Mr. Speaker, in a week that has been dominated by the drama of a Senate scandal and the political noose that is tightening around the Prime Minister's neck, the Conservatives' latest budget implementation bill all but flew under the radar of Canadians' attention. Despite this, Bill C-4 is profoundly important to my constituents in Hamilton Mountain.
As with all budget implementation bills, I always look forward to them with some hope. I am always optimistic that the government will recognize the trajectory of economic indicators and play a positive role in mitigating potential negative impacts for hard-working Canadians. However, while hope springs eternal, my optimism vanishes when I crack the spine of the latest Conservative budget bill. Bill C-4, unfortunately, was no exception.
In fact, this latest Conservative effort was summed up perfectly by the Toronto Star's columnist, Chantal Hébert, who aptly described the content of the 308 page bill as amounting to “a handful of sometimes half-baked and always ill-defined promises”. It was indeed a huge disappointment.
We returned to Ottawa last week after a summer recess from parliamentary proceedings that was extended by yet another prorogation. All of us have had plenty of time to knock on doors in our communities and talk to the very people who are most directly impacted by the government's budgetary policies. I certainly did that this summer. What I heard was continuing anxiety about stagnating wages, job insecurity and high household debt. Those fears are well-founded; they are not based on paranoia.
Let us review some of the facts. Over the past 35 years, under successive Liberal and Conservative governments, incomes have increased for the top 20% of Canadians, but have decreased for everyone else. There is 80% of Canadians who have seen a drop in their income. Our economy has grown by 147%, yet the real income of the average Canadian family has dropped by 7%.
At the end of last year, Canadians' household debt reached 166% of disposable income. Canada's total household debt is now dangerously close to the peak levels prevailing in the United States just before the 2008 economic crisis. Indeed, the Bank of Canada is now referring to this debt as “the biggest domestic risk” to the Canadian economy. This is not only a burden on Canadian families, it is a threat to our entire economy. Yet, all the Conservatives have to say to the millions of families struggling to make ends meet is that they have to make do with less, and their children have to make do with less.
Conservatives have done nothing to reign in the high cost of living for families. They have done nothing to guarantee retirement security for seniors. They have watched a generation of middle-class jobs disappear, but they have done nothing to create the next generation of middle-class jobs. We can and must do better.
It is time to put the interests of Canadians first. The budget implementation bill could and should have been the perfect opportunity to do just that. It should have made life more affordable for hard-working families. It should have created quality well-paying jobs. It should have ensured secure retirements. It should have fostered opportunities for young Canadians. What we got instead was a continuation of the austerity agenda, which is premised on the mistaken belief that we can cut our way to prosperity.
As David Olive from the Toronto Star noted in March of this year:
...sucking demand, or cash, out of an economy with cutbacks to government spending--including essential services and infrastructure upgrading--merely adds to the jobless lines and cuts household incomes. That, in turn, drives up social-spending costs related to mounting unemployment.
It is not as if the finance minister were oblivious to that. He, himself, has repeatedly warned of the threat that household debt poses to the economy, yet neither his spring budget nor Bill C-4 does anything to offer help to Canadians.
In a scathing review of the Conservative record on the economy, Michael Harris said, in iPolitics:
Apart from pitching a free-trade deal with Antarctica, the PM has nothing to offer on the economy besides glowing self-appraisals, bad commercials on the public dime, and discount-rate foreign workers inflating his dismal job creation numbers.
He also said:
The PM and his government are not good managers. The nauseating repetition of the claim that the Tories know what they’re doing with the country’s finances will not make it so. They’ve pissed away more money than Madonna on a shopping spree—a billion on the G8--20 meetings that put a dent in the world’s Perrier supply and little else.
They just plain lost $3.2 billion and the guy in charge over at Treasury Board is still there [...]
They are such good fiscal managers that we now have the highest deficit in our history.
With that as the backdrop, let us have a look then at Bill C-4. Unfortunately, its provisions would do nothing to prove the previous statement wrong. Instead of acting on the economy and creating jobs for an agenda of growth, the Conservatives are doing the exact opposite. Instead of creating jobs, they are continuing their ideological attacks on Canadian workers. A full third of the bill is designed solely to undermine the rights of workers.
The bill would eliminate the basic right of workers to a healthy and safe workplace, and continues its attack on the federal public service. Allow me to say a few words about those outrageous changes.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that Bill C-4 would place the lives of workers in the federal sector at risk as a result of the cynical amendments that the Conservatives would make to the Canada Labour Code. The bill would attack the right to refuse dangerous work, a hard-fought right that offered basic protection to Canadian workers. By redefining and limiting the word “danger” and undermining the work and expertise of health and safety officers by giving many of their powers to the minister, the Conservatives are essentially saying that forcing workers to work in unsafe conditions is absolutely fine by them. No New Democrat will support that. No worker should ever be forced to work in unsafe conditions and I cannot believe that any member of the House would ever knowingly vote to put workers in harm's way.
I urge my Conservative colleagues to please do the right thing and respect the rights of workers. With lives literally hanging in the balance, I urge them to ignore the party whip and do what they must know is the right thing to do, which is to oppose these objectionable changes to Canada's labour laws.
In fact, let us delete all of the labour sections from the omnibus bill. The changes that Bill C-4 would make to the Public Service Labour Relations Act would eliminate binding arbitration as a method to resolve disputes in the public service. What could possibly be the motivation for that, other than to prompt labour unrest and conflict with civil servants. Again, if my Conservative colleagues do not believe in gratuitous attacks on the very people who serve both them as government and the Canadian public, then they must vote to oppose the bill.
I am sure all members heard the interview that the Conservatives' colleague, the MP for Parry Sound—Muskoka and President of the Treasury Board gave on CBC Radio in Ottawa yesterday. It must have given every Conservative backbencher pause. The minister was being asked about sections of the bill that arbitrarily designate what “essential services” are. This is important because, as members know, any public servants that are deemed “essential” are not allowed to go on strike. That is a very serious infringement of a fundamental right. In essence, the government is stripping workers of their full collective bargaining rights.
In the very tense exchange with the CBC reporter that I referenced above, the minister absolutely refused to spell out how the government would use this new power. The President of the Treasury Board said, “I am waiting for this legislation to pass and then details will come forward.” That is contempt of Parliament. How can we be asked to vote for something that is not defined?
In the interview, the minister suggested that border guards would be deemed “essential”, but he hedged on scientists. When he was asked whether he would clarify who would be deemed “essential” ahead of the upcoming contract negotiations with a large number of bargaining units over the coming year, the exchange got downright testy. He would not deny that he could change whom he deemed “essential” at any time, including in the middle of the bargaining process. I would commend the verbatim record of that exchange to all members of the House, and Bill Curry has helpfully reproduced it for us in The Globe and Mail.
To recap, we are being asked to approve a bill that fundamentally would change collective bargaining in our country, yet we are not allowed to know the details before we vote. Instead of being ashamed of that, the minister became downright hostile when interviewed on CBC Radio.
That attitude is all of a piece when it comes to the way the current Conservative government operates. Whether it is the Senate scandal or this budget bill, there is zero accountability. The Conservatives have utter disdain for Parliament, and by extension, for the Canadians who elect us to represent them here.
I am not worried about my voice being silenced; the government should be so lucky. However, I am profoundly worried about a government whose members believe they are above the law, a government whose members believe they can do whatever they want, a government whose members believe the end always justifies the means. Nothing could be further from the truth. Our number one priority has to be to address the real priorities of Canadians. That is what I was sent here to do, and that is the responsibility that my NDP colleagues and I take very seriously.
No, I cannot vote for this budget implementation bill, and I would encourage members on all sides of the House to oppose it with me. At best, we are being asked to adopt a pig in a poke. At worst, we are continuing down a road of stagnating wages, job insecurity and high household debt. Canadians deserve better. As parliamentarians, we can and must do better. As a member of the government in waiting, I can tell members that an NDP government will do better, starting in 2015.
