Mike Sullivan

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, May 2nd, 2013]

It is even a war on working people. I thank the minister for making sure I got my terminology correct.

We were given the role of Her Majesty's official opposition two years ago today, and almost immediately the Conservatives began their assault on working people in this country.

Canada Post locked out its workers, and despite being at arm's length from the government, the government not only legislated them back to work, but that legislation included reducing the workers' wages and attacked their pension plan.

Shortly after that, the government went after the workers at Air Canada, twice, legislating them back to work before a strike or lockout even began, again with conditions unfavourable to workers.

Later, the government legislated another private company back to work: Canadian Pacific Railway, a private company. I remind the House that it was not even a public corporation or a crown corporation.

Air Canada then closed its maintenance bases in Winnipeg, Montreal and Toronto. Despite the government's assurance that those bases and those workers would be protected, the jobs are now performed elsewhere, and the Conservative government sat on its hands and did nothing.

Caterpillar closed its Electro-Motive Diesel plant in London, Ontario, after getting a lovely cheque from the Prime Minister during the election campaign. The workers were tossed out and production moved to the U.S.

The U.S. government then loaned money to Iron Ore Company of Canada in Labrador to buy its locomotives in the United States. The U.S. government is loaning money to a Canadian company to buy American. How ironic is that? Again, the Conservatives did not even raise a finger to help the workers. We do not have a buy Canadian policy. Nothing in the budget suggests we should be buying in Canada.

However, the Conservatives had not finished. They attacked working Canadians again by demanding they work an additional two years before retiring. The Prime Minister announced this broken promise in Davos, Switzerland, I guess because he is afraid of facing Canadians on issues as big as that.

Next, the Conservatives attacked workers unlucky enough to need access to the safety net called employment insurance. They have reduced the number of weeks of payment, raised the premiums and put in place new rules that demand workers take jobs that pay up to 30% less and can be up to an hour's drive away. Of course, that 30% less becomes a vicious circle and a downward spiral, because the next time individuals are laid off, they have to take 30% less, and the next time they are laid off, another 30%, until finally they are paying to work.

While workers were trying to fathom those changes, the government made it easier for employers to not hire Canadian workers by easing rules for importing workers from other countries. A staggering 338,000 such workers are in Canada now, in jobs ranging from food service workers in fast food restaurants to airline pilots. Banks are even so bold as to ask the outgoing laid-off staff to train their foreign replacements.

This is not what we should be doing in this country. This is not what we want in a budget, to have Canadian jobs fleeing as fast as we can get them out the door in favour of cheaper foreign labour. That is not how to run this economy, and the Conservative government is running our economy quickly into the ground.

Bill C-377, a government bill in private member's bill clothing, attacks the unions that help support these workers by subjecting those unions to mountains of red tape. So much for being the party of red tape reduction.

Now we have Bill C-60, the next anti-worker salvo in the government's arsenal of weapons aimed at workers in this country. I notice that, as of today, the government is afraid of debating that bill. It has now limited the ability of this House of Commons to actually bring to this House of Commons issues with regard to this bill, in front of every member of this House. Instead, the Conservatives have given us time allocation, which will force the bill to be voted on in four days, after only four days of debate.

There are 60 separate acts of Parliament that will be discussed in only four days.

How on earth are we, as representatives of the people, going to give the proper accounting of how we looked after their interests over the course of the next four days? I stagger to think how we can do it.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Transport has mused about eliminating the Rand formula, another attack on working people in our country. The Rand formula is a uniquely Canadian solution to the problem of union membership, which was put forth in the 1940s and is a model around the world of how to protect employers and union members, yet the government would perhaps try to attack it.

The Minister of State for Transport has suggested on a number of occasions that the wages at Canada Post are too high. He would attack wages. That is part of the problem we have with the government. Each time we turn around, the government is trying to lessen Canadian wages and expectations of job and wage. Foreign workers are allowed to be paid 15% less than the prevailing Canadian wage, yet we are supposed to think that is a good thing. The government is driving down wages time after time with its policies and formulas, and even this budget would do it again.

How would it do it specifically? It would do it by attacking, through the Treasury Board, the collective bargaining process in crown corporations. Some 49 crown corporations would now have to face the government, supposedly at arm's length, but the arm is in a stranglehold around the neck of the crown corporations and their workers.

By that arm's length now permitting the Treasury Board to determine how much money these crown corporations get, which the government does already, the crown corporations would be faced with trying to make do with what they have. The government has already lowered the budget for VIA Rail. It has lowered the budget for all of the crown corporations, generally, across the system.

Now the government wants to go in and tell the crown corporations how to do business with their workers. It has not consulted with anyone on these changes.

The Treasury Board can apparently change a crown corporation's bargaining mandate at any time in collective bargaining, which could force the employer to engage in regressive bargaining, going backward. That is what the Conservatives seem to want to do. They want to take Canada backward as fast they can and take wages backward to make us compete with low wages in parts of the world with which we have no business trying to compete.

The Treasury Board could dictate that a crown corporation violate countless rules under the Canada Labour Code. We have the Canada Labour Code for a reason. It is to govern the working relationships between federal employers, including crown corporations, and their workers in a manner that everyone can read and understand. Now we have the Treasury Board saying it is going to set different rules and not pay attention to the Canada Labour Code. I do not know if that would survive a court challenge, but it is scary nonetheless.

The Treasury Board can have one of its employees present at bargaining to ensure that the crown corporations follow its dictates. Not only will the big hand of Big Brother be no longer at arm's length, but it will be right there at the table. Big Brother will be watching as they try to bargain with their employees in a manner that is fair, reasonable and just, which is what we want in this country.

The Treasury Board can also dictate that a crown corporation can change the conditions of employment for a non-union employee at any time. There are laws against that in this country, called the Canada Labour Code, which the members opposite should read one of these times. The Canada Labour Code suggests that it would be tantamount to a constructive dismissal and is illegal. It is illegal here in Canada to constructively dismiss individuals by changing their terms and conditions in a way that they can no longer stand. That would be challengeable under the Canada Labour Code.

The provisions that have come to us in the form of Bill C-60 are, unfortunately for us, just another salvo in the war against the working people in this country.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, May 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-60 today, which is yet another salvo in the Conservative attack on working people in this country.

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, May 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am somewhat concerned by the bill's attack on workers. His colleague who spoke before him has a plant in his riding. Our agreements with Europe, which are being touted by the government as the next wave of free trade, could directly threaten those workers in the riding of York Centre where Bombardier has a significant workforce. There is a lot of that stuff going on in Europe. If we are making it easier for these things to come from Europe to Canada, that will directly affect those workers. That is part of what our concern about the bill is: it is attacking workers. It is attacking workers both in terms of taxes and in terms of direct attacks on collective bargaining.

Could the member comment on that?

[Economic Action Plan 2013 Act, No. 1, May 2nd, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I negotiated for the CBC for 25 years. I am well aware of how things are done in that crown corporation, and a number of very serious trades were made over those years in order to protect its pension plan, for example. The government has given hints that it wants to go after some pension plans. It has already gone after the OAS for seniors over 65 and has given very broad hints that it believes pension plans to be too rich. I am very concerned that this is just a smokescreen and, in fact, what it is going to do is order the CBC to start dismantling its pension plan.

Would the member like to comment?

[Navigable Waters Protection Act, May 1st, 2013]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-502, An Act to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act (Humber River).

Mr. Speaker, I move, seconded by the member for Parkdale—High Park, to request leave to introduce a bill to amend the Navigable Waters Protection Act with respect to the Humber River.

Last year, the Conservative government removed most of Canada's rivers and lakes from the Navigable Waters Protection Act through its omnibus budget implementation bill. Out of Canada's hundreds of thousands of rivers and lakes, only 62 rivers and 97 lakes remain protected. That is simply not enough.

Today, I am seeking to restore the Humber River to protection under the Navigable Waters Protection Act. The river is a Canada heritage designated river, part of the historic Toronto Carrying Place trail and has over 800,000 people living within its watershed.

The Humber River has its headwaters in the ancient rock of the Niagara Escarpment and the glacial hills of the Oak Ridges Moraine. It flows through a rich mosaic of Carolinian forests and meadows, past farms and abandoned mills, before meandering through the largest urban area in Canada, Metropolitan Toronto, passing by my community of York South—Weston.

The Humber is the backyard of not only Toronto but Mississauga, Peel, York, Brampton, Caledon, King, Richmond Hill, Vaughan, Aurora, et cetera. It is a unique river that flows through the most densely populated area of Canada, but still retains many of its natural and cultural values.

By placing the full length of the river, all 126 kilometres of it, back into the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Humber would be once more protected from unbridled development, requiring full environment assessments with public consultations for any project, be it transportation, pipeline or other development to be conducted to ensure the health of the river before going ahead.

This is a river worth protecting and I look forward to support for my bill by all members of the House.

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

[Old Age Security Act, April 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise in support of this bill put forward by the member for Laval—Les Îles, who has obviously put together something that will be very helpful to a lot of the poorest of Canadians.

That is part of what the NDP has pledged to do in all of its years of existence: to ensure that the poorest of Canadians are looked after, that we are not placing wrongful burdens on people in our society, and that we are dealing with the poorest citizens and, in particular, the poorest seniors in a way that is humane, thoughtful and reasonable. That is what this bill is.

Being poor in Canada ought not to be a crime, but sometimes poor people are penalized for things most Canadians take for granted. It could be something as simple as prepaying funeral expenses as part of looking after themselves and their families in the future.

We sometimes forget the daily constraints faced by poor people, the three million or so Canadians who live below Canada's poverty line. That is one of the worst records in the G7. Finding enough money after paying the rent is a daily challenge. Too often they do not have enough money to feed their children or to look after their health or their future. It is a sad reality that in a country as rich as ours, hundreds of thousands of people need help putting food on the table and have to rely on food banks. This is a shame and a travesty.

It is said that the inevitable things in life are death and taxes. I will not talk about the tax increases in the last federal budget, which will hurt poor people more than most, but there is a cost to dealing with the practicalities of death, which are funeral expenses. The most prudent way to deal with these expenses is through a prepaid funeral plan. Death comes to poor people as it does to anyone else, but why should the poor be penalized for enlisting in a prepaid funeral expense plan? That is exactly what the government does to elderly people who, because of their poverty, qualify for the guaranteed income supplement as part of old age security.

Let us understand this. For a single senior to qualify for GIS, income must be below $16,500 a year, and for a couple, it must be below $21,888 a year. Let us face it: at those income levels, people are poor. Why, then, does the government penalize those same seniors when they withdraw a bit of money from their RRSPs to pay for the inevitable, their funerals, by cutting their GIS benefit? That is what the current law does, and that is simply penalizing the poor. The irony is astounding.

This bill would allow those same seniors to prepay their funeral expenses with money from an RRSP. This makes sense. It does absolutely nothing to change the living conditions of seniors. This is, in fact, a prudent course of action, a humane, rational, reasonable and emotional course of action to protect their families in the future from having to deal with part of the tragedy of their deaths. Some of the expenses and emotional turmoil will have been taken care of by the seniors themselves. Who better could decide how to do that?

Having an RRSP is not a crime in this country. Some seniors have RRSPs. The government encourages savings through RRSPs, and 47% of seniors on OAS have an RRSP. Surely being poor and dying, as we all do, is not a crime. Using a modest sum of $2,500, a very small amount of money in the grand scheme of things, to pay for funeral expenses should never be considered income in the hands of a senior, but that is what the government is suggesting it is and that is, in fact, the case now. If seniors withdraw $2,500 to prepay funeral expenses, that withdrawal becomes income in that year.

Did they themselves receive a benefit from that $2,500? Did they go out and buy a new TV or an old clunker of a car? Did they do anything to improve their lot in life? No. They are protecting their loved ones from the problems that will face them with when those individuals pass away, and that is not something that should be counted as income. That is what this bill proposes in the calculation of the future GIS.

Luckily, I am not the only one who sees the irony. A single senior with an annual income of $16,000 a year could not afford this any other way. Nobody is going to be able to afford to prepay funeral expenses without dipping into their RRSPs.

The bill stands on its own merits. It is a clear example of a commitment we in the NDP have made to reduce poverty among seniors. I need not remind the government that the NDP, in fact, voted against the budget in 2011 because it did not actually take all seniors out of poverty. Jack Layton and the NDP had suggested to the government, in 2010, in 2009, in 2008, that we needed to deal with that. The government only did a half-measure, which was to raise the level of the GIS, but it was nowhere near enough to get all seniors out of poverty. Then the next year, it took all the money back by telling seniors they could not retire until they are 67 anyway, and actually take more than that money back. We have a government that gives with one hand and takes back with the other.

The irony of this situation is that these seniors are the poorest of the poor in the seniors' world, yet the government will, as the parliamentary secretary has already said, vote against the bill on the basis of some fabricated cost. Some of the government members will anyway. It is a private member's bill and the vote is up to each individual member.

In fact, only those seniors who have an RRSP and only those seniors who decide to do this will benefit, but they will not actually benefit. What will happen is the government will continue to pay them what it has paid them already. Therefore, we are not talking about a cost. We are talking about a reduction in tax savings that the government is taking from these seniors. It is taking money out of the pockets of seniors who do this in the year following their use of this money to prepay their funeral expenses. That is what the government is currently doing. It is taking money out of the pockets of seniors.

We are suggesting that these are the poorest of seniors to begin with. We should not be taking money out of their pockets in subsequent years. The minister has suggested this is an outrageous and exorbitant amount of money. Our calculations are about 1,000 times less than the minister's own calculations. I feel our calculations are much more accurate and more closely reflect what it would mean when it stopped taking money out of the pockets of seniors.

We are not suggesting this money should not be taxable. If a seniors withdraw money from their RRSPs, none of those rules would change. There is no huge administrative expense to this. There is no enormous burden. This is a simple and effective way to allow seniors to plan their death. This is something all seniors should be able to do with dignity, just as the rest of Canadians do.

We firmly believe this is part of an overall policy of ensuring that the people who built this great country, our seniors, are in fact looked after in the best and most humane way. We have been unsuccessful in convincing the government to lift them all out of poverty and we have been unsuccessful so far, however, in 2015 we will change that, in convincing the government to back off on making them wait until they are 67 before they get any of this money. That two-year wait will cause untold harm on a number of seniors in our country.

However, we can, and should, take this simple and straightforward approach and this simple and straightforward forward measure of ensuring that seniors who want to plan their death have the ability to do so without it costing them out of pocket the following year as the government takes the money back.

[Old Age Security Act, April 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to thank my colleague from Laval—Les Îles for this excellent bill. Seniors who are already at the poverty line have come to me in my riding with the same issue. The issue is that their income in a following year is affected by their decisions in the previous year. They do not know that this is going to happen until the following year, so they cannot plan for it.

This is a simple but effective change that would change the lives of many seniors, and I wish to commend the member for his foresight in this bill.

It is a very small cost to any treasury. It is less than the cost of one senator per year.

[Public Safety, April 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the fact is, last year's budget did cut our front-line agents at the border, and we are all paying the price in community safety. Last Sunday, armed robbers shot two people in a bank robbery in my riding. Last night, another man was killed by gunfire in Scarborough.

Seventy per cent of the guns Toronto police seize are smuggled in from the United States. When will the Conservatives realize that cutting border services and failing to address gun smuggling is putting public safety at risk?

[Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act, April 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, that is an excellent question. The NDP has said on a number of occasions, and will continue to say, that crime prevention should be the number one focus of any government. In fact, creating fewer victims in the first place is what we should be aiming for.

I have a private member's bill coming up that will deal with 85% of the street crime in my riding, which is the theft of cellphones, and the government has said it is opposed to it. I am trying to prevent the crime before it happens, and the government has indicated that it is not willing to prevent the crime before it happens.

Maybe it wants to fill up the jails it built; I do not know, but our job should be preventing crimes in the first place. If a robust and effective mental health care system in each of the provinces prevents even one crime, then we have all done justice to the system.

[Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act, April 26th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in fact we said we support this bill at second reading, so we are not looking for an excuse. All we want to do is make sure that we do not unintentionally create a problem by amending a bill in a way that actually re-victimizes individuals. That is all.

Perhaps there are victims in the world who would not want to be told, “By the way, the person who did something brutal to you or caused you to become a victim of a crime, a person who was found not criminally responsible, is being released. Do you want to know about it?” If it is six or 10 years later and the victim has forgotten all about it and there is a chance it will be harmful, we simply want that possibility to be taken into consideration. That is all.

I am not suggesting that victims are not paramount; they are, and the NDP believes they are. We simply want to make sure we craft this bill in a way that does not cause injury to any victims.