Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Health entitled, “Promoting Innovative Solutions to Health Human Resources Challenges”.
House of Commons photoWon her last election, in 2021, with 44% of the vote.
Committees of the House June 17th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the sixth report of the Standing Committee on Health entitled, “Promoting Innovative Solutions to Health Human Resources Challenges”.
Mr. Speaker, that is another laundry list. The Conservative government is patting itself on the back and congratulating itself for initiatives that it had nothing to do with, including the Richmond Oval, which was planned and incorporating pine bark beetle wood long before the government was even in office.
The fiscal situation, the pension plan and the banking system are all no thanks to the Conservative government. They were all decisions by a Liberal government that the Conservatives fought and voted against when they were in opposition. We have a jobless recovery. We have unemployment that has gone from 5% to 8% under the government. We have $1 billion spent on a fake lake summit.
What is being spent to reduce the risk of fire to first nations and communities around British Columbia? Nothing.
Mr. Speaker, I am rising with respect to a question that I asked in the House previously regarding forestry and pine bark beetle.
I am the proud member for Vancouver Quadra which is an urban riding. It is a riding in which the history of the city has been built on the forestry industry. There are many families in Vancouver Quadra who remain directly or indirectly dependent on a healthy forestry industry.
There were two challenges that I raised in my question. One was the difficulties in the forestry industry in Canada. In British Colombia, the lumber sector, value-added manufacturing, and pulp and paper have been struggling. Many jobs have been lost, communities have been affected, and families are obviously very affected. Their retirement security is uncertain. The ability of their children to afford post-secondary education is at risk.
That is the economic challenge that the government has not properly addressed, compared with its very generous support for other industries, such as the auto industry.
The second challenge is the pine bark beetle. In British Columbia 20% of trees in our province are dead or dying from pine bark beetle. We have hillsides of grey, brown sticks, where every tree in the pine forest has been killed by the pine bark beetle. Whole landscapes look as if they have been bombed. There is a tremendous impact on communities dependent on those forests, but there are also impacts on the soil and the water, the ability of the soil to absorb water, the erosion of soil, and on wildlife.
These pine bark beetle dead forests are like kindling. They are tinder dry. Fires burn much hotter and spread much more quickly through these dead forests. Many of these forests are in interface areas around communities. In fact, 103 aboriginal communities are at risk.
The government promised $1 billion over 10 years to address the pine bark beetle problem and very little has been done. This is a promise broken that undermines the safety and security of people and communities across British Columbia.
I just want to quote the B.C. First Nations Forestry Council vice president who claimed that last year's:
--near-record forest fire season in B.C. has been exacerbated by the federal government backing away from providing millions of dollars to reduce the threat of pine-beetle-killed wood.
The mayor of Lillooet, where a fire came within a kilometre of the town, agreed that the federal pine beetle program was cut. There is no doubt that the pine beetle exacerbated the summer's wildfires. He said that there has not been progress on dealing with the pine bark beetle.
In the last two years there have been no dollars in the budgets to show a pine bark beetle commitment. This has been an undermining of an important environmental and economic challenge in British Colombia. It is a broken promise by the Conservative government.
Federal Sustainable Development Act June 16th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I appreciated some of the heartfelt language of the member opposite in terms of his deep concern for the environment. I imagine that he must be very embarrassed to be part of a government that had to be shamed into even mentioning climate change at the G8-G20 summit. The government was planning to do nothing on that issue with the leaders of the world.
He talked about measures but his government ignored the very organization it had appointed, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy. It came out a year ago with a plan of measures to address and accomplish the government's own goals and the government ignored that. It is not putting the measures in place that its own advisors recommended. In fact, it has lowered its target instead.
When an independent audit under the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act shows that under the Conservative government emissions are rising and will keeping rising, why are his colleagues claiming in the House that the opposite is true?
Canada Labour Code June 11th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate on Bill C-386, An Act to amend the Canada Labour Code (replacement workers). As the labour critic for my party, I will not be supporting this bill, and in my remarks I will lay out some of my concerns.
Under the current Canada Labour Code there is no general ban on the use of replacement workers. This bill proposes to amend the code so there would be a ban. As my colleague from across the aisle has just noted, the House has considered this type of bill, and motions as well, a number of times over the past decade and they have all failed to pass.
The Canada Labour Code was last revamped in 1999 as a result of recommendations in the Sims report. Most of the issues were agreed on by the stakeholders who had been consulted in the course of the study by the Sims task force.
The controversial measure around replacement workers was not fully agreed on by the stakeholders at that time. However, the task force did recommend that there be no general prohibition on the use of replacement workers after consulting and giving due consideration to the issue. I will quote a recommendation in the task force report:
Replacement workers can be necessary to sustain the economic viability of an enterprise in the face of a harsh economic climate and unacceptable union demands. It is important in a system of free collective bargaining that employers maintain that option, unrestrained by any blanket prohibition. If this option is removed, employers will begin to structure themselves to reduce their reliance on their permanent workforces for fear of vulnerability, to the detriment of both workers and employers alike.
The Liberal government of the day accepted the recommendations of the Sims task force, and the blanket provisions that some of the stakeholders were looking for on the use of replacement workers were not included in the Canada Labour Code at that time.
The business sector believes that since the changes to the code were made, there has been little controversy over the use of replacement workers in the federal sector, but other stakeholders would disagree with that comment.
Where are we today? There are arguments on both sides of this issue. Some would argue that it is an unfair labour practice for employers to use replacement workers in an attempt to undermine a union's representational capacity, for example, to attempt to break a union.
I think all members of the House would agree that unions serve an important function in their representation of workers in collective bargaining with respect to benefits and health and safety conditions.
On the other side of the argument, some have argued that while a union has the absolute right to strike, an employer also has the right to continue to operate and customers have the right to service. This is a very polarized argument.
It is clear that some provinces have been successful with respect to both sides of this issue. Some of my colleagues have talked about the ban on replacement workers in Quebec. There is also a ban on replacement workers in British Columbia, and that was put in place by an NDP government in the 1990s. When the B.C. Liberal government took office in 2001 it was widely expected that it would amend the labour code in British Columbia to remove the ban on replacement workers, but it chose not to do that.
As a proud British Columbian and as a former member of the government of that day, I would note that British Columbia went from having the slowest growing economy in Canada in 2000 to having the fastest growing economy a few years later, still with the ban on replacement workers in place.
There is no evidence that one way is right and another way is wrong. In fact, several provinces with NDP governments have maintained the aspect of their labour codes that allows replacement workers. In a way, this is not even an ideological divide.
The example of Quebec shows that the number of days lost to work stoppage is not substantially higher than the average number lost under the Canada Labour Code. In terms of a severe impact from having a ban versus not having a ban, I would contend that we do not see that.
What is at the core of my argument that we should not be supporting this private member's bill? The key to the situation really is fair and free collective bargaining that is balanced between employers and unions. I would assert that this balance cannot be maintained and improved through a selective private member's bill that picks one side of a historically polarized issue in the absence of a clear crisis that demands immediate action.
I would further assert that we face some serious challenges in the future, we being Canadians, in the broader context within which we need to look at labour relations and our approach to labour relations. Is the historic polarity between organizations representing labour and those representing the private sector on this issue the framework within which we want to make decisions for the future?
Do we want to maintain that polarity and weigh in on one side or another, or do we want to find a place away from that dichotomy, a place where employers and employees work together with the co-operation and co-ordination of their representatives to address larger external threats to the quality of life and the well-being of Canadians? That is exactly what I believe needs to happen.
What are some of the serious challenges? As I have said, I do not believe that this is useful legislation to help achieve the objective of improving people's lives. Some of the challenges include the re-entry into major deficit into which the Conservative government has placed Canada. There is the mounting debt we are facing.
At the same time, we have the demographic of an aging population such that there will be relatively fewer people in the workforce a generation from now. Perhaps two in ten Canadians will be in the workforce. There will be far more people aged 65 and over than there are today, along with the related costs for health care and other services. That is the challenge facing Canada that we cannot ignore, though the government seems to be doing that.
Some would assert that four in ten Canadians are challenged in their ability to be successful in their jobs because of illiteracy. We need to increase Canadian productivity and better match people with jobs, because we are faced with a million Canadians who are out of work and a million jobs for which there are not skilled people.
In the future, when there are fewer people of working age, we will need higher productivity. To be competitive, we need to be working together to face the challenges of the major economies of the Asia-Pacific and their success and growth.
We need a new economy that is based on green jobs. As we change the way we use energy, we increase our efficiency. We need to be thinking about all those kinds of technological innovations that underpin the transformation of our economy.
Does this legislation address any of those problems and help to solve them? I would say that it does not. We need employees and employers working together. We need governments working with employees and employers, finding the successes, building on them, and then addressing the huge challenges we face in the future.
Offshore Drilling June 11th, 2010
Mr. Speaker, $30 million to $40 million is what the government is pouring out for every 15 minutes of the G8 and G20 meetings. Thirty to forty million dollars is also the ceiling for corporate liability if Canada were to suffer a catastrophic oil spill. Meanwhile, in the Gulf of Mexico, damage from crude oil is estimated at over $3 billion.
Will the minister ensure that it is the oil companies and not the Canadian taxpayers on the hook for a major oil spill in Canada?
Mr. Speaker, I would like to extend an invitation to the member for North Vancouver to talk to his constituents about why he is advocating flooding the streets with unregistered guns, the very guns that are used to attack and kill women and their police.
The idea that the member is talking about, one large government or something like that, is exactly the direction in which the government's activities are leading by undermining the power of Parliament to access documents, with the government's secrecy, lack of transparency and obstruction. Staff that he claims do not handle these requests actually block the requests. There is a shutting down of democratic voices, the independent officers of Parliament and independent organizations of civil society. It is a shameful pattern by the government.
I would like to invite the member across the way to come to our round table on Monday of the 13 groups doing important work for society, the ones that make for an independent democracy. They are coming to talk about how their funding was slashed by an ideological government that does not like anyone saying something that the government might not like to hear.
Mr. Speaker, I rose on April 26 to bring attention to a growing problem that weakened the democracy of our country, and that is the current government's increasing secrecy, lack of transparency and obstruction of presentation of information. This is a deliberate chill that it is placing on the civil servants and civil society and one that is very unhealthy for our democracy. Instead of getting an answer about my question, I received some pontification about the gun registry.
Therefore, I will first spend some time addressing the question I raised.
The government has a track record of thumbing its nose at the public and the transparency that it promised to the public. I refer to the Information Commissioner, who recently commented that there was a lack of will on the part of the government to be transparent and that Canada was no longer an information leader. She recommended legislation to force the government to comply with requirements to prevent delays in the release of public information.
It is worse than that because the government not only obfuscates and delays, it is breaking its own laws. In one of the worse offences, the office of the former public works minister stopped the release of a 137-page report that had been requested by an applicant to ATIP, ordering the public service officials to unrelease this report after the access to Information office at the department had okayed it.
We have a worrisome trend here. Beyond that, the government is actually hiding information that it statutorily is required to release. This brings me back to the gun registry. A report on the gun registry, which the government must, by law, table, was held until after a vote on the gun registry.
Let us discuss a bit further why the members opposite are promoting an action that flies in the face of the evidence of the police chiefs, the police associations that represent the police members and the police boards that represent the community. All those organizations, as well as a cross-section of organizations across our society, are clear that the gun registry is a vital component and tool in protecting the health and safety of Canadians and the police. On an ideological basis, the government is pursuing a path that is destroying a life-saving registry that society needs and wants.
There is a pattern with the government of firing independent officers of Parliament, ideologically cutting funds to groups and hiding information to promote its own end.
I invite the member opposite to explain to the constituents of West Vancouver why they should want more guns on the streets, which would put their lives at risk as well as the lives of the police officers they value.
Mr. Speaker, this was a $10 million boondoggle with a contract that went into the pockets of an American company because it was a complete botched job by the government.
Unfortunately, it is $10 million of borrowed money because the government has record deficits. The dollars that the government is spending beyond what it is earning is unbelievable. The fact that it does not believe that it has any obligation to account for these dollars is an unfortunate arrogance, which we are seeing now in a billion dollar boondoggle with the few days of conference that are being planned with the G8 and G20, a fake lake for $20 million, and hundreds of thousands of dollars for assets that are nowhere near where the meetings are taking place.
Therefore, this lack of accountability by the government is an embarrassment to Canada. It is spending dollars that it is borrowing. The government has no ability to manage funds or provide accountability to the public.
Mr. Speaker, I rise to follow-up on a question that I asked on April 26 regarding the government's expenditure on the Canada pavilion at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.
I do want to reiterate the fact that these games were very successful. A number of leaders spent over a decade making sure these games would be as successful as possible. I am speaking of people like Gordon Campbell, the Premier of the province; Jack Poole; John Furlong, the chief executive officer of the Vancouver organizing committee; the athletes; and the paralympians.
This was an extraordinary moment for Vancouver, British Columbia and Canada. It was an opportunity to savour the fact that half a million people would be coming from all over the world to visit our city and country. It was also an opportunity to make the most of the fact that business people and investors would see our city, our province, and our country as a place to invest or do business.
The B.C. pavilion was an excellent example of a way to utilize that opportunity. Over 100 meetings or events with various associations and sectors of business were held there to show what Canada had to offer to a whole range of sectors.
The Canada pavilion on the other hand was a rented tent that was not even open at the beginning of the Olympic Games. It was an embarrassment. Commentators from a wide range of backgrounds were amazed that this was the pavilion which would showcase Canada and Canadians to the world.
My question back in April had to do with that tent. It contained a variety of sport video games and some videos from Parks Canada that had been borrowed from the ministry and very little else. There were some lineups to get into the pavilion but that might have been due to the fact that it shared its location with a live site and a beer tent sponsored by the city of Vancouver.
We have never received any accounting on how the $10 million was spent. The government has not been transparent. That was a waste of money. The pavilion was a very poor product for Canadians considering that the government borrowed the $10 million.
I would ask the minister to give an accounting of the $10 million that was spent on the Canada pavilion at the games.