Mike Sullivan

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Absolutely, Mr. Speaker. If the Investment Canada Act had been strengthened, we would not see the demise of Electro-Motive Diesel and we would not be facing the possible problems in the member's riding with Rio Tinto.

This benefit to Canada is a no-brainer. It should be automatic. We should automatically be in a position where any time a foreign buyer wants to buy our stuff that creates jobs in this country, it should be automatic for the government to say, “Only if there is a benefit to Canada”. The size should not matter. The current government does not have that way of thinking. We in the NDP do.

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Compton—Stanstead.

My heart goes out to the workers of the EMD factory. It is never ever easy when massive layoffs take place, in particular at a technologically advanced modern facility. It is one thing for a factory to close when it has old equipment or there are better competitors in the field. However, for a factory to close that has one of the most modern production facilities in the world beggars belief. It makes it very difficult to believe that this was not the plan all along.

This company has a myriad of patents on this equipment. They are worldwide patents. Nobody can build what it builds. It is against the law in most countries where these patents exist for anybody to copy this equipment. There are significant environment regulations about to hit North America that require railroad manufacturers and operators to make their engines cleaner, and ships at sea as well.

This company was on the leading edge of that technology. It was the only company that was going to produce this equipment efficiently, so that operators would not use a urea spray system to clean the air as it escapes. This means rail operators would not have to carry along a tank of urea. This company was on the verge of perfecting that technology. It is a crying shame that the technology and the patents have left Canada. Apparently the equipment is going to leave Canada, too. The expertise and the workers are disposable and have been shelved. The workers will be left to the devices of the EI system. People hope EI offices will not be closing in London soon because a lot of people are going to need them.

There is a United States connection to this disaster as well. President Obama has done what the Conservative government refuses to do. He has insisted that public money in the United States designated for public projects goes to American companies. That is not the case in Canada. There is a lot of public money being spent by all levels of government. However, it is only at the provincial level that there is any requirement whatsoever that the money be spent on workers in Canada.

The Province of Ontario currently has a 25% regulation. If it spends money on public transit projects, it has to spend 25% of the money in Canada on Canadian workers. That is not the case federally. The federal government spends an awful lot of money, though not as much as it should, on public transit projects in this country. Yet it does not guarantee that a nickel of it will be spent on Canadian workers. In fact, it encourages companies that operate in Korea and China to bid on those projects. The government hopes those companies get the projects because Conservatives think taxpayers benefit from cheap labour. The taxpayers are also the workers in London and they did not benefit by the notion of cheap labour.

In the U.S. there is a huge Amtrak order coming. Of course, if EMD wants to access that order, it will have to build the trains in the U.S. because of the U.S. protectionist stance. There is no such stance in Canada. It was easy to close the plant because Canada did not have to worry about whether federal money had any link whatsoever to Canadian jobs.

The folks who actually earned the benefit of that capital cost allowance, the $5 million that flowed through to orders to EMD, are in the process of renewing their entire fleet. CP is re-powering its older fleet of hundreds of engines. CN will follow shortly. GO Transit and VIA Rail will follow because those fleets are not environmentally sound.

They have signed a memorandum of agreement with the Minister of the Environment to re-power their fleets with more environmentally friendly fleets. Now they cannot have the work done in Canada. The plant is closed and they have to go to the United States. They will still get the capital cost allowance, the tax benefit to the Canadian owners is still there, but they will now have to buy that equipment in the United States because we did nothing about stopping it.

GO Transit, a provincially regulated, owned and operated heavy commuter rail system currently has 57 engines pulling its trains around Toronto. It is in the process of ordering many more because commuter rail is expanding in Toronto, in part with federal money. Every single one of those 57 original engines was built at the EMD plant. The shell was built elsewhere for some of them, but every one of those engines was built in London.

Now those workers can look as the money flows out from GO Transit. Every one of those engines has to be rebuilt within the next 10 years. Every dollar will now go to Muncie, Indiana or somewhere else in the United States where there is another manufacturer, because they cannot be purchased in Canada. Why not? Because the only plant that built locomotive engines in Canada has now closed.

There is no reason for this to happen. Ontario has a 25% buy Ontario policy. There is no equivalent buy Canada policy from the Conservative government because it prefers that the taxpayer be protected by being able to buy in China, Korea, or in this case, the United States. GO Transit is going to refurbish all of those locomotives very soon. It was looking at EMD because it was at the leading edge of companies providing the environmental protection that GO Transit has been ordered to provide by the minister of the environment in Ontario. Now it cannot do that.

The Province of Ontario has an air-rail link, a train from the airport. It uses diesel engines bought in Japan. Why? Because it said there was no manufacturer in Ontario. The Liberal premier of Ontario said, “we are going to waive our buy Ontario policy because there is no plant in Ontario that could build that”. There is, but there is some other business going on.

When GO Transit has to buy another 57 engines, the Province of Ontario will be able to say the plant is gone, so feel free to buy anywhere. If GO Transit has to buy from EMD because it has the best technology, then the workers in Muncie, Indiana making $16 an hour will be the ones to get the benefit of tens, probably hundreds of millions of dollars of our taxpayer money.

That is wrong. We have done a disservice to the whole transportation sector in this country. We had one of the best employers in the world, building the best engines in the world, at the leading edge of the best technology in the world. That employer has now gone.

CN and CP are Canadian companies and get the capital cost allowance. I do not know if VIA and GO get the capital cost allowance. Those companies now have to go elsewhere. The capital cost allowance does not generate a single Canadian job.

One of the speakers earlier suggested that EMD did not get a single tax break from the government. I did not realize that there was a clause in the $60 billion reduction in corporate taxes that said EMD is exempt from this reduction. I think it did get a pretty tax break, but now it has left the country.

[Business of Supply, February 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to my colleague's comments.

I wonder whether the final comment, the final suggestion that the fault lies with the CAW, is an accurate reflection of what really happened and if the suggestion that the CAW was at fault because, in his words, it was not prepared to take the single largest pay cut in its history is a really accurate reflection of what took place.

I do not believe the members of the CAW, the workers, were in any way prepared to slash their wages in half to meet the demand of an employer who would only demand more. We know how this works. They test the water to see how much they are willing to take and then if they say yes, they go in and get more.

Therefore, how is the CAW at fault?

[Employment, February 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the current government is also failing Toronto families. Friday's dismal job numbers show that Toronto still faces one of the highest unemployment rates in the country. Household debt is skyrocketing because family-supporting jobs just cannot be found. Meanwhile, the Conservatives are sitting on their hands. They are out of touch with the reality in the city.

Where is the plan to ensure that Toronto families can find decent jobs and afford their bills? Where is the plan?

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as usual we are faced with the rhetoric of “We voted against this, we voted against that”. What we voted against was $6 billion in corporate tax cuts, cuts that made the government unable to take seniors out of poverty. We are opposed to the $19 billion cost of extra prisons because of a crime agenda for crime that is not happening. We are opposed to the direction in which the government is taking us, which is what caused us to vote against the entire budget.

We are of course in favour of raising seniors out of poverty, but the Conservatives have not done that.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the government keeps saying that this will not have any impact on current seniors. Maybe it will, maybe it will not. However, everyone becomes a senior at some point and there will be a definite impact. It will mean, as I said in my speech, that almost every pension system in this country will have to move to keep in lock step with this. I am fearful that this will just be the first step in a series of reductions in our social safety net, and this first one attacks seniors first.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her very good question because the government does not appear to be focused on real issues. This is a made-up issue in order to throw a monkey wrench into our retirement system. However, there are real issues like health care, whose costs will rise and for which there need to be smarter ways of dealing with it. We need to have better investment in home care. We need to have better investment in systems that will keep people out of hospitals and keep our population healthy.

That is not what the government is about: it is about cutting things, and we are opposed to that.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, the other effect of this is that it would discriminate against women. Women make roughly 70% of the earnings of men in this country and, therefore, 70% of their pension. Therefore, women, by far, make up the majority of people who are reliant more so than men on OAS and GIS. What would happen to those women if the age were moved to 67? More women would be in poverty and would need to work another two years.

We like to think that we would want to move Canada forward and moving Canada forward does not mean moving the age to 67. Moving Canada forward means protecting what we have; strengthening the Canada pension system, which would, in turn, cause less of a demand on GIS; making pensions more secure against bankruptcies; and maintaining and improving the GIS, not just the little amount the Conservatives talked about in their budget but enough to take every senior out of poverty. That is what we need and that is what the government ought to be doing.

[Business of Supply, February 2nd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.

I believe we are at a watershed moment in our new 41st Parliament. We have now experienced the first of what I am fearful, and we talk about fear a fair bit, will be one of the many hidden agenda items of the Conservative government.

There was never any discussion in any of the past election campaigns about the need to raise the age at which people receive old age security. If there is a problem, and we do not believe there is, there has never been any discussion among the Canadian people about this problem. Baby boomers, of which I am a member, have been around since I was born in 1952, which, coincidentally, was the year the old age security system actually started.

We all know we will retire and now the Conservatives have created a crisis in order to achieve a different agenda, in order to start rolling back the social safety net of Canada. This is the first step and it is a dangerous first step. We will see more of this in the future I am afraid.

As a wag in Halifax has said, the Prime Minister opened a can of worms with a Swiss army knife and once again the most vulnerable members of society must pay for the excesses of the government. Seniors are just one of a long list of members of our society who, according to the Prime Minister, must accept less from government and should not expect to keep a reasonable standard of living when they reach retirement.

This crisis has been created as a result of a temporary blip caused by baby boomers. It is temporary, so why not find a temporary fix, like perhaps rescinding the corporate tax cuts that have taken so much out of the government treasury?

The government came to office with an enormous structural surplus and it is gone. Not only is it gone but, in their term in office, the Conservatives have created the biggest deficit ever in Canadian history. Now they are saying that the cupboard is bare and that seniors will need e to pay for it. That is not what the NDP believes. We do not believe in going backward. We believe in moving Canada forward, and this is moving backward.

The Prime Minister and the government also tell us not to worry because the Canada pension plan is solvent and that it will not be touched. What they have forgotten to tell us is that Canada pension is inexorably intertwined with the old age security system, as are all the pension plans in this country, private and public. They all have what is called a normal retirement date and they all require that there be some other form of assistance for the poorest of Canadians and the middle class of Canadians, that being old age security at age 65.

Once we step into the 67 world, as the Prime Minister appears willing to do, all of those systems must move to age 67. It will not just be old age security, because that would leave an enormous gap between what all of the other pension, retirement and income systems in Canada already have. All pension plans are based on a normal retirement age and almost, without exception, they are all at age 65, not 66 or 67. Moving away from that would put enormous pressure on other plans to move in lockstep.

Many employees have planned their careers around retirement at age 65. For those whose total pension income pays less than $16,000, they count on the guaranteed income supplement to top-up their pension to a reasonable amount. For seniors who have only the old age security to count on, most of them women, it is the difference between abject poverty and living at the poverty line. However, the government is telling them to suck it up buttercup, that they should either continue working past retirement age or go on welfare for the next two years.

We do not agree that we should drag this country backward when we have worked so hard to protect the systems and security measures that are in place now.

What if those individuals were not able work another two years, as the Prime Minister suggests? Both the federal government and the Government of New Brunswick allow forced retirement at age 65. All provinces allow forced retirement in jobs that require large physical or safety requirements, such as firefighters. Employers can fire people for being too old. How would people be able to work past the age of 65 when several levels of government suggest that they can be fired at age 65? Many employers work very hard to discourage people from working past 65.

I am aware of that from my career as a union rep. As soon as the Province of Ontario eliminated forced retirement at age 65, employers went through hoops to make it difficult for people to stay on past the age of 65. They changed benefit plans, income plans and tried to make people work for less, all to try to force them to leave or quit at age 65. Why? Because the kid coming out of school will work for a lot less. That is the kind of Canada the Conservatives are building.

The Prime Minister's proposal largely affects lower and middle income Canadians. This does not bother the famous 1%. They have other income beyond CPP and OAS. Their OAS is clawed back and they never qualify for GIS, so they would not be affected by the Prime Minister's proposals.

As for the guaranteed income supplement, it is not paid to those who already have reasonable pensions. The GIS goes to the 1.7 million seniors today who otherwise would live in abject poverty. That is one in three seniors in Canada. The fastest and easiest way to cut government spending on items like the GIS is to raise the minimum pensions. If Canada pension goes up, the GIS bill goes down. There is no need to raise the retirement age to 67 if the Canada pension plan can pick up the slack and, surprise, surprise, there would be no cost to the treasury.

There are significant impacts on the provinces that no one is talking about. Welfare stops at age 65. What happens between ages 65 and 67? Provincial long-term disability is not paid past age 65. Provincial workers' compensation and WSIB is not paid past age 65. This unilateral proposal by the Prime Minister to raise the retirement age to 67 would create significant holes in provincial social assistance programs, costing millions of dollars.

Further, most private pension plans take into account OAS payments. They are interdependent. Many of them have what they call the level income option where individuals can opt for a different retirement age based on the knowledge that they will get OAS. All of those deals would be gone.

Those holes in the private sector plans would create significant costs for employers and force extra costs on the provinces. All private benefit plans depend on retirement at age 65. Private long-term disability plans all end at age 65. There would be enormous costs to employers to do this.

Has anybody talked about the domino effect of what you are proposing? What you are proposing would actually cause an enormous cascade of costs on employers, on governments and on individuals. It is not just future seniors. I know you are musing, “This is only those younger people who don't really think about retirement right now. Don't worry, we won't touch it for several years yet”.

[Pooled Registered Pension Plans Act, February 1st, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with some interest to my colleague's speech.

Once again he has reiterated the Conservative Party's second story about tax cuts for businesses, that the tax cuts for businesses have resulted in greater profits.

His colleague, the Minister of Finance, would suggest that is not the case, that the tax cuts for businesses were to create jobs. One cannot suck and blow at the same time: Either there are profits to be made in otherwise profitable corporations by lowering their tax burden, or they will create jobs. We cannot do both. Which is it?