Matthew Kellway

[National Defence, October 15th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, in September 2008, the Prime Minister said that a decade of war in Afghanistan was enough, and a motion passed in the House agreed there would be no more combat operations by Canada after December 31, 2011. Now we learn that Canadian soldiers continue to be deployed in combat roles in the volatile region at the centre of the Taliban insurgency.

Why did the Prime Minister break his promise? Why are the Conservatives violating their own 2008 motion to end combat operations in 2011?

[Questions on the Order Paper, October 5th, 2012]

With regard to the F-35 JSF Program: (a) what is the total Canadian dollar value of benefits received by Canadian industry from Canada’s participation in the F-35 JSF Program (i) from the start of the program until December 1, 2011, (ii) from December 2, 2011 to June 22, 2012; (b) what is the projected value of future contracts, from June 22, 2012, onwards, that come as a result of Canada’s participation in the JSF program; (c) for the contracts in (a), what is the value of each contract that was awarded and on what date was each contract signed; (d) what methodology was used to determine the value of (i) the contracts in (a), (ii) the contracts in (b); (e) was there industry involvement in determining the values of (i) the contracts in (a), (ii) the contracts in (b); (f) do these valuations include analysis related to the global supply chain; (g) do these valuations include and/or anticipate changes in the domestic supply chain; (h) is the information used in the valuations updated periodically and, if yes, how frequently; (i) was the methodology used to arrive at the values in (a) and (b) independently audited and, if yes, by whom and what was the result of the audit; (j) since the start of the program, have there been discrepancies between projected and actual value of benefits received by Canadian industry; (k) if the answer to (j) is in the affirmative, what are the specific instances and contracts where discrepancies occurred, including (i) the value of each discrepancy, (ii) the name of each company that was meant to receive the benefit; (l) what, if any, changes have been made to the valuations and projection processes used to determine all and any cost projections related to the F-35 JSF program in response to the recommendations in the April 2, 2012, Auditor General's report; (m) for the contracts in (a), is there a means of ensuring that the contracts are being fulfilled as stated in terms of dollar value; (n) for the benefits in (a), how many jobs have been created as a result of participation in the program, (i) are these new jobs and, if so, how is “new jobs“ defined, (ii) how long are these jobs projected to last (i.e., are they start-up or long-term jobs), (iii) who calculates these job numbers and is there independent auditing of these numbers?

[Conservative Members of Parliament, October 4th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, whether it is making up policies or fantasies about Commies hiding under their beds, Conservative backbenchers can be counted on for a daily fix of fact-free statements and a trip to the twilight zone.

Let us review the record. Since the E. coli crisis began, the New Democrats have asked 33 questions about tainted meat, the Conservatives not one.

What are they talking about? Is it the economy? Is it health care? No. Conservatives have made 33 statements and asked 10 questions, one out of every Conservative questions, about us, the New Democrats.

For my colleagues across the way, I ask if this is really what they wanted to do with their life in elected office: indulging the fantasy life of the kids in the PMO?

Could the member about to rise please tell us what is going on in her riding and what she wants to do for Canadians? I urge the Conservatives to take Parliament seriously so that Canadians can start taking them seriously.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, just as a matter of clarity, the only thing I have contempt for is the ignorance exposed by the question that draws an analogy between labour markets and working life in rural Canada and that in the city of Toronto. I also have contempt for the malice that underlies this program.

Perhaps the member could tell us how these revisions to the working while on claim program benefit people in urban Canada.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the opportunities for folks in Toronto in terms of the labour market are as I described in my speech. When we talk about part-time and contract work, we are generally speaking about low wage work in the service industry. The fact that people have to cobble a number of low wage jobs together becomes very difficult in a city like Toronto where the government just turned down a very sensible, practical and economically viable motion by my colleague for Trinity—Spadina for a national public transit strategy. To get from one side of the city to the other in Toronto these days takes an extraordinarily long time.

To have to cobble together low wage part-time jobs in the city of Toronto is an enormous problem, especially for people trying to raise families in what is the most expensive city to live in Canada. In Toronto from 2000 to 2005, prior to the recession, we saw a 42% increase in the working poor. I am talking about the working poor. Those are the kinds of jobs that are now available to people in Toronto. There is a hollowing out of the middle-class in Toronto and that is the job market reality for people in Toronto.

This is not about hunting, fishing or logging. This is about people working in minimum wage jobs in a big, expensive city and trying to raise families. It is impossible.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we in the official opposition know this can be fixed. However, as I have sat here and listened all day to the commentary, I am a little more on the side of the member for Hamilton Mountain than the member for Vancouver East. Although I respect my colleague for her optimism, I do not think one needs advanced degrees in semantics and pragmatism to listen to this language and understand that what the government is trying to do is force low wage workers off the EI system and into the workforce. I think the language the government uses is “encouraging low wage workers off the EI system”, but it is based on the presumption that there all kinds of jobs in this country that are empty and want to be filled. However, the latest statistics I have seen show that there are six unemployed persons for every vacancy in this country, so I am not sure what labour market the government is looking to.

[Business of Supply, October 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in the House today to speak in favour of the motion put forward by my colleague from Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles. I am also very honoured to share the time with my colleague from Vancouver East, although I am not sure if she reciprocates. She just about forgot me, but never mind, I am up now.

The motion that we are talking about today focuses on the Conservative government's provisions to the working while on claim pilot program and calls on the government to take steps to fix the program immediately.

Some heady claims have been made about the government's revisions to this program. The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development has been quite adamant on two claims: first, that the vast majority of employment insurance recipients will benefit from these revisions; and second, that everyone who works will keep more. Her parliamentary secretary, the member for Simcoe—Grey, has been equally unequivocal in these very same claims for the revised working while on claim pilot. However, all is not what it is claimed to be.

According to a recent publication of the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation entitled, “What the New EI Rules Mean”:

EI beneficiaries with earned incomes that are around half the size of their weekly EI benefits (or smaller) will generally see a decrease in total income. This is because they will experience a 50 per cent clawback on income that was previously exempt from any clawback. EI beneficiaries with earned incomes that are greater than roughly half the size of their weekly EI benefits will generally experience an increase in total income, because they will experience only a 50 per cent claw back on income that was previously subject to a 100 per cent clawback.

So much for the claim that “everyone who works will keep more”.

What about the “vast majority” benefiting from the revisions?

According to a May 2012 report by the Canada Employment Insurance Commission, 240,000 EI recipients stand to be negatively impacted by these revisions. That is about 40% of all EI recipients, which is a far cry from the vast majority by any reasonable definition.

The commission expressed its concern about disincentives built into these revisions and notes:

...claimants who currently work a few hours a week while on claim, below the current allowable threshold, may decide to not work these potential hours as they would be subject to the 50% earnings exemption from the first dollar earned.

Compounding the problem here is the fact that those who are adversely impacted by these changes are those who can least absorb this financial setback. It is those who earned income that was less than half their claim who will be penalized under these changes.

It is not the operating assumption or principles of the NDP that workers on EI need incentives to look for and secure work. However, what the working while on claim program is meant to do is remove disincentives to work. In this, the revisions to the program fail miserably in that it has put in place, by way of removing the shift in clawback, a very obvious penalty for about 40% of EI recipients seeking to get back into the labour market. This is moving backwards at a time when employment insurance, properly managed, would provide an opportunity to move forward for Canadians.

With 1.4 million Canadians still unemployed, and I would note 300,000 more than pre-recession levels, we should be extending EI stimulus measures to wrestle down current unacceptably high levels of unemployment in this country.

With most Canadians living paycheque to paycheque, we should be eliminating the two-week waiting period. It must be remembered that employment insurance is not available to those who voluntarily leave their work. Therefore, there should be nothing punitive in a system that is intended to provide support to those who find themselves involuntarily without work. This, after all, is an insurance scheme that workers have paid into in an effort to save themselves from financial ruin should they lose their livelihoods.

Further to this point, and to ensure that EI provides meaningful benefit levels, the rate of benefits should make their way to 60% of insurable earnings.

It has also been noted by many that periods of unemployment are getting longer. This signals the need for improvements in the quality and monitoring of training and retraining programs.

As the last proposition, I would propose that we return the qualifying period to a minimum of 360 hours of work, irrespective of the regional rate of unemployment. This is a critically important proposition. Since the mid-1990s, the number of unemployment persons eligible for EI benefits has fallen by half, from about 80% to 90% down to about 40%. It has been estimated that Liberal government policy changes to the Employment Insurance Act in the 1990s are responsible for about half of this decline in EI eligibility.

Certainly there has been an obvious and precipitous decline in eligibility in the wake of the stricter eligibility requirements introduced by the Liberal government.

The other part of the equation that explains this rapid decline in eligibility are the long-term changes in labour market that have been ignored by both Liberal and now Conservative governments.

We should consider the following: Since 1976, the number of multiple job holders has increased by 150%; the number of part-time job holders has increased by 55%; and self-employment has increased by 29%. As one expert on employment insurance, Professor Leah Vosko, said:

Workers least well-protected [by EI] are clustered in part-time and temporary forms of paid employment and self-employment, and in sectors of the economy long viewed as ancillary but experiencing considerable growth in recent decades, such as sales and services....

This is a particularly important analysis for my riding of Beaches—East York and my city of Toronto. The changing labour market has reshaped my riding and my city socially and economically. I would note that while there has been a 59% increase in the number of temporary and contract jobs right across this country over the past decade, over that same decade there was a 68% increase in Toronto. Part of this story too has been the loss of well over 100,000 manufacturing jobs in Toronto, even pre-2008 recession.

Again, Professor Vosko was quoted in a recent study on the EI system as follows:

A notable overarching finding is that EI’s entry requirements disfavour part-time workers. For instance, in urban areas and metropolises, where entry requirements tend to be highest, more than 50 per cent of workers in this group do not meet the 700 hour threshold.

Insensitivity of regular benefit requirements to the changing nature of employment in this formula contributes to disentitlement of workers falling outside the norm of the full-time permanent job in low-unemployment regions where workers in part-time and temporary forms of employment face high entry requirements.

So it is that, in Toronto, less than 25% of unemployed workers are even eligible for EI benefits, far less than the national average for eligibility, which hovers around 40%, and well below the pre-Liberal reform levels when 56% of unemployed workers in Toronto were eligible.

There was a time in our history that employment insurance played a critical social and economic role by countering poverty and limiting income disparity in this country. Over time, successive Liberal and Conservative governments have undermined the effectiveness of our employment insurance system to accomplish these goals which has been done both through deliberate changes to the system and by way of the sheer failure of successive federal governments to adapt the system to changing labour market conditions.

This, of course, is to say nothing of the failure of successive federal governments to ensure that Canada has labour markets that provide good, productive jobs, jobs that can support families and keep Canadians out of poverty.

In the meantime, I urge the government to fix immediately the harm it has caused with its revisions, the working while on claim program.

[National Defence, September 24th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there was a time when they happily mugged for cameras in a cardboard F-35 and now they are running from W5's cameras.

The ministers in charge claim that the fix is not in, but first they included the F-35 in the secretariat's name, then they populated it with the same people who got us into this mess, then they hired an auditing firm connected with Lockheed Martin. Now we find out they are using Lockheed Martin's communications firm, paying 700,000 grand for “no comment”.

How much does is cost to get an honest answer?

[National Defence, September 21st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, there is an admission of the government's effort to hide from accountability. I will print and frame that one.

The minister and his department have been caught trying to hide embarrassing information and mismanagement as matters of national security. It is well past time for the Information Commissioner to investigate this issue.

Until then, maybe someone on that side could tell Canadians why the minister is working harder to hide his mismanagement than to fix it or, better yet, as Mike Holmes says, “Do it right the first time”.

[National Defence, September 21st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, what we are talking about here is a department-wide directive instructing officials to reclassify and hide embarrassing information. This time they were caught with $2.1 billion in lapsed funds. This is not a matter of national security. This is about a minister hiding his own mismanagement from the light of day.

When will the Conservatives start practising the transparency they used to preach and stop treating this place like a mushroom shed?