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Crucial Fact

  • His favourite word was actually.

Last in Parliament October 2015, as NDP MP for Welland (Ontario)

Lost his last election, in 2021, with 32% of the vote.

Statements in the House

Electoral Boundaries Readjustment Act February 25th, 2009

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-325, An Act to change the name of the electoral district of Welland.

Mr. Speaker, quite often people will ask what is in a name, and to my constituents, it is everything. At one point in time not that long ago the riding of Welland was known as the riding of Niagara Centre. The component in the Welland riding is actually the city of Welland, but the riding composes the city of Port Colborne, the city of Thorold, parts of the city of St. Catharines and indeed the township of Wainfleet. People of those communities have no real affinity with the city of Welland, so it really is a misnomer to name the riding “Welland“ in the sense of what it really encompasses.

My constituents are saying that Niagara Centre is where they live and Niagara Centre is what they identify with. I would hope to obtain unanimous consent in the House to change the name back to what it was before, Niagara Centre, a name which identifies those people and that constituency.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

Access to Information February 23rd, 2009

Mr. Speaker, last summer's listeriosis outbreak killed 20 Canadians and made many more sick. During the election, the government promised to get to the bottom of it. However, not only is its their own closed door investigation a sham, we are now learning that the Conservatives are denying Canadians the full scope of the situation by blocking information about the outbreak from being released.

Will the government tell us when the agricultural subcommittee hearings on listeriosis will start, and when will the government tell Canadian families everything it knows about the crisis in order to restore Canadians' confidence in the food supply?

Budget Implementation Act, 2009 February 11th, 2009

Madam Speaker, I could not agree more with my colleague when it comes to daycare. Clearly that is a critical component when it comes to the issue of allowing folks to have the opportunity to look for work.

If we do not have daycare facilities, if we do not have that space for our child, how are we to get out in the marketplace to look for that job, especially if that daycare space dried up when our job dried did. If it were tied to our job, it disappears. If it were tied to our income, it disappears because we can no longer afford it.

On retraining, let me just speak to what the gentleman who owned the—

Budget Implementation Act, 2009 February 11th, 2009

Madam Speaker, let me talk about severance pay, since I know a lot about severance pay and EI. It does not get people one dollar more from employment insurance to get severance. EI claws it back, dollar for dollar, which means they do not qualify, so that is a non-starter.

Let me just quote for the member what the Association of Community Colleges in Canada said about the training programs, “We do not have the places.” They do not have the infrastructure in place to accept all those folks that perhaps the money would help, if the government can get it out the door fast enough. The problem is, if we look at the last program, the money did not get out the door.

If the government did get the money out the door, we would simply have folks lined up at community colleges waiting to get in. That is what the community colleges said. They said that they needed $7.4 billion, of which they expected the federal government to come up with $3.4 billion, to help them build the spaces to get those folks in and retrained. What they did get instead was $300 million this year and $200 million next year, which by my count is a shortfall of about $2.9 billion.

It seems to me we will have people lined up outside community colleges waiting to get to those seats to be retrained. Standing and saying “we will”, does not get it done.

Budget Implementation Act, 2009 February 11th, 2009

Madam Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise to speak to the budget.

Over the course of the last few days, I have heard a great deal of comments from all members on this side about the inadequacies of the employment insurance system, as it is now called. I prefer the old title of UIC. If people are employed, they would not need to collect it in the first place. Nonetheless, I digress.

Let me put it in more concrete terms around what it is like to be unemployed, not from the perspective of someone who is unemployed, but as someone who has helped folks with claims since 1992. I will walk members through the life of a claim.

We have heard about the statistics, the hours and the five weeks, which is nothing. We have heard all of those things, but we have not heard about what it is like to walk all the way through it, to actually go and apply for the unemployment insurance, to go to an office that is understaffed and has fewer computer kiosks than it had before to take care of those folks, to be unable to get a piece of paper to fill it out with a pen or pencil because they want it on a computer. They tell people to go to their public library if the office is too busy or if they do not have computers.

From the get-go of walking through that front door, there is a barrier for those who may not feel they are technically literate enough to do it on a computer. There is a refusal on part of the Employment Insurance Commission to give them a piece of paper, even though the act says it is required to provide it when asked for. Too many claimants are refused and that is wrong. It should be made easier for them because it is their money.

The life of a claim really starts when people apply. However, when they apply, all it means is they have put in an application. There is no guarantee of acceptance because then they base themselves on the rules. The rules are rather prohibitive in a lot of cases. However, let us assume that people do indeed qualify. They apply. There has to be documentation. Their employers must send a record of employment, colloquially called the ROE. If the employer forgets or just does not bother because it has gone out of business, the claim is delayed. Without an ROE, people cannot get unemployment insurance, even though they qualify. They might have been working for ten years, but the fact that their employers did not do something simply delays it.

Let us assume that people do indeed qualify immediately. For the first two weeks, they do not qualify for any money because the rules say they do not get paid for those two weeks. It means they get paid for weeks three and four. However, they do not receive any money in weeks three or four because they have to fill out more paper, or do it on a computer if they are capable, or phone it in, to explain that they did not work during those weeks. This means that, if they are lucky, they get paid in week five.

Think about that. The people are unemployed. Perhaps their employer has gone bankrupt. Perhaps their employer is leaving the country, like John Deere is doing, even though it is profitable. Nonetheless, people may not have had any money since week one. They are now in week five and they receive their first cheque. What did they do in the intermediary period? What do they do from week one to week five? They are about to qualify, not someone who has a hiccup in the sense that perhaps the claim has been pushed to the side because it needs to be looked at or because there is no documentation.

When we look at those just from the claim phase timeline, people who are unemployed will not receive money at the very moment they need it. Instead, they will have to wait well over five weeks. I ask the government what its sense is of what those people should do for those five weeks. Sit on their hands? Look for work? We accept that they look for work. In fact, the unemployed are the best folks who look for work because they are always looking for work. Because they were working before, to suggest that they would not is a slap in the face of those workers. To qualify for unemployment insurance, they need to have a work history, which means they are able-bodied workers who really want to work. From that perspective, it is a non-starter.

On this side of the House, I have heard my colleagues ask about what we need to do to the system to enhance it. What we need to do is wipe out the two-week waiting period so when people apply for unemployment insurance, they will actually collect unemployment insurance.

I reiterate that it is our money, those of us who pay into the EI system. It is not taxpayer dollars. It is not collected from the tax base. It is collected from those who work for a living and contribute to an insurance program.

The Liberal government changed it from UIC to EI, but kept one letter in that system, “I” for insurance, and that is exactly what it is. I pay the premium, then when I need my insurance, I get to collect it. The problem is the government has decided to put enough rules in place that we do not get to collect it. One in three in the Niagara Peninsula, in the southern part of Ontario, are now collecting unemployment insurance. Almost two-thirds do not, yet, they paid their employment insurance premiums.

How many folks would like to pay their car insurance, have an accident and have the insurance company say, sorry, that they are in the 62%, so they do not get to collect on their car insurance because they are not in the other third? I do not think too many folks would put up with that. Yet the unemployed, at the most vulnerable point in their life, are faced with that type of restriction.

Therefore, waiving the two-week waiting period, which puts money into the pockets of those who need it at the point they need it, is where the government should have gone. Instead, the government chose to tack five weeks to the back end of a claim, if they qualified.

There is a song, and I am not sure how to sing it, and certainly I would not try in the House because I cannot carry a tune, that talks about nothing from nothing is nothing. Five weeks of nothing truly is five weeks of nothing. Ultimately, what they have gained is absolutely nothing at the tail end, and the government knows that through its own statistics.

The other side is, how to make people qualify. Reduce the hours. It is an hours based system now. We are not asking the government to go to a weeks based system. Three hundred and sixty hours would ensure that at least two-thirds, if not 70%, of those who were working would now qualify. However, that did not happen either. The government decided it would keep it at the lowest level possible so the least number of people could qualify.

Where are we with that? I talked about the claim phase. Let me tell members what they are doing in the Niagara region when it comes to the EI office. As I said earlier, I worked in conjunction with that office in a previous career since 1992. That office is about a third, if not a quarter of the size of what it used to be in 1992. At the very moment in time, when we need people in that office to service the unemployed, it has decided to restructure and the head office will now go to London, Ontario. Thank goodness it did not pick London, England, although I am surprised it did not try to go that far. At least it went to London, Ontario. The problem is that London, Ontario, in the greater southern Ontario area, now has more than 2.5 million to 3 million people in it rather than the 500,000 that our office looked after initially. Now it has four times the number of claimants to look after.

The minister said in the House earlier that its service would get better. Right now in the Niagara region people do not get money in week five. They get money in week six. Sources have said to me that if the backlog continues, they will not get money until week eight. It is reprehensible that we cannot make this system work better.

If we want a stimulus plan to put people back to work, the office has to re-hire and re-fill the positions in the EI office that they have simply let go under the government over the last number of years. We would create jobs in that particular environment, not jobs that we necessarily want because it means more unemployed, but it is something we would like to see.

As we can see, the unemployment piece is an economic driver. Don Drummond of the TD Bank said that we needed to do ensure that those who were unemployed would collect unemployment insurance because that unto itself was a stimulus. Think about that. That is a stimulus in itself. We do not have to do much else because that is a stimulus.

I would like to add one more thing from a personal perspective. We have talked about things that are missing from the budget. Let me talk about something that is in the budget, and that is equity for women. I will do this as a father.

My wife and I were blessed with a millionaire's family, as it is called. The first time we had children, we had two. We had a boy and a girl. I find it absolutely abhorrent that somehow my daughter will be treated, when it comes to equity, less than her twin brother. They were born three minutes apart. To suggest that somehow my daughter, who is now a young woman today, and her twin brother, who is a young man, both out in the workforce, would have less of an opportunity to have less pay for work of equal value than him, after nine months of living together, is abhorrent. That one aspect is enough to defeat the budget.

Budget Implementation Act, 2009 February 11th, 2009

Madam Speaker, it is interesting to note, when we talk about this country of ours from coast to coast to coast, how interrelated it is in so many facets. Unfortunately, in this particular interrelationship it really is one of decimation in his riding and mine when it comes to unemployment.

We see the struggles of the folks who live in our ridings and what they suffer through day in and day out. Those folks are looking to us for hope and for us to say to them, “Here is the way forward”. What we do not see in this budget is a way forward or any sense of hope for those folks who are asking us to simply show them the way and they will work toward it.

They are not asking for a hand out. They are asking for a hand up. They are saying, “Put the effort into us and we will repay it tenfold. We will put forward effort like you have never seen before”. “Let us get back to work” is what they are saying. They do not want to be unemployed. This is no choice of theirs.

My question for the hon. member is this: Does he see hope in the eyes of his constituents and in this budget?

Budget Implementation Act, 2009 February 9th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently as the hon. member talked about how the budget has been graded a C- by my colleagues on the opposition benches. I find it fascinating that the Liberal Party would put the government on probation for a C-, especially when talking about the most vulnerable people in Canadian society. Those members have decided to help pass a C- budget when they had an opportunity to perhaps make it an A budget. They chose to ignore that and decided that a C- was good enough for Canadians.

The Liberals had another opportunity through the amendment process where they could have perhaps raised the grade to a C+ but they chose not to do that either. Instead, they decided that a C- was good enough and that they should put Canadians on probation. It seems to me that if those members believe that Canadians are only worth a C-, then why bother with probation?

They did this to the folks who are most vulnerable, those who live in poverty and those who are unemployed when they had an opportunity to tell those people that they intended to get something better for them. Why did the Liberals not make that type of amendment for Canadians and not have them suffer a C- budget?

Food Safety February 5th, 2009

Mr. Speaker, despite listeriosis, despite salmonella, the government, just as was the case with the previous Liberal government, still does not get it.

The Auditor General today told us that we spend more time, more money and more resources inspecting food that leaves our country than food that enters our country. This is extremely disturbing.

Why does the government have higher food safety standards for exports than the food that is being fed to our grandparents, our parents, and our children?

Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act February 4th, 2009

Madam Speaker, as I was thinking through all of the interventions I have heard over the past two days in talking about workers, we would all be remiss in this House if we did not think back to all those veterans of the merchant marine who served this country, not from the perspective of an armed combat role but sailed those seas in perilous times. I think back to those veterans of the merchant navy who are today looking at us and saying, “Whatever happened to our shipbuilding? Why is it disappearing?”

I wonder if the hon. member could comment on what it means to those veterans, in a sense, to see this slip away.

Canada-EFTA Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act February 4th, 2009

Madam Speaker, this past week the Dairy Farmers of Canada have come to visit many of us on the anniversary of its 75th year as being an organization which was absolutely memorable. It was great to meet with those members, especially since those dairy producers are actually close to our own ridings and in some cases in our ridings. One of the things that they wanted to talk about was the supply management system. My question for my colleague will be around that issue and what that means in the sense of fair trade.

They asked me what was my sense of the quality and the security of the product they were delivering, in particular milk, and what were my constituents saying to me. One of the things that came to mind was that one of the most secure systems in the world is the supply management system. One of the validators for that is mothers. It is mothers who buy milk for the youngest of us, for their children, and who never have a question about its quality and the security of it. That speaks immensely to the supply management system and how well it works.

I think that is a tribute to the type of system that we have had and continue to have, and indeed could build upon if we so chose. Then again, it is the choice that we have to make and one that is in front of us today. It is that very choice, that we could look to build on that type of a system, augment it in other sectors, and look to that and ask what are the good parts of that.

Consumers are very satisfied across the country with the dairy products they receive from the perspective of quality and security. We have seen around the world, when it comes to dairy products, that there are some systems that are not as secure as our own. I am not so sure that we would want to have those systems given to us, because we had no other choice, because we let ours disappear.

If we look at that system and we were to say to ourselves, what are the good attributes of that system and could we take those attributes and indeed overlay them on to things like shipbuilding and to other parts of agriculture in the context of a fair trade system in this particular case? Could we allow the shipbuilding industry to have a kind of managed system, not so much like dairy but use those attributes that say that once we allow it to be on a level playing field with its competition, it would be more than happy to compete?

I wonder if my hon. colleague would comment on that. Does he see any kind of linkages and does he see any overlap? Can we use and learn from those good things that we see in the supply management system in those particular dairy products?