Kennedy Stewart

[Petitions, October 24th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to present a petition to the House.

Right now in British Columbia there is a large movement taking place right across the province called “Defend Our Coast” and we have hundreds of citizens stopping in front of MLA's offices telling them what they think about saving our coast from oil spills.

My constituents have asked me to present a petition about the Kinder-Morgan pipeline that is proposed to run from Edmonton to Burnaby. They are very concerned about the effects on the local riding. For example, they note that the current pipeline has already leaked one million litres since 2005 and they are worried about the effects of a new pipeline. They are also worried that the Conservative government is rushing ahead with this without real consultation.

[Food Safety, October 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it really is the general approach that the Conservatives' are bringing to this country that we should question. We see them on the planes reading Hayek and Milton Friedman. The whole idea is that government is the enemy and it has to be reduced. This is what is happening in the food inspection world. Fewer inspectors are better for the Conservatives because it is less government. Frankly, that is not working. We have the largest meat recall in Canadian history and the Conservatives have blown it, so has the minister.

[Food Safety, October 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will take the word of Tommy and Peter. They have not only worked in small butcheries themselves but they have also worked in large slaughterhouses and they know exactly how inspections work. I have sat through many evenings when they told me this distinctively.

Canada brought in a tightly regulated meat inspection regime in the 1960s and it was based on having food inspection agents on the floor ensuring that these machines are clean 24 hours a day. When we have voluntary compliance by companies, especially in these megafactories, there will be mistakes, and that is why we have had the largest recall of beef in Canadian history.

[Food Safety, October 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise in this emergency debate. I thank the members on this side of the House, especially my colleague from Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques who is splitting his time with me. Also, I thank the staff and pages for staying tonight to be present during this debate.

I also want to commend my colleague from Welland for leading the charge to protect Canadians on this matter, to keep Canadian food safe and to get the bottom of what is happening. I have been following his work both here and on other issues and very much value his expertise on these matters.

I will take a bit of a step back and think about this from a less detailed perspective and about the kinds of things with which governments have to deal. They face all kinds of issues. Some of these issues are reactive in nature, such as natural disasters and things like that. Some of the issues are proactive in nature. Those are plans and programs governments want to introduce. Sometimes governments get these things right, sometimes they get them wrong and sometimes they get them terribly wrong. The types of policies governments get terribly wrong are often called policy disasters.

The worst kind of policy disaster we can have is one where the government gets something terribly wrong and the reason it gets it wrong or the issue that it has blown essentially is something it has initiated itself. Whether it is driven by ideology or incompetence, the worst kind of policy disaster is when the government initiates something and it results in a huge mistake and problem. It is the worst kind of government action. That is what we are facing here. The government is facing a policy disaster of its own making.

Thinking in that context, let us see where we are right now. Canada is currently experiencing the largest meat recall in our history. I do not think anyone in the House would dispute that point. We are a meat producing nation. We export meat and consume a lot of it, but we are facing the worst recall in our history.

Five cases of E. coli have been traced to the XL Foods meat processing plant in Brooks, Alberta. This Alberta plant processed about 40% of the beef in Canada. A problem with this plant is a problem for not only the entire country, but for our export market as well. Incredibly, this factory processes about 4,000 to 5,000 head of cattle per day. It is a massive undertaking.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency has now recalled more than 1,500 beef products due to possible E. coli contamination. It is not a secret we are holding within Canada. The recall not only extends to every province and territory, but to 40 states in the U.S. and Puerto Rico.

The plant has been temporarily closed. The closure is impacting beef producers, who through no fault of their own have been caught up in this and the 2,900 employees who work at the XL Foods plant. It paints a picture of the size of the plant for Canadians who have not visited there. The hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster has been there on a number of occasions. Twenty-nine hundred employees processing 4,000 to 5,000 head of cattle a day is a massive undertaking. Worse, some of these employees are receiving only partial paycheques.

XL Foods plant has had its licence to export to the U.S. revoked. This will have long term impacts not only on the plant itself, but on the whole industry. There are now real concerns that Canadian standards do not match American food safety expectations.

That is where we are. We are at a stage where we have a real problem, a real policy disaster. We have something that we have to address. Unfortunately, on the other side of the House we have had advice like “wash your hands, maybe that will fix it”. That is not really adequate for the type of problem we are facing.

How did we get here? We have had a lot details tonight. We have had a blow-by-blow, almost a minute-by-minute account by the hon. member for Welland. However, to look at it from a larger perspective, with a little less detail, it appears what has happened is a change in culture. It used to be that companies would slaughter and process meats. This is what they are good at. They would buy and process it, package it and ship it out. However, the government inspectors would go into these plants to ensure cleanliness and sterility. They would actually go into the plants, look at the machines, inspect them and give the okay and production would start up again.

These factories are often working on 24-hour cycles. This is an ongoing process and a very important relationship between the government inspectors and the producers.

However, there has been a change in how the Conservatives see this cycle working. It is a belief that voluntary inspections by the companies are adequate. This is not really driven by hard facts. It is driven by an ideology that less government is necessarily better.

In this case, it does not seem to be better. Relying on voluntary actions of companies to ensure they inspect their own equipment is very susceptible to problems and what happens is something is missed. Without having government inspectors doing that work, the proper inspections and enough inspectors to do that proper inspections, we have run into a large problem here.

We have also been told that the inspectors working in these plants are spending more time looking at paperwork that has been given to them by the companies rather than being on the slaughterhouse floor looking at the cleanliness of the machinery.

This is something the Conservatives have done. By cutting funding, by having fewer inspectors in these large plants, we are relying more on the companies to ensure their own processes are adequate and then turning over paperwork to what inspectors are left. It is not adequate. We have the largest meat recall in Canadian history.

At the same time, we have not only had a change in regulatory culture, we also have had a change in the process itself. I have described the XL Foods plant that has 4,000 to 5,000 head of cattle going through it a day. What we have seen is a consolidation of the industry to an unprecedented level where we have meat factories that are so big they are almost hard to imagine.

In some cases there are small boutique butcheries that still exist. That is the way food production used to work. There were butchers who would buy from local cattle producers in small quantities. They would be able to inspect all the meat themselves. They would slaughter and butcher the cattle themselves and sell it to clients in small batches. If there was a problem, meat inspectors could sort that out. Now we have huge factories that are processing at a massive speed.

I have learned a lot about this industry from my father-in-law Thomas Ashe and his very good friend Peter Markin who have been butchers their entire lives. They started in the slaughterhouses in Belfast, Northern Ireland and moved to Canada and brought their trade here. They have been doing this job for decades.

I have sat down with both of them and talked to them about the process by which they as butchers see how things have changed in Canada. They have seen the industry grow from these small butcheries to the massive plants we have today. There are no bigger advocates for adequate food inspection than these two men who have seen this industry almost spin out of control.

Tommy and Peter have told me of their concerns, about how the reduction of meat inspectors will lead to disease and how a little tiny piece of meat left in a machine overnight can spin into a very big outbreak of certain kinds of diseases, like E. coli, that can be very harmful and deadly to consumers.

They also talked about how these were worst kinds of diseases for people to get. They strike people when they are unaware. They think their food is safe, but it is not. This is the problem we are facing.

There are lessons we can learn about the slaughterhouse floor from men like Tommy and Peter.

Also, the thought of how the Conservatives are systemically altering our approach to food inspection is a big problem. I do not like to say it, but if the Conservatives continue down this path, we will see more of these kinds of outbreaks.

If we continue to reduce the number of inspectors actually on the slaughterhouse floor and in the processing plant ensuring that the things are clean, we will see more of these outbreaks. I am very scared of that. The Conservatives have not just created this one policy disaster they are in fact inviting many more to happen and it will be a systematic series of disasters that we will face.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, since I have been elected, I have had scores of people come into my office with problems with EI. They are having trouble getting through to the call centre and their claims have been messed up. It takes up a big part of my constituency office budget to help these people through the system and deal with changes such as have been made here.

I wonder if the member has had many EI claimants come to her office and ask for help.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, of course Canadians want to work. If members were to talk to anyone, they would see that he or she wants to work. They want to work in jobs that they enjoy and that fulfill them. That is what employment insurance is supposed to do, to help people between gaps in jobs. That is what it is doing. To mess with the program and make it help people less is the wrong thing to do. That is why I support the motion we have put forward today.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the first statistic I read out is what we should really pay attention to. Under both the Conservatives and Liberals, the percentage of unemployed people eligible for EI has collapsed. We have gone from 90% in 1976 down to under 40%. Both Liberal and Conservative governments have a lot to answer for, and that is why an NDP government is needed to set this straight.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Not the spokespeople for the CFIB.

The point about consultation is that there has been none. The Conservatives go off and talk to a couple of their great friends, but they do not talk with the people who are affected by these cuts, clawbacks and mistakes made in this program.

The minister should do the right thing. She should admit that she has made a mistake and redesign the program so that it works properly.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, if the CFIB had its way, it would probably get rid of all social programs. That, to me, is not a great resource to draw from.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her wonderful speech and also for splitting her time, allowing me to speak to this important motion. I also thank the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles for bringing forth this motion. I have had the great pleasure of working with her in the past on the natural resources committee, and I am also pleased to support her fine work here today.

While I was doing my research for this speech, and of course the researchers are very helpful in this area, I happened upon a CANSIM table that looks at the percentage of unemployed people receiving EI regular benefits, stretching from 1976 right through to the current 2012. In 1976, 90% of those people who were unemployed were receiving EI regular benefits. That 90% figure dipped for a while through the 1980s, but also in 1990, 90% of the unemployed were receiving regular benefits. Then we entered into a free fall. We went from 90% eligible down to 80%, down to 70%, down to 60%. In the 2000s, we were under 50%, and currently we are under 40%. That is, only 40% of those people who are unemployed are receiving regular EI benefits.

That really is worrying to me. We are seeing a slow erosion of our social safety net programs. This is very disturbing. We are not seeing it just in this area. We are also seeing it in the old age security program and, looking at the other side, with young people and tuition levels and student loan allowances. It really is an erosion of our social safety net and it is punishing those people who are least able to make up for this lack of help.

Of course I support our motion. It is very important for the Conservatives to reassess what they are doing, not just on this pilot program but in all areas of the social safety net, to make sure Canadians' equality does not span just between groups in the current time but also over time, so that the people born today and in the future have the same opportunities and benefits that Canadians had before them. I am very worried that these programs are eroding what I would call generational justice.

I remind the House of the motion, which states that the new working while on claim pilot project is not benefiting many EI recipients who are able to find employment. In fact for many it creates a disincentive to take part-time work. It is leaving low-income Canadians worse off than before, and really the government needs to take steps to immediately fix this working while on claim project.

The motion stems from Conservative changes to the working while on claim pilot project. Early versions of this program had a clawback formula, which is really what we are talking about. In that, allowable earnings while on claim were equal to the greater of $75 or 40% of weekly benefits. For example, if weekly benefits are $300, the allowable earning would be $120. Earnings above that level were clawed back dollar for dollar. Under the new clawback formula, there are clawbacks of 50¢ on the dollar for every dollar up to 90% of the weekly insurable earnings. Any amount above that 90% of weekly insurable earnings is clawed back dollar for dollar.

It is a bit of bafflegab. We see these things written and they do not make a lot of sense, but when the rubber hits the road that is what really makes the difference. According to the Conservatives, these changes would incentivize all EI recipients to accept new work.

However, we found that the new pilot program discourages part-time or low-paying work for many EI recipients, and many of them will be making less than under the old system. For example, in 2010-2011 the average EI regular benefit was $360 a week; that is for the average person collecting this. That means previous earnings for the EI recipient were about $670 per week.

Under the new system the average EI recipient will have no incentive to accept new work unless that person earns over $300 per week. If the recipient takes one day of work or something like that and does not earn $300, of course he or she is not going to make any money. For example, if the person who made under $300 a week accepted work earning $150 per week, he or she could potentially lose $70 under the new system compared to the old system. Contrary to what we are hearing from the government, the new system would hurt the average EI recipient.

I am particularly concerned about the low earning EI recipient and will let the House know why in a minute, but would first like to clarify the details of the program.

If an EI recipient previously earned $300 per week, then that recipient could earn $165 per week when unemployed and receiving EI. Under the new system the recipient would have no incentive to accept new work unless he or she earned over $125 per week. That means that if this person, a low earning EI recipient, accepted work for $75 per week, he or she would lose $30 under the new system. It does not sound like a lot of money, but in the community where I grew up and to a lot of my constituents in Burnaby--Douglas, losing $30 is a lot. If we talk to anyone who is unemployed, $30 often makes a difference between fresh vegetables and something that is canned, for example.

This also does not include work-related expenses, such as transportation and child care. If these additional expenses were factored in, very few EI recipients would benefit from accepting new work, especially low earning EI recipients.

The effect on low income earners is something I understand very well, because I was once in this category myself. In my early twenties I lived in Nova Scotia. I worked at minimum wage jobs for a few years and then at one point I was laid off. I looked for work but could not find any. Lots of my friends were in the same situation. Lots of people would get a job, work hard, but the job would dry up. They could not find any other work, so like me they would apply for what was then called unemployment insurance. That helped us pay our bills while looking for work. It is not like we had trust funds that we could tap into, or something like that. It is not, as the Conservatives have alluded to, that people were lazy. It is just that the area where we were living did not have any work.

Of course, when I look back I could see that it was because we were youth. Youth unemployment is especially high. Right across Canada youth unemployment is 15% now, but in particular regions it can be 20%, 30% or 35%.

This was not a period that any of us felt good about. In our early twenties, my friends and I felt somewhat like failures. We had gone through high school, where we had done pretty good work. Some of us had received university degrees from the local college. However, none of us could really find work, so we would go on what was then called UI.

Every day while on UI we would go to what was then called a manpower centre. We often had to hitchhike or cycle there because it was so far away. It was not that we were not looking for work or trying hard. We made a lot of effort to do that. Back in the old days before computers, the manpower centre had little cards stuck on bulletin boards and sometimes there would be no cards there. Ten of us would show up after hitchhiking, cycling or walking there, only to find there was no work available and to be told to come back the next day. Sometimes there would be a little card on the bulletin board indicating that one day of work was available shovelling gravel, laying sod or something like that. We would play rock-paper-scissors so that we would not compete against each other for the one job and bother the employer. Or whoever needed the money the most could apply for the job. Often these jobs did not make much difference because sometimes the money was clawed back, and that was discouraging.

That is why we have to be careful with these programs. When sitting in a place like the House of Commons and making a good salary, it is easy to lose track of what it is actually like, or to have what fancy academics call an experiential perspective. Having an experiential perspective is to look from the perspective of the people who are actually affected by these programs. That is perhaps what has been lost here.

It is easy to look at the numbers, the graphs, the Statistics Canada data and all of that, but we should really be talking to the people on the ground and asking how this is affecting them. We have been hearing these stories in Parliament. We are respecting people's last names, but we have definitely been hearing calls in members' offices by people who are saying that a local person is losing a certain amount of money. The person had one cheque stating one amount and comes back with another cheque with a different amount, and there is definitely some money being lost. We can do the calculations and see that they are right.

This program therefore needs to be re-evaluated. The Conservatives should also be careful in their statements not to insult the hard-working people of Canada who are looking for work.