House of Commons photoLost his last election, in 2011, with 35% of the vote.
Manufacturing and Forestry Industries November 29th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the Economic Development Agency of Canada, the agency I oversee, helps companies become more innovative and more competitive. We have put in place six new tools especially designed to help companies that wish to grow, expand or start up.
Here is the bottom line: in 18 months, 680 projects for the manufacturing sector in Quebec received assistance, resulting in 11,240 jobs maintained and 5,363 jobs created.
Manufacturing and Forestry Industries November 29th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, in the throne speech, we mentioned that the forestry and manufacturing sectors as well as the tourism sector would be priorities for our government. As mentioned earlier, first of all we have put in place measures and new tools to foster the economic development of Quebec regions, SMEs and diversification. In addition, we are working on the forestry file.
Questions on the Order Paper November 29th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the response is as follows:
a) It is standard practice in developing labour policy to seek the consensus of business and labour groups through consultations. While some consultations have occurred, the process is not complete. Stakeholders have asked for refinement, precision and clarification of proposals before committing themselves.
b) Since the release of the report in October 2006, both the Minister of Labour and departmental officials have heard the views of a broad range of individuals and groups.
Departmental officials have met individually with the following employer organizations: Federally Regulated Employers — Transportation and Communications (FETCO), the Canadian Trucking Alliance, the Canadian Bankers’ Association, Conseil du patronat du Québec, Canadian Chamber of Commerce, the Association of Canadian Search, Employment and Staffing Services, and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. Officials also met numerous union and community-based organizations, namely, the Canadian Labour Congress, the United Food and Commercial Workers Union Canada, Teamsters Canada, Canadian Auto Workers, Confédération des syndicats nationaux, Grain Services Union, and the Workers Action Centre/Parkdale Legal Aid Clinic. Departmental officials also organized a roundtable in Winnipeg in December 2006, with participants from the Canadian Professional Drivers Association, Workers Organizing Resources Centre, Progress Rail, Sabourin Transport, Canwest Global, and the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.
In January 2007, the Minister of Labour made a four-city tour. In Montréal, he met the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, Fédération canadienne des entreprises indépendantes, and Au bas de I’échelle. In Toronto and Vancouver, the minister participated in breakfast meetings which attracted some 25 to 50 employer representatives each. As well, in Toronto, the minister met the Canadian Bankers’ Association and Teamsters Canada. In Vancouver, the minister also met the British Columbia Maritime Employers Association and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union. In Calgary, he met the Canadian Industrial Relations Association, the Institute for Advanced Policy Research, the Calgary Chamber of Commerce, and Westjet.
b) i) Because of the report’s length and complexity, 192 recommendations, many stakeholders did not focus on details, preferring instead to make comments of a general nature.
There was a high degree of consensus in support of a new compliance strategy. All stakeholders favoured more education and information and they recognized the need to get tough with repeat offenders. In July 2007, the minister spoke at the annual conference of the Association of Labour Relations Agencies, where he announced that the labour program had begun to hire and train more inspectors to strengthen compliance through handling workplace complaints so that issues are dealt with in a timely manner and to ensure that Canadians can count on stronger enforcement, safer working conditions, and better labour relations. The minister reiterated that the labour program is investing in education, sharing best practices, providing dispute-resolution expertise, and conducting audits and inspections targeted to high risk workplaces and industries.
The report may be divided into three major areas: “flexicurity”, sector-specific legislation and minimum wage. Regarding flexicurity, we heard that unions favour those aspects of the report that supported security, but they did not like measures which promoted flexibility. Employers took the opposite view, supporting flexibility and resisting proposals for more security. Both employers and unions found ideas surrounding sector councils and sector-specific legislation quite attractive, but they identified a variety of challenges to making this approach more practical. Finally, there are huge differences between employers and unions regarding the minimum wage. Unions support a minimum wage that is based on a poverty measure, such as the low-income cutoff, and which is adjusted annually in line with increases in the cost of living. Employers support the status quo where the federal minimum wage reflects the current minimum wage established by each province and territory.
b) ii) Before committing themselves, stakeholders have asked for the refinement, precision and clarification of proposals. The government is doing this, but because many of the recommendations are detailed and complex, the process is time consuming. The government will continue to work closely with stakeholders.
c) It is standard practice in developing labour policy to seek the consensus of business and labour groups through consultations. The stakeholders have already expressed a high degree of consensus in support of a strengthened compliance policy featuring additional education and awareness activities and more robust enforcement. The government has started to implement part of this through reorganization placing a greater focus on compliance and by hiring additional inspectors. More work is required for consensus to emerge in other areas.
d) We are strengthening compliance and hiring additional inspectors within existing resources. Otherwise, it is not feasible to consider funding without knowing the result of the consultation process.
Colombia November 28th, 2007
Mr. Speaker, a free trade agreement is currently being negotiated with Peru and Colombia. This accord will contain a parallel agreement in the area of workers' rights. Discussions are going very well with both countries. This will be one of the most robust free trade agreements we have ever negotiated.
Youth Criminal Justice Act November 22nd, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I listened to my hon. colleague's statements, and I would like to remind the members of the two primary goals of this bill.
First, we do not want a young person who has committed a violent crime to be allowed back into the community while awaiting trial. This kind of thing has happened before. I am thinking of the case in Nova Scotia that someone mentioned where young people who had committed violent acts were allowed back into the community, where they committed more violent crimes. Innocent bystanders were killed or seriously injured by these youths, who were not detained while awaiting trial. That is what we are addressing. We want to make sure that judges have the power to order pretrial detention.
Second, we want judges to take two things into account when sentencing young people who have committed violent crimes.
The first is deterrence. We want to ensure that the youth understands what is going on and that other youths who might be considering committing similar acts—crimes of violence against the person—will be discouraged from doing so. We want judges to take this into account when determining a sentence.
The second is denunciation. We want the sentence to show that society disapproves of the acts committed.
We want judges to use both elements of this framework when handing down sentences in order to protect our seniors and society in general.
I am thinking of those news reports about youths committing violent acts on buses against people who were just minding their own business.
That is what we hope to accomplish with our bill.
Business of Supply November 1st, 2007
Mr. Speaker, I think that the member fails to grasp the importance of the question of pay equity in the workplace.
We already have a law. At one point, the call was for the Wilson report to be adopted and another pay equity law to be written. The problem was not a shortage of laws, but a shortage of personnel to enforce the law. We were short of people with the political will to really do something.
At that time, the Liberal Party was in power. And it failed to do anything at all throughout its term in office. When we came to power, we looked at this question and we saw that we did not need a new law, we just needed to enforce the law already in place.
We therefore sent out our inspectors, and we do in fact have inspectors in the Labour Program for which I am responsible, to visit the companies. They go out to meet with employers and also with union representatives, to determine whether they are applying the principles of the Employment Equity Act. If they are not doing that, the inspectors inform them about the provisions of the Act and the consequences it provides for. We are proactive, so that they will move forward. That is what we are doing.
Over the last year we have visited 250 companies. We are in the process of preparing our information kit and we will be targeting companies where we think it is most important for us to step in.
I would point out that even though Quebec has its Pay Equity Act, unless I am mistaken, almost 60% of employers at present are not in full compliance with their obligations under the Act. Certainly, there has to be a law, and we have one. The problem is in enforcing it.
Business of Supply November 1st, 2007
Mr. Speaker, first of all, I would like to say that, with your permission, I will be sharing my time with the member for Sarnia—Lambton.
What should we be asking ourselves this afternoon? What are we doing as a government to ensure women's economic security through pay equity? I would like to point out first of all that the government and I, as Minister of Labour, believe in fairness and equality for all women. Our government is proud of the decisive measures it has taken to improve federal pay equity. We are convinced that women in the federal public service will also applaud these measures. These workers have waited long enough for real action.
The principle of equal pay for equal work was recognized as early as 1977 and was entrenched in the Canadian Human Rights Act. In 1986, as a member of Parliament—because I was here in this House at the time—I supported the equal pay guidelines that took effect under the Conservatives. I am still a strong advocate for pay equity today.
However, it turned out to be very difficult for employers and unions to apply these principles and there was a lot of litigation over key elements in the act. In 2001, a working group was tasked with studying the pay equity plan. Its members consulted a tremendous number of employers, unions, and equity defence groups. Three years later in 2004, they submitted a lengthy report.
One year later in 2005, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women submitted its own report in which it presented a bill to implement the working group’s report. A little later, in 2006, the standing committee submitted another report on pay equity, the sixth in the series. Through the pay equity legislation that has been passed, our government is sending women in the workplace the following message: the wait is now over.
After years of discussions, studies and interminable debates, the stakeholders feel it is clear that everyone agrees on the need for pay equity. Everybody wants it. All parties have recognized that more needs to be done to eliminate discrimination in the workplace, including on the basis of sex. There was no agreement, however, on the best way to proceed. Everyone had a different view.
At the time when the working group on pay equity submitted its report, it was clear that it would be very difficult to get all the parties to move forward together on this matter. The shortcomings in the report proved insurmountable. We had to look elsewhere. We needed a solution that was flexible enough to meet all the various needs of the federal private sector. However, so much flexibility was simply unattainable. That is why a consensus could never be reached on how to proceed. Nevertheless, a lack of consensus is no excuse for inaction—I repeat: a lack of consensus is no excuse for inaction—or for the kind of senseless delays we have seen.
After looking at the experiences of other levels of government in Canada and of other governments on the international scene, we realized that a lack of consensus on how to handle pay equity seemed to be the norm rather than the exception. Some provinces, including Manitoba, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, have specific legislation on pay equity. It applies, however, to their respective public sectors. Other provinces, such as British Columbia, still do not have any specific pay equity legislation.
In Europe, the pay equity initiatives are far from comprehensive. In New Zealand, there is an act requiring pay equity for women doing the same work as men, but there are no policies on pay equity for work of equal value.
Here, in Canada, our collective experience with pay equity is among the greatest and most varied in the world. This has been achieved in part because the federal and provincial governments actively consulted stakeholders, and also because at key points in our country's history, they chose to act based on the most reasonable understanding of the facts.
We listened to the interested parties and came up with a response that would make positive changes in the workplace.
The measures we are now taking to support partners of federal workplaces are threefold.
First, we are striving to improve and increase the participation of education stakeholders in order to help federally regulated employers, workers and unions understand their rights and obligations in terms of pay equity plans.
Labour program officers have already visited 250 employers to inform them of their legal obligations. A training document and tools have been developed to provide better information for employers on what they must do. The Labour program has already provided specialized training on pay equity to 23 officers, and training sessions will be given to more officers again this year.
Second, what did we do? We established specialized mediation assistance for partners in the occupational setting who wished to cooperate in order to enforce pay equity. Mediation and conciliation officers were given specialized training in pay equity and can provide specialized services to employers and unions that need them.
The chief mediator even met with business representatives and other stakeholders, and offered specialized mediation services. Furthermore, the association that represents major unionized employers—FETCO—expressed its gratitude for the assistance we were able to provide regarding addressing pay equity in the context of collective bargaining.
Third, by hiring 15 compensation specialists, we can monitor the situation more closely in order to ensure compliance with equity principles and measure the progress made towards eliminating gender-based discrimination in wages.
Lastly, when an employer refuses to take proactive measures to correct an unfair wage gap, the Canadian Human Rights Commission will be notified and asked to investigate.
In closing, we have taken the proper approach to resolving the contentious issues involved in federal pay equity.
Instead of creating a situation in which women must wait and wait for new legislation to be passed, we thought, and we still believe, that we could improve the existing pay equity system.
As Minister of Labour, my role is to make decisions that offer practical solutions for everyone involved. The pay equity measures that we have established allow for flexible, concrete enforcement of pay equity principles in the workplace.
We will continue to consult the major players, particularly, employer and employee representatives, to hear their points of view on the best way to implement measures to establish pay equity.
Very recently, we met with major stakeholders such as the CLC, CSN, Canadian Bankers Association and FETCO, and other meetings with key stakeholders will be held as needed, as questions arise.
I am confident that our approach will serve to support our vision of Canada's workforce, where industrial relations are strong and durable.
Let us be clear, our government is committed to the principle of pay equity and our goal is to eliminate wage disparities based on gender, in sectors under our jurisdiction. What do the Labour Program officers do in this regard? They promote the pay equity program, they educate employers about the program requirements and about their obligations and responsibilities. To date, in less than a year, meetings have been held with 250 employers. They have been asked whether they apply pay equity principles. They have been told what the law requires of them, what they have to do, and what progress they have to make. We are educating them about this, and we are supporting them, we are helping them to implement pay equity principles.
That is what we are doing. This fall, an information product, as it is called, and a toolkit will be sent out to employers to give them more information so that they will move forward with putting pay equity principles into practice in their own companies.
Labour November 1st, 2007
Mr. Speaker, Canada is currently negotiating a free trade agreement with Peru and Columbia and, along with it, a labour agreement.
I will be travelling to these countries in the next few days to advance these discussions. Our goal is to include provisions on labour law that will be stronger than those negotiated in previous agreements.
The best way to make progress is to include our partners and not to ignore them. That is how we will be proceeding.
Forestry Industry November 1st, 2007
Mr. Speaker, the ARC Resins file is indeed very interesting. It is a wonderful project, especially since it involves re-manufacturing. The company wants to manufacture railway ties.
Initially, the file was not one of the regional office's priorities. However, it was brought to my attention and I asked to see the file. I can inform the hon. member that the file is currently being examined. We hope to reach an agreement with the sponsor and the partners to get this new project off the ground. If we are successful, that would be great.
Regional Economic Development November 1st, 2007
Mr. Speaker, allow me to read this quote from the association of manufacturers and exporters of Quebec—and I did say Quebec: “—we congratulate the Minister of Finance for recognizing the challenges faced by manufacturers with regard to competition.” What more can I add.
The throne speech mentions that we will intervene in the forestry sector. That commitment was made by our Prime Minister and, as a general rule, when our leader, our Prime Minister, says he is going to do something, he does it.