Daniel Blaikie

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it would be irresponsible to endorse a plan I have not seen. In the House we have been calling to see that plan. We keep being told that it is coming. However, until I see the details, I will not say one way or another whether it is something I would be willing to support.

I would urge the member or another member to stand up in the House today and give us the details of that plan so that we might better evaluate our support.

[Income Tax Act, March 7th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in debate on this bill today.

What has been most interesting about the debate on this bill to date has been the opportunity to drill down into an issue of contemporary Canadian political semantics. There was a time when we started to talk about the middle class that a lot of people felt this was sort of updating the language of standing up for working-class people and that when we talked about the middle class, we were talking about people who were going to work every day and working hard every day to bring home what they needed to be able to feed their family, pay for their home, and engage in some meaningful recreation after working hours as well.

That is where a lot of people felt the language of the campaign put forward by many parties, especially the governing party, was going when we were talking about the middle class. People felt the middle class meant people who were working hard every day to try to provide for their families.

We see an acknowledgement by the government sometimes that that is not quite what they mean by “middle class”. It has talked about the middle class and those working hard to join it. However, in fact, the way the government is defining the middle class through the tax cuts is to say, first of all, that they would only benefit people making over $45,000 a year, which already does not include 60% of Canadians going to work every day and trying to provide for their families.

Then the greatest benefit, of course, does not come at the bottom of that bracket, but at the top, so when we start talking about the people who are going to see the major benefit of this tax cut, it is plain to see that it is far more than 60% of Canadians who will not be seeing any real, substantial benefit from this tax break.

We have been talking about how we define the middle class. If we are trying to define in any sort of absolute way what that means vis-à-vis the majority of working Canadians, then I would say the government proposal really does fail to do anything for the middle class, understood as the large majority of Canadians who are going out and earning the median market wage for a lot of the work being done in Canada. The median salary of a Canadian worker is somewhere in the neighbourhood of $35,000 a year. That is not even close to qualifying for any benefit under the new Liberal tax plan.

We can define it aspirationally, as the Prime Minister sometimes does when he says it is the middle class and those working hard to join it. Maybe the implication is somehow that is more the focus or that we really need to capture all those people under the umbrella of “middle class”, even though they are living a life quite different life from those making $90,000, $100,000, $110,000, $120,000, who are the people in the middle of the bracket that the government has chosen to target.

If we are defining it aspirationally, then it is a mistake to say it is the class of people who need the most help. It is not. It is often implied by the government itself that the intention of the program is to provide help to those who need it the most, but if the middle class is going to be defined only aspirationally, then it would be a mistake to say that it is the class of people who need it most.

If it is defined absolutely, we are looking at the majority of working Canadians, and I would say that those are the people who do need help. If anyone needs extra help or extra resources in order to leverage more out of their work and create an acceptable living standard for their family, it is the people on the lower end of that scale, not the people on the higher end.

I find it a strange focus. I wish the government would be clear about the way in which it is going to go about defining the middle class and clarify whether it wants to speak directly to the majority of working Canadians or whether it is talking about some aspirational category. If that is the case, then the help is misplaced. We really want to be helping those who are trying to get into that category, and this tax package really has nothing to do with that.

I find that odd. We want to talk about how we provide real help to those who need it, those working families. If the Liberals are going to get away with defining “middle class” as being that upper end, a six-figure category, then we do need to rehabilitate the language related to “working class” in Canada, because the category of people we thought we were talking about when we were talking about the middle class clearly is not the category we are talking about if we listen to the government.

There is a whole group of people out there, 60% of the population, working for under $45,000. Those are the people on whom the efforts of government are best spent, both because there is a moral obligation to make sure that people who are putting in that work are getting a fair return for that work and are able to provide for their families and also because there is an economic argument.

It is the kind of economic argument that has been appropriated by the government in favour of those making around six figures. That argument really belongs with that 60% who are making $45,000 or less a year. The resources provided to them and the extra bit of spending money that could be provided to them, whether it is through tax relief or through a child care program program that would do a better job, would relieve the actual dollars that are coming out of the pocket just the same as taxes are.

Child care is not optional for most working families in Canada, so the money that they spend on child care is no more an option than the money that is taken off their cheque every week for taxes. Providing relief on the cost of child care is meaningful and would put money back into the pockets of families. The benefit of this strategy is that it also means we could do a better job of making sure those services are available where they are needed.

We know that the market has not always been doing that in the most efficient way and that there is room for intervention there. There are many ways to put money back into the pockets of those families who need it the most—not the ones in which one or two earners are making $100,000 a year, but the ones who are making a median salary. We could do that with a child care program.

We could do it by providing relief on EI, because even families who might have benefited from these tax cuts because they were making $80,000 to $120,000 somewhere in the country in the trades are now unable to find work. Because of the change in commodity prices, their jobs no longer exist, and those families need relief right now.

It is why I was quite pleased with our opposition day motion to get the government to move as quickly on EI as it saw fit to move on this tax break, the main benefit of which is going to go to people already making six figures. It will not help the people who need it now. If the government asked what its priorities are and how it can move quickly to help those who need it most and how it is going to put money in the pockets of people who will spend it right away because they have to and need to, this would not fit the bill.

I am shocked that this is what we are debating and that it took an NDP opposition day motion to get urgent debate on EI reform in the House. We will be voting on that later today, and I would be pleased to see colleagues across the way stand in favour of that motion. It is much needed, and I would be remiss if I did not mention it, because the vote is today.

In the spirit of being constructive, we also put forward a different tax proposal. Investing in a national child care strategy is a better way to go and would accomplish a lot of what the Liberal government said it wants to accomplish through tax relief. We said, “Fine; the Liberals ran on a platform of tax cuts that are supposed to help the middle class, so let us play ball. Why do we not give a proposal that is in spirit the same thing, but would actually do a better job of realizing the objectives the Liberals set out in the campaign for tax relief?”

We proposed a reduction on the first bracket that would actually cover that 60% of Canadians earning below $45,000 a year. It is why we are looking to move the bill on to the committee stage to have it examined. I hope members opposite will see that as an opportunity to improve a plan that has misfired because it not helping those who need the help and is not helping those that the government in the election campaign implied it was going to be helping with tax relief.

We are looking to be constructive in the House. We think we have found a way to help the new government help itself. It is a busy time. There is a rush to get certain things through, and we hope that our reflections may assist the government in doing a better job of what it said it would do. We are voting in favour of the bill at second reading to get it to committee and have that full debate.

[Business of Supply, February 25th, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I come from the building trades, and many of the people who are out of work across the country right now are tradespeople. It is frustrating for them, having paid a lot into the EI system, to now not be able to access those benefits when they need them. Their frustration increases in proportion to the amounts that they learn were taken out of the EI fund by successive Liberal and Conservative governments to use for other purposes, often corporate tax breaks, in fact.

The member for Kenora said there were aspects of the motion that he thought were unreasonable. We will have to agree to disagree on those. However, he certainly cannot think that the aspect of the motion is unreasonable that calls on the government to protect the EI fund from the whims of government dipping into it, taking money out of it, and using it for corporate tax cuts and other purposes. I would like him to stand up and let us know that he believes that is reasonable, and he will be calling on his government to ensure the EI fund is protected.

[Canada's Contribution to the Effort to Combat ISIL, February 23rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of the member's speech he referenced his Mennonite heritage. I come from Manitoba where there are many Mennonites, many of whom came to exercise their right that Canada afforded them to conscientious objection. During the campaign, a number of Mennonites in my riding who had always voted Conservative told me that the previous government's policy on Syrian refugees was a turning point for them, as many of their families had come to Canada as refugees.

Does the hon. member share those feelings and if so, is there not an implicit criticism of the bombing campaign which is contributing to the massive outflow of Syrian refugees?

[Canada's Contribution to the Effort to Combat ISIL, February 23rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, unfortunately, my further thoughts on that are that this is part of an emerging pattern. We saw a number of places where the Liberals were making certain professions during the campaign that were designed to tap into a sense of malaise with Canadians about how the previous government was behaving and policies it had undertaken. To be sure, some of those have been acted on.

We have been happy to see the reinstitution of the long-form census, for instance. I was pleased to stand and speak in favour of Bill C-4.

However, on some other things, like EI reform, making a commitment to expand the CPP, those were commitments that the Liberals made to capture a spirit of reform, a different kind of reform, a left-wing reform. I do not want members beside me to get too excited as I talk about reform.

We now see that they are all too slow to act. I hope that does not mean that they will not act at all.

[Canada's Contribution to the Effort to Combat ISIL, February 23rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am aware that the government is talking about train and assist. I am aware that the government has undertaken similar types of measures in the past. When I was talking about the types of missions that did not ultimately yield the outcomes we had hoped for, that was partly what I had had in mind.

That does not change the fact that when the government performs those kinds of roles, it is more likely to be engaging in combat. That is partly why we have been up in question period. We would like the plan to change. However, we are not telling the government to change the plan, just to confess to what it actually is, what parts of that train and assist really are.

Carpenters cannot be trained just in a classroom, a trainer has to go out on a job site with them to teach them to do the job. When the government is talking about train and assist, it is talking about sending Canadian men and women out into the field, and that means it will be more likely they will be engaged in combat. In fact, it is more likely than for some of our allies who are continuing with an air campaign.

What we are asking, in the most minimal sense, is for some recognition from hon. members on that side of the House. We want them to own up to the fact that this means that Canada is actually continuing in a combat role, granted in a train and assist capacity.

I do hear what the hon. member is saying. I would just like to hear him say what is being left out.

[Canada's Contribution to the Effort to Combat ISIL, February 23rd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today in opposition not just to the amendment but also the main motion. I have to start by expressing some disappointment, frankly, with the government's position.

Throughout the campaign, there was a clear and deliberate effort by the Liberals to tap into what was a very widespread feeling among Canadians that they did not support the kind of military action being taken in Syria and wanted a government that would take a different approach. A lot of the language the Liberals used in the campaign, I dare say, such as the commitment to withdraw our CF-18s, was meant to tap in to that sense of dissatisfaction with what was going on.

Then, lo and behold, when the Liberals became government, they have stuck to the letter of the commitment. It is not only the letter of the commitment to withdraw the CF-18s that I would say Canadians were voting for when they thought they were voting for change. They were also voting for what they thought that represented, what that commitment was designed to represent, which was a different approach from the government with respect to this mission.

Instead, what we hear from the government in the House is how it is just as committed as the previous government was to that mission, but it is going to do it and live it out in a different way, a way that it refuses to call a combat mission. However, from what Liberals have said in the House and the plan they have laid out, to the extent that they have, we know that it is going to involve putting Canadian personnel on the front lines more than before. It is going to increase the likelihood of engaging the enemy. I would say that really does not at all represent the kind of commitment that the Liberals were representing to Canadians during the election campaign.

It is disappointing to see how quickly that changed. For Canadians who were paying attention, they, too, are disappointed, because they really do not feel like the government is living up to the spirit that it presented on this issue or, I would say, perhaps in general, but that is for another debate.

We have heard different things in the House. We hear the Liberals saying even now that supporting the mission is not just about the CF-18 commitment and then they say all the ways they are going to support the mission. In the election campaign they said they were withdrawing the CF-18s. Canadians were supposed to know that was code for not supporting the mission. It is frustrating to watch the government trying to have its cake and eat it too. On issues like this, we owe it to Canadians to take a clear stance, but the Liberals, so far, are doing a fine job of practising the art of fence-sitting. I am just not sure that is the kind of approach that Canadians want to see on this.

Some in the House think that means recommitting to the CF-18s; New Democrats do not. We think it means honouring the spirit of the Liberals' election commitment to withdraw the CF-18s and to actually withdraw them from the mission and look at other things. Sometimes the hardest questions, when we talk about trying to undermine forces of global terrorism, are the ones that cause us to look in the mirror, to the extent that funds for organizations like ISIS are passing through Canadian hands, if they are, to the extent that Canadian arms producers are selling weapons directly to countries or parties, which end up being part of the global terrorist movement. Those are some of the tough questions, because they actually ask us to say no to our friends, to restrict our own behaviour that, in some cases, benefits some Canadians.

Once again, when we look at the Liberals on this issue, we see that kind of fence-sitting happening again. When New Democrats have asked questions in the House about the sale of arms and military goods to Saudi Arabia, we are met by a government that says it agrees with us that this is not good, but it is going ahead anyway, because that was done by some other government and it is too bad. I think Liberals would tell us, and certainly on other files they tell us, that they were elected to undo some of the most egregious things that the last government did and then, suddenly, on an issue like this, their hands are tied.

It is hard to buy and hard to accept. I think this is one of the things that Canada could be doing. It is concrete, and it would be far more effective.

We now have a long recent history of these kinds of military interventions in that region of the world, which, I think it is fair to say, have not produced the kinds of results that those who initiated them, or even those who did not initiate them, would have liked to have seen. They did not bring peace and prosperity to the region. They have not made people in North America or other parts of the world feel more safe and secure. Things have gotten worse.

The answer, typically, from some has been to say that we just need to ramp up our efforts and do more of what has not been working, instead of looking at some of those tough questions about arms traffic that either originates in or passes through Canada and what we could be doing in those instances. That is where I would like to see the focus. On this side of the House, we have been asking to see more focus on that, because we do believe in doing something about the threat. We would like to see that threat neutralized.

We just cannot be blind to recent history, which has shown that these kinds of undertakings by the U.S. government, and not NATO and not the UN, have not been in the tradition of peacekeeping. It is this tradition that the Liberals in their new government have been trying to invoke, saying that Canada is back and we are getting back into the old traditions. The old tradition of peacekeeping would have seen us participating in UN missions. This is not a multilateral mission, and it is not sanctioned by the international alliances and groups that we have traditionally undertaken these kinds of missions with.

I am disappointed in that. I do not think that de-emphasizing a military role, or even leaving a military role altogether, means not being able to do things. Therefore, I think it is the false dichotomy that we need to reject in this debate, and which I stand here to reject. There are many things we can do in terms of cutting the legs out from under terrorist organizations that do not involve the kinds of ultimately ineffective military interventions that we have seen; ineffective in the sense of not realizing the goals that they purport to realize.

Military intervention is a particular kind of tool. Like any tool, one has to know what job it is one wants to do and what the finished product would look like. It is why, when we use the military, we need to give a clear definition of what the mission is. We need to give a clear definition of what the end goal is and what completion looks like. We need to know how it is that we are going to extract ourselves from it once the goal has been realized. If we cannot do that, then it is a real mistake.

We have seen it before where countries, and in some cases even Canada, get involved in long protracted military missions where people lose their lives. At the end of the day, it is a messy exit, because there is no clear victory, because it was never clear going in what a clear victory would be. It pains me to sit on this side of the House and see our new government, having promised change, engaging in that same behaviour.

As I said, there were many people during the election who, on this issue, saw the Liberals and the NDP as of a piece, because the Liberals wanted to stop the CF-18 campaign, as did we. Canadians took it to mean that the Liberals meant what we meant, which is that this kind of military mission was not producing the results that its advocates said they wanted and said would happen.

Therefore, we need to do other things. We need to look at ourselves, and the way that these organizations are financing themselves. We need to look at the way these organizations are getting the arms they are using in the region.

Even though those are harder conversations to have, including the conversation that the Liberal government is refusing to have right now when we ask questions about the Saudi arms deal, they are the kinds of things that I think could be more effective. They may help us to actually realize the goals for which we have now had many years of military intervention with many lives lost. Therefore, I would urge the Liberals to take that approach rather than the one represented in the motion before us.

[Canada Labour Code, February 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I find it interesting that the member would say that this one organization would be exempt.

In fact, by the Conservative argument, it is in part because there is a tax write-off on the dues, that unions are being publicly funded essentially and that is why they need to disclose this information. We provide tax write-offs to all sorts of businesses, and they are not required to disclose any purchases over $5,000. To to say that somehow unions are getting special treatment by not having to disclose expenses over $5,000 strikes me as kind of rich, frankly.

There are good reasons why, for instance, a union may not want to divulge the contents of a strike fund. If they want to be the hard-nosed economic people the Conservatives often claim they are, when there is a labour dispute and if employers knew they only had to wait three months for that strike fund to run out versus having to wait six months to a year, they could plan and prepare to ride that out. That would not be fair to the workers who are withholding their labour in order to get a fair deal for the work they do.

It makes all kinds of sense, just in the way I am sure the hon. member would be up, red-faced, on his feet, if we suggested that private companies ought to disclose any purchase over $5,000.

[Canada Labour Code, February 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I can assure the member that in my union and in any one I have ever heard of, the leadership of the union is elected by secret ballot.

We hear about this alleged disconnect between the executive and the members, and certainly in any democratic institution there can be disconnect between those elected and the people who elect them. That might well have happened in some governments. I am not going to deny that it can happen from time to time. That can happen between shareholders and the board of a corporation. It can happen in all sorts of democratic contexts.

It is important not to lose sight of the fact that in that context, just as in the general context, members have recourse. If they do not like what they see in their newsletter, they can get involved with their union. They can elect a different union executive. That is the recourse that we have.

At any time when members want to ask about how that money is being spent, they can ask that question and have access to that information.

When people belong to a democratic organization there is no substitute to being involved. This is not getting rid of secret ballots in unions. In fact it is not even necessarily getting rid of votes, but is just creating an option not to have one to avoid what we know are sometimes abuses by employers of employees.

[Canada Labour Code, February 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise today to speak to Bill C-4. As a member who was elected to the House right off the job site and a proud member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, I am very pleased to be speaking to this legislation.

We have heard a lot in the debate. The hon. member was just talking about the executive and the membership. I come from a union where the rank and file were quite upset with Bill C-377 and Bill C-525. They wanted to see them go. They go to their monthly meetings and discuss what kind of spending is going to happen at the executive level, right down to approving the credit card bill, on a monthly basis, of the people who work in the office. I do not think there is any doubt in the minds of most members of my union that they have the opportunity, not just to get the information about how their local union is spending money, but also to have a say in open meetings.

There is a fabricated argument for transparency. For those who need the transparency because it is their dues money being spent, they have access to that information and have had access to that information. In that sense, the bill was a solution looking for a problem.

The executive in my union know well that the power they have when it comes to working with industry, finding jobs for members and making sure that members get fair pay and good benefits for the work they do, does not come from any particular piece of legislation. Obviously, like any other good institution, we need enabling legislation, not persecuting legislation, as I would say Bill C-377 and C-525 are. The power of the executive of my union comes from the membership. It comes from the good work that we do every day. It comes from the quality product that we produce on site. It comes from the extra training that our union provides to our members so that we are out there being the best in the industry. That is why our contractors, like the electrical contractors of Manitoba, have worked quite collaboratively with my local. They know that our union is providing added value to the projects they do, and frankly that we are making them more money. That is what we hear in the dialogue with our contractors.

I am in a tight spot, because of course I do not want to be unparliamentary. I do not want to attribute ulterior motives to any particular party. However, the level of ignorance that one would have to attribute to people making some of the arguments I have heard in the Chamber today, such as ignorance about the way that unions work, about the relationship in the building trades between the unions and contractors, verges on unparliamentary. Therefore, I am feeling in a bit of a tight spot.

I do not want to do any of that, so perhaps I will talk instead about the degree and extent to which the legislation has to be seen not just on its own. If we consider it on its own, then some of the red herrings we have heard today may be effective. However, we need to consider it in the context of a government program that brought in Bill C-377, Bill C-525 and Bill C-59. When railroad workers were going into negotiations with their employer and Canada Post workers were going into negotiations with their employer, they were threatened. Sometimes before they even had the strike vote, they were threatened that they would be legislated back to work.

We need to consider it in the context of a government, some of whose members were making comments such as we heard again today from members from the Conservative Party, criticizing the Rand formula and mandatory union dues. We need to consider it in the context of a government that limited access to EI so that workers were more afraid of challenging their employer, because in the case of a layoff they would not be able to pay their mortgage and feed their families. We need to consider it in the context of a government that refused to talk to the provinces when they asked to increase the Canada pension plan, so that employees who were ready to retire could not leave the workforce, putting downward pressure on wages and blocking opportunities for young people to be promoted within their companies. When we consider it in that context, it is impossible to say that those bills were not meant as an anti-union program. It had very little to do with anything that was coming from the rank and file of labour unions, and everything to do with a government that was working hand in hand with employers to put downward pressure on the working conditions and wages of Canadian workers.

That is part of why these bills were so shameful. It is not just for the content of the bill; we have heard a lot about what was wrong with the content of the bills. They were part of a deliberate and sustained program to make life harder for Canadian workers so that corporations that were already, over that timeframe, making record profits could add a little more to their margins. In a time when corporations were seeing their tax rate go from 28% to 15%, they could squeeze a little bit more out of their workers.

When the economy is working well, we have labour peace. We have labour peace, not when employees are being held under the thumb of their employers, but when they are free to negotiate collectively with their employers and work for fair wages and fair benefits. We know that the union movement, over time and today, contributed to that and contributes to that. We know by the behaviour of many employers, and I dare say even some governments, that if we did not continue to have a strong labour movement in Canada, we would soon lose those gains that were hard fought and hard won over the last 100 or 150 years. That is why we on these benches are concerned to see a legislative environment that allows the union movement to thrive.

We hear sometimes that times were tough and we may have needed some unions to help with workplace conditions, but by and large really, prosperity just spontaneously came out of the industrial revolution. Forgotten in that account is that the organization of workers went hand in hand with that, and it was not until workers were organized that those gains actually came.

I think we need to be careful that we not give credit for the accomplishments of the labour movement to employers that would still be, and we know that they would still be, treating their workers in the way that they treated them in the 19th century. In parts of the world, the very same employers, operating in Canada in some cases, are treating their workers in other parts of the world as if it was the 19th century.

We would have to be very naive indeed to believe that, if there was not the legislative framework and if there was not the strong labour movement that we have had in Canada here, those same employers would not get the idea that maybe they could treat their Canadian workers that way too. I think we need to be very careful that we not attribute the good conditions and the good wages that some Canadian workers continue to enjoy to the benevolence of their employer, but acknowledge that those were gained hard fought and hard won.

I would say that in their more enlightened moments, some employers, like some of the employers that I am glad we have in the electrical industry in Manitoba, know that it has been overall good for them. It has created a customer base. Employees who have disposable incomes can afford their homes and are not worried about their families. They have child care. We can get into all the issues, but largely workers, well paid, well fed, and well housed are more productive, and that is good for Canadian employers.

Again, I think it speaks to the shame of the previous government that it would have sought unsolicited, except maybe by some employers, but certainly not by a groundswell of Canadian workers, to disrupt that partnership that had developed. This is not always easy. We had arrived at a place in Canada where at least some workers, and usually unionized workers, were getting a fair return on the work they did and that employers were benefiting from having those productive workers.

I do not think it is the place of a government to go and intentionally disrupt that. We can talk about what is in the particular context of those bills. I do not think it is very good, but certainly when we look at the larger context, that seems to be the case. It is one of the reasons I ran. I did not think we could tolerate having a government that bent on disrupting that relationship between the labour movement and employers and making sure that workers got their fair share. It is why I can hardly wait to stand in favour of the bill.