Jinny Sims

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, all I know is that in the riding I live in, Newton—North Delta, more and more people are losing decent-paying jobs.

If we do have work shortages, we have always been able to address them through our robust immigration policies, which, as we know, have been broken under the current government and are now being turned into a mixed hodgepodge that no one really seems to understand.

The other thing that is very important to realize is that fisheries is not just about fishing, processing, and selling what we catch. It is also about good stewardship so that we have sustainable fisheries. I think the kind of deal that was made would allow for the renewal of the fishing industry in Newfoundland and Labrador. We cannot lose sight of that. I think this is where the federal government does have a role to play.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2015]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker, and once again I do apologize. I am so delighted to see the Minister of Transport back in the House. Because of that, I got a little carried away. I have a great deal of respect for the minister and I know she has been through a difficult time.

I am going to appeal to the minister to intervene here. I believe the federal government has a role in this as it is a port issue. We have massive unemployment happening all around us and we need to address it. We need to have some answers for the drivers who have given good loyal service, but there is no transparency. They went to work and received a letter to say their licences ended on Monday. That is it. They were told not to turn up for work. That is just not good enough.

We are seeing more and more good jobs disappearing. We have to remember that the fisheries industry is very important along our coastlines. The fisheries support good, middle-class jobs in Newfoundland and Labrador. The government needs to protect jobs and build a fishery of the future. The government needs to live up to that commitment. I am appealing to the goodness in colleagues across the way because I know it is there and I know they want to do the right thing.

If we made a promise and commitment that we would invest in the fisheries and in new technologies to deal with the fisheries, then we should do it. Let us not turn this into “they love CETA more, we love CETA less, or they do not like free trade agreements” because that does not add dignity to the debate. In order to have dignified debate, let us deal with the fundamental premise that I am sure we have all taught our children, and that is to tell the truth. When people make a promises, they should keep them. When the federal and provincial governments start to break promises, what kind of an example do we set for the country and for our children?

We are all elected officials and there are some things we know are right. What is right is that when we make a promise, we keep it. The people of Newfoundland and Labrador deserve to have that promise kept.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, first, let me make it crystal clear. At no time have I heard my colleagues on this side of the House, including our critic, say that we categorically reject CETA. What they did say, which is what any wise parliamentarian would do, was that we wanted to look at the wording. We want to see what is in the deal, to consult with Canadians and engage in getting input. Only after we have done that will we support or reject it. We are not like other parties that without seeing a bill would say that it is great and that they will support it, then live to regret it at a different time.

The more my colleagues across the way try to change the channel by giving information that is very clearly misleading does the House and parliamentarians a huge disservice. We are here today to debate a broken promise, a betrayal. A deal was made.

Let me make it clear that the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador asked our leader for help. It is a beautiful province, by the way. If people ever have a chance to visit it, they should. Not only is the province beautiful and the people are great, but the seafood is amazing. Our leader was asked to take up this issue in the House and to hold the government to account for the commitments it has made. That is why we are debating this today.

I forgot to tell you, Mr. Speaker, that I will be splitting my time with my esteemed colleague, the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.

I want to start off with a quote from Paul Davis, the Conservative premier of Newfoundland and Labrador. He said:

It really solidifies that you can’t trust the federal government, you can’t trust Stephen Harper's government…We bargained in good faith. We believed that we had an agreement in place, that we had a deal set.

He is saying loud and clear and very explicitly, with no reading between the lines, that he does not trust the government, that he does not trust the Prime Minister and that he feels very betrayed.

Governments lose their credibility when they break their commitments. However, why am I surprised? I have been in the House since 2011. Over and over again the government has broken its commitments.

There is one that is very important in my riding. A recently released report noted that crime was on the rise. Not only that, but we have a very low level of policing compared to other jurisdictions around us. The government made a commitment to add X number of RCMP officers to the force. It has failed to do that. If I were to stand here and list all the promises it has broken, I would run out of time. I think all my colleagues would run out of time.

There are also the commitments we made to our veterans, who are also feeling very betrayed. There are the commitments we have made to those who lose their jobs and who pay into a fund in good faith, thinking EI will be available for them when they are out of work. However, due to the taking of the money from the EI fund, first by the Liberals and then by colleagues across the way, and then changing the rules, they now find that the rules are so hard they cannot even access the support they need.

Just today, the minister had to respond in the House about a fund to create access for those with disabilities. The fund has been underutilized by billions of dollars. It appears that a vast majority of that funding is going into Conservative held ridings. Surely this is not the way we want to run a country.

I also want to take this opportunity to say that this feeling of betrayal runs very deep in my riding. I was at a rally on Saturday held by truckers who had been laid off. They were given notice summarily that they would no longer be given entry into the port. Some of these truckers have 20 to 28 years of experience driving into that port. Their families and children were there and it was heartbreaking because they could not understand how this happened. It was only last year when they signed a deal. They did not realize, and were not told at the time, that the deal had some hidden components and some other output that would lead to a massive number of layoffs of people trying to make a living. That is unconscionable.

I saw the little children. I talked to either the drivers or their wives, and learned their stories of betrayal. They feel betrayed by the federal and provincial governments. This is being treated like a hot potato, being passed from one level of government to the other to the port. Those drivers want a solution.

Today, I also appeal to Minister Raitt, because I know how thoughtful she is, to do some kind of an intervention—

[Veterans Affairs, February 2nd, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, there has been a lot of Conservative talk about safety, but not a single cent of new resources for the police.

A year ago, the NDP proposed a common sense Surrey accord that would put more police on our streets. A year later, violent crime in my community is up and the only response from Conservatives has been more cuts to the RCMP.

When will the Conservatives keep their promise to put more police on Surrey streets?

[Employment, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, youth unemployment is at 14%, and Conservatives are making it worse. The minister was warned 18 months ago that the temporary foreign worker program was making it harder for young people to find jobs. He was warned that the industries that are the top employers of young workers were filling those jobs with temporary foreign workers. He did nothing until CBC shone the light.

The minister sat on this information for over a year, while our young people were denied jobs. Why?

[Business of Supply, January 29th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am sitting here a bit incredulous, because between the years 2000 and 2006, Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin only found time to meet with the first ministers twice.

I absolutely agree that we need to have a Prime Minister who has meetings with the first ministers. However, looking at the track record of the party at this end, I am really hit by the fact that they only met twice in six years, and at a time when people are losing more and more jobs and the Conservatives are missing in action when it comes to a real job action plan, what we have here is one proposal from the Liberals, which is to have an annual meeting.

Is this the best the Liberals can do?

[Employment, January 28th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, while the Conservatives deny reality and delay, the New Democrats propose solutions to help families. The Conservatives like to pat themselves on the back, while Canadians lose their jobs. Target's closure alone will put nearly 18,000 people out of work, affecting families in every community across this country, and many will not qualify for benefits under an EI program that has been cut by both the Liberals and the Conservatives.

Where is the Conservative plan to create and protect Canadian jobs?

[Business of Supply, January 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my hard-working colleague for the work he does back in his riding. I would bet that other MPs from coast to coast were hearing the same kind of concerns and questions back in their ridings that I heard in my riding.

I am really glad that my colleague asked me this question because it reminds me of something from the previous two weeks. Through an ATIP request, I had a response from the government. The response was that the government knew exactly that what jobs that youth usually access were being filled by temporary foreign workers, yet we had the minister in the House acting really surprised when the CBC shone the light on the McDonald's in Victoria.

I think we have to take a look at the kind of policies we have had with the expansion of the temporary foreign worker program and, of course, the decimation of our training and apprenticeship programs. We need to start looking at growing decent-paying jobs right here in Canada. We need to diversify our economies. We have to start looking at investments in clean energy. We have prime examples around the world right now showing that these lead to more and better-paying jobs than we have right now. That is why we need this fiscal update, and in that fiscal update the current government needs to come to us with a plan.

[Business of Supply, January 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I am always in awe when colleagues from that end of the House stand, because they always go into denial about the reality of what it was like for Canadians when they were in government. They forget about all the scandals and all the insider stuff that happened while they were in government. They forget the fact that they stole billions and billions of dollars from the EI Fund. They forget the fact that they are the ones who started the cuts to all the social services.

I will finish on a positive note. When we look at the data and actually examine it, we see that the unemployment rate has been much lower under NDP governments than Liberal ones, which have always had the highest unemployment, or under Conservative governments. So let us talk about reality.

[Business of Supply, January 27th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to this opposition day motion today because after spending more than a month away from this place, almost exclusively in my beautiful riding of Newton—North Delta, I heard a pattern of comments from my constituents. They are very worried about the harmful effects of the Conservative government's economic mismanagement.

Our economy is damaged. Middle-class families are working harder than ever, yet falling further behind. The people of Surrey want to know where the police are that the government promised our community in 2006. They want to know why they have so much difficulty bringing siblings and parents into Canada to say goodbye to dying relatives and to attend their funerals.

People want to know why the government made cuts to literacy programs when half of the adult Canadian population right now does not have sufficient literacy skills to read the prescription on a bottle of pills. They want to know why community groups fear closure and loss of services for the most vulnerable, when the government does not bother to inform them whether their skills link funding will be renewed.

People want to know why it will be five years before they can get a hearing on their appeal before the social security tribunal. They want to know why the government has not yet fixed the temporary foreign worker program. They want to know why the government is doing nothing to make day care more affordable for families.

People want to know why the Conservative government is pushing an income-splitting scheme that would give billions to the wealthy few and absolutely nothing to more than 85% of Canadian families. Honestly, I would love to know, too.

I love representing Surrey and North Delta here in Parliament. Right now, I am hurting for my constituents.

By the way, I forgot to say that I will be splitting my time with the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

Too many constituents in my riding are struggling to make ends meet. Income inequality in our country is spiralling out of control. The incomes of the top 1% have been surging for decades. It is embarrassing. The typical Canadian family has seen their income fall over the last 35 years. How is that fair?

High levels of income inequality and slow growth have hurt communities like Surrey-Newton and North Delta, preventing millions of Canadians from achieving their full potential. It is no surprise, sadly, that when the data is examined, 94% of the increase in inequality over the last 35 years occurred under federal Liberal governments.

The Conservative government and the Liberal governments that preceded it have taken our country in the wrong direction. Billions of dollars of cuts to social programs by Liberal and Conservative governments have made things worse by reducing services to all Canadians.

The NDP motion today calls on the Conservative government to release an economic update. Canadian taxpayers deserve an honest account of how the drop in the price of oil has impacted the state of this country's finances.

Budgets are about making choices, and the Conservative government has chosen to make cuts at every turn, cuts to programs and services that Canadians rely on. The government has also gutted Canada's fiscal capacity to help families in need through tough times. Meanwhile, it is worth noting the government is proceeding with reckless handouts to the wealthiest Canadians.

The NDP wants an economy that is fair to the middle class. We want a budget that focuses on diversifying the Canadian economy, rather than putting all our eggs in one basket. We find it wasteful to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on government advertising to advance a political party's interest. Indeed, just last week I submitted a letter to Advertising Standards Canada, asking them to investigate the government's apprenticeship ads.

We find it wasteful to spend tens of millions a year on an unelected, unaccountable, and under investigation Senate. We find it wasteful to give away billions in subsidies to oil companies and handouts to the most profitable corporations.

The former parliamentary budget officer, Kevin Page, said recently that “In the last 10 years, we have virtually made no progress on all our big issues, long-term economic challenges. We have not closed innovation gaps in our country, dealt with an aging demographic that will put pressure on health care, nor dealt with environmental sustainability. We have not even had the discussions or proposals from this government.”

While my New Democrat colleagues and I continue to roll out concrete proposals to support working and middle-class Canadians, the Liberals are continuing to cower with no ideas to propose other than their same old feeling of entitlement to power. New Democrats have a plan for the middle class, including a $15 minimum wage and child care that costs no parent more than $15 a day. We are ready to make the economy work for average hard-working Canadians, not just the rich few. We have a practical plan that would repair the damage the current government has done to our social programs, our environment, and our economy.

I came to this country in my early twenties with very little. I started to teach immediately and have not stopped working yet, many years later. I know what it is to work hard, and I know the anxiety and stress that surround job losses, and serious illnesses and precarious employment within families. Under the current Conservative government and previous Liberal governments, too many families have lived through this kind of stress.

Not only do I have the immense privilege of representing people of Newton—North Delta, but I am also very proud to act as an opposition critic for employment and social development. In this capacity, I see first hand, on an almost hourly basis, the impact of the current government's fiscal mismanagement on Canadians all over the country. The Conservative government has both driven down wages and reduced support for unemployed Canadians through its cuts to EI, a fund that most Canadians pay into and which only about four in ten people can now access. The current government has expanded the temporary foreign worker program, even though youth unemployment is at an all-time high, and it has failed to fix it. As well, the Conservatives have totally ignored the importance of keeping current labour market information. They have introduced a “job creator tax cut” that would only create 800 jobs at a cost of half a billion dollars. I need help to wrap my head around that one.

In real terms, the average minimum wage in Canada has increased by just 1% over the last 40 years. Do the Conservatives honestly believe that someone who works 40 hours a week should be left living below the poverty line? Without action to boost minimum wages for workers in federal jurisdictions, that is essentially what the Conservatives are telling us.

What do we tell our youth about this government? What do I tell young graduates who cannot get a job? What do I tell someone whose job application was not even considered because it was cheaper for the employer to use the government's temporary foreign worker program? I would like to be able to tell them something.

I would like the Conservatives to vote in favour of our opposition day motion and immediately present an economic and fiscal update to Parliament that outlines the state of this nation's finances in light of the unstable economic situation, including job losses, falling oil prices, and declining government revenues. Further, we are asking the current government to prepare a budget that would address the economic challenges faced by the middle class, by creating more good-quality, full-time jobs, and by encouraging economic diversification.

Despite poor economic forecasts by others, the Conservatives continue to claim they will achieve a balanced budget. We are asking for a fiscal update. We want to ensure that their agenda does not get achieved on the backs of hard-working Canadians. Clearly, the Conservatives government is conflicted, because even ministers cannot agree among themselves on to how face the challenges. The mixed messaging only continued as the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Employment and Social Development explicitly put forward two different agendas.

I would like to finish with a very brief quote from Kevin Page, who said that “When you're spending somebody else's money, you need to show them the plan. When you're spending someone else's money, that plan needs to be scrutinized, and that's okay. That's just good fiscal management.”

Give us the plan.