion is factually correct and absolutely we support and salute the work of the officials of the Department of Finance, which the motion references. Yet there is a massive elephant in the room, and that is that this motion is designed to ignore the actual economic record. Yes, that elephant is the actual economic record of the former Conservative government. In fact, this motion seems designed to deflect attention away from the brutal fact that our country is only now emerging from one of the most grievous eras of economic mismanagement that we have ever had the misfortune to endure. The Conservatives like to present themselves as competent economic managers, but honestly, this was always more a public relations effort than fact. They seem to believe that if they just repeat this falsehood enough, people will believe it.

Let us talk about this record. According to analysis by economists Jordan Brennan and Jim Stanford, published last September—one that applied standard measures such as job creation, unemployment, GDP growth, productivity, personal incomes, debt, and more—the previous Conservative prime minister ranked or tied for last among all post-war prime ministers. He ranked or tied at second-last in another six cases. Across all 16 of the indicators the study used, the government's average ranking was the worst of any post-war administration—not even close to the second-worst, another Conservative, Brian Mulroney.

In a market economy, two of the most strategic components of spending are business spending and exports. The Conservatives' abysmal failure to garner more business investment within Canada and to increase exports has been especially damaging. Conservatives promised that expensive corporate tax cuts costing $15 billion per year would boost investment, and that signing more free trade deals would do the same for exports, but neither has worked, as we all know. Canadian corporations have not used the money saved by the tax cuts to create jobs or expand their infrastructure; they sat on it. Recent figures from Statistics Canada show corporate Canada's pile of dead money now hovers at $680 billion.

Exports hardly grew at all under the former prime minister—they were the slowest in post-war history—and business investment was stagnant and is now declining.

Government spending cuts, enforced in earnest after the Conservatives won their majority in 2011, only deepened our macroeconomic pit of despair. As noted by economists Scott Clark and Peter DeVries, when the Conservatives first formed government in 2006-2007, they inherited a surplus of $13.8 billion and within two years' time this became a deficit of $5.8 billion. After that point, the Conservatives were in deficit each and every year. If this is competent economic management, I shudder to think how Canadians would live under their conception of incompetence.

Economic growth has declined in every year since 2010 and averaged only 1.7% per year. In the previous nine years, economic growth averaged 3.4% per year. In 2014, only 120,000 new jobs were created, less than in 2013. Now these same people stand before us today, hoping that we will forget about all of this and just focus on a tiny moment in time when there was a tiny surplus that the Conservatives managed to obtain during their final weeks in power. Here we must ask ourselves how this surplus was achieved. It was by closing Veterans Affairs offices and by eliminating staff at Service Canada and indeed across every branch of the federal government responsible for delivering vital services to Canadians. The former government even used a flimsy legal technicality to deny claims of thousands of residential school victims.

It also turns out that federal departments and agencies helped out by not spending an estimated $8.7 billion for different programs that had been requested and often publicly announced by the government and approved by Parliament, the so-called lapsed funding.

Lastly, the surplus was achieved through the sale of General Motors in April-May of 2015, and the NDP opposed this sale. It was essentially the sale of these shares, an estimated $3.5 billion, that enabled the Conservative government to balance its pre-election budget. The main unions criticized this action, calling it short-term political gain for the next federal election—precisely. Therefore, the motion being debated today creates a false debate and is really a missed opportunity to talk about the real issues facing Canadians in these uncertain times. It is a futile effort to misrepresent the record of the former government by its remaining representatives in the House.

Canadians are not buying it. They know what is up and they know that this motion is an opposition day motion, with the emphasis on opposition. Meanwhile, there are families, workers, and low-income Canadians who are struggling to make ends meet. Conservatives are welcoming the numbers in this report, while Canadians continue to suffer the consequences of Conservative mismanagement.

Low-income Canadians, seniors, veterans, persons with disabilities, and those most vulnerable in our society face long wait times for their benefits, long wait times to have problems with their payments addressed or appealed, and across the board, the departments serving them have been cut to the bone by the former government. However, we are not supposed to think about our grandmothers or the elderly waiting for pension payments. We are supposed to focus on the surplus.

Accordingly, this motion is a missed opportunity to discuss real issues facing Canadians. We cannot contradict this motion. It is based on facts, however cherry-picked, and instead of wasting time squabbling over partisan numbers, my question is why the Conservatives and the Liberals are not discussing the issues that are actually affecting Canadians.

The NDP is the only progressive party that is actually working on behalf of workers and low-income Canadians. It proposed a number of concrete measures, including the national child benefit supplement, the guaranteed income supplement, $15-a-day child care for all Canadian families, and restoring the labour-sponsored tax credit. Instead of using their opposition day motion to try to rewrite economic and political history, I encourage the Conservatives to consider using such opportunities as a means to advance the real needs and interests of all Canadians.

[International Trade, February 4th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is that the TPP is a threat to our economy, and Windsor—Tecumseh and Essex County have already suffered hard blows to the auto sector. We know. Do not dismiss our concerns. We need meaningful consultation. The auto sector supports more than 120,000 good jobs in our province. However, the trade minister, back in 2008, wanted to let the big three go bankrupt, and now the trade minister signed a bad deal that puts our auto jobs at risk again—

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank the hon. member for his inspiring speech. I too want to ask a question regarding his union background and about his riding in particular. I would love to hear some of the positive impacts he has observed with pay equity, having experienced that in his work environment in the past. If we could hear some of the pros, I think it would be beneficial at this point in the day.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, unfortunately the damaging legislation that had been passed, which undermined the progress of the work of Status of Women Canada, was not passed unanimously. I do not know if this has merit in this case to stall us from working on this real milestone achievement that would help to negate the damage that has been done. We should be further ahead by now.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, yes, absolutely. I mentioned a regulatory environment. Once we normalize, once we reach certain milestones, there are other sectors that can and will emulate that. They do look to government for leadership.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, at this point I feel overwhelmed by how we are wallowing in the past mostly because of the fact that it can be embarrassing or uncomfortable for some people who have tried to champion the cause. For us to move forward though we have to acknowledge past practice.

The member should look at the motion through the lens of Status of Women Canada in trying to expedite and acknowledge as we move forward the truth and reconciliation to how women are being treated in the workforce and our past practices having to be nullified. That would help in the context of how she could move forward to support this motion.

It is important for us to have an independent committee work on pay equity. The committee would look at the legislative environment in a way that would help us expedite pay equity as quickly as possible. Other barriers against women would gradually crumble because we would have taken care of the legislated environment. It is important for us to put forth the history of that legislated environment. It is not the same thing as talking about goals and policy that have been undermined. This is a regulated environment.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I rise today on an issue that has long been near and dear to my heart, that being equity.

As the proud daughter of a hard-working mother and hard-working grandmothers, and as the proud mother of three daughters who are entirely capable, I burn with righteous indignation when I think of the value of the work they have done and have the potential of doing and realize that we have allowed ourselves to be skewered and talked into a legislated environment that today makes it acceptable to pay a woman less for equal work. That is why I am honoured to be part of the New Democrat caucus and to speak on behalf of our opposition day motion.

The motion calls on the government to recognize pay equity as a right; to finally implement the recommendations of the 2004 pay equity task force report; to restore the right to pay equity in the public service, which was eliminated in 2009; to appoint a special committee to conduct hearings on pay equity and to propose proactive pay equity legislation, which is the icing on the cake for me to expedite such an important issue.

It blows my mind that in the year 2016 we are actually talking about it. I wish it were a decade ago and I could be sharing in anticipation with my younger daughters the kind of future held out for them as they entered their era of political activism as young women.

Why pay equity? To paraphrase the Prime Minister, which we have done often here today, it is 2016 and women make nearly a quarter less than men on the dollar. Put simply, pay equity is a fundamental human right, the principle of equal pay for equal work.

In her 2012 paper, “A Living Wage As a Human Right”, Mary Cornish points out that by failing to achieve pay equity, Canada is in violation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and related United Nations conventions, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, and the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The goal of pay equity is to stop discrimination related to the historic undervaluation of work traditionally performed by women, or “women's work” as they say. Let us be clear that pay inequity is a form of discrimination and the gender wage gap is usually greater for aboriginal women, women with disabilities, racialized, and immigrant women. The more categories a woman occupies, the greater her financial disparity.

A good example of this can be taken from the area where I live in Windsor Essex County, where my riding, Windsor—Tecumseh, is located. Forty-one point eight per cent of female-led, lone parent families live in poverty, according to Pathway to Potential, Windsor's poverty reduction strategy. Here, pay equity is but a symptom of larger structural inequities, with women being hit the hardest, be they from a minority community, or aboriginal, or a person with disabilities, or merely single.

How did we get here? How did it happen that women came to earn 77¢ on the dollar of what a man makes? Lower rates of pay do not just emerge ex nihilo out of nothing. There are broad historical and cultural factors at play.

An interesting report from Status of Women Canada last year detailed some of these factors. These include a stubbornly consistent rate of violence against women in Canada despite dropping rates of violence against men; a greater vulnerability of aboriginal women to violence than non-aboriginal women; increasing poverty rates of single moms and senior women; and following from the above, a 20% income gap between men and women. This is two percentage points higher than the gap that exists in other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, OECD, countries. While this report notes that Canadian women are better educated and are entering the workforce in greater numbers than men, the latter are still paid over 20% more than their female colleagues. This pay gap puts Canada fourth from the bottom of 34 OECD countries, with only South Korea, Japan, and Germany scoring worse.

What can we do? How can we fix the problem? According to a recent OECD report, “Achieving stronger growth by promoting a more gender-balanced economy”, there are certain enabling conditions that are needed to create an environment where gender equality and then pay equity are possible. These enabling conditions turn out to be concerns that New Democrats have been fighting for generations. These conditions are maternal health measures such as prenatal, childbirth, post-natal, and reproductive health services.

In Canada, women on average do 1.5 hours more unpaid work a day than men do, and the affordability and quality of child care overall in Canada is still an issue forcing many women to drop out of the labour market or reduce their working hours during their child-rearing years.

Gender equality in future labour force participation crucially involves policies enhancing gender equality in education, such as ensuring that boys and girls have equal access to good-quality education, ensuring equal rights and opportunities for them to successfully complete schooling, and helping students make informed choices about their field of study and career path.

I want to salute Unifor and Windsor's Women's Enterprise Skills Training for promoting awareness and mentorship. Members might check out the independent video Because It's 2016 and see why this video is getting well-deserved accolades for the awareness and mentorship of young women in skilled trades.

To this I would add that it is about having legislation, laws with real teeth that set out more than mere voluntary goals that feel and look good and that explode well in public attention during campaigns. Those kinds of fireworks disappoint and frustrate us when we are here in the House of Commons and hear the rhetoric first. Let us get some legislation with teeth, and having an independent committee is the most expeditious way for us to take that dedication seriously and do the work that really needs to be done.

Last, pay equity is not just about being the right and moral thing to do, although this alone should be cause enough to desire it. I look across the aisle at our other parties and I know that each and every member has a sister, a mother, or a daughter, and finds it unacceptable that females should be paid less than males for doing equal-value work.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, January 27th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I want to extend my congratulations to the hon. member for holding the deanship in this chamber.

I wanted to share a statistic about seniors, since he shared with us that it is our duty to defend our constituents and made a comment about seniors and the GIS. I would like to share a statistic.

In my riding of Windsor—Tecumseh, 35% of seniors have an income of $20,000 or less. I would like to know if the hon. member has any insight about the demographics in his riding, and if he thinks the throne speech adequately addresses those very serious statistics.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, January 27th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I agree that we need to look at a more systematic approach for seniors. Our platform makes a lot of sense in terms of the dominos that have to fall. For income security for seniors, the Liberals campaigned on a platform to enhance CPP. I mentioned before the social determinants of health. We have so many seniors right now who are deciding what bill to pay and what medication to pay for, so it also includes a prescription drug plan.

We need to maximize our resources. Our belief is that to maximize our resources, we have to access them, for instance, the TFSA cuts. Using resources in a smart way for seniors would create a savings down the road. When it comes to prescription a drug plan, there is the saving we have in the bulk costs. There is also in the quality of life for people. The longer people are at home and independent not only improves their quality of life, but our system can flourish and help people who really need it.

These supports have to be put in place. I believe it starts with a national pension reform that addresses income security for seniors.

[Resumption of debate on Address in Reply, January 27th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's question helps me reiterate how important it is that we commit to a health accord. We cannot make any long-term plans until we have that commitment and the links to our social strategies that affect our health. We all know this. We hear it called the social determinants of health.

We cannot work on these long-term strategies and work meaningfully with our partners at the municipal and provincial levels if we do not have that commitment at the national level. That is the very simple, first, significant step of recommitting to health care at the national level. National leadership is imperative if we are to address social determinants of health.