Niki Ashton

[Business of Supply, December 10th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I would like to give my colleague an opportunity to share some thoughts.

Here we are in a new Parliament. We are in a minority setting, with the same Prime Minister and many of the same players in the government, with a chance to speak of Canada having a broken relationship. Coming from western Canada, I am deeply concerned about the billions of dollars' worth of agricultural products that are no longer being sold in China, the kinds of opportunities for our economic well-being that are no longer being acted upon and the way in which the government has allowed a key relationship to be broken, something that is having a devastating impact on people in my part of the country.

[Indigenous Affairs, December 10th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, on October 21, first nations and Métis people in Churchill—Keewatinook Aski sent a message to the Liberal government: enough of promising a new relationship and doing the opposite; enough of promising the Dene to settle the north of 60 land claim and bailing; enough of promising to solve the housing crisis and failing; enough of ignoring the suicide crisis in Gods Lake Narrows where over 100 people, primarily young girls, have attempted suicide in the last four months.

Will the Minister of Indigenous Services acknowledge that the Liberals failed on their promises and act urgently on the issues facing first nations and Métis people?

[The Environment, December 6th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, the planet is warming. The verdict is clear. We are running out of room to manoeuvre. People in the North are already living with the effects of climate change. The ice season is getting shorter and our infrastructure is at risk.

The throne speech does not even mention this. Ending oil subsidies would have been a start, but not buying any more pipelines is not even mentioned. In fact, I wonder what the member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie thinks about this. Clearly, he is finally discovering just what the Liberal Party's legacy is.

Why are the Liberals refusing to take action?

[Natural Resources, June 17th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, a Vale tailings dam by my community of Thompson has been flagged by outside investigators for stability concerns. Vale told its shareholders of this, but not people living on the ground. In fact, it took an investigative report from The Wall Street Journal for this to come to light. No one wants another Mount Polley disaster, but this is a company that has shown repeatedly that it does not take these kinds of safety concerns seriously.

What is the government doing to ensure the protection of the people and the environment around Thompson and in our north?

[Indigenous Affairs, June 17th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, four years ago, people in our north held out hope when it came to the Liberal government's commitments with words like “reconciliation”, “nation-to-nation relationships”, “support for the middle class” and “champion on climate change”. However, fast forward four years, and the shine is off.

The housing crisis on first nations is worse than it was. Health care continues to be underfunded and inadequate, and when it comes to middle-class jobs, our north has lost hundreds of them, and the federal government has not lifted a finger.

As for climate change, not only has Canada failed, but first nations and northern communities are paying the price. The disappearing ice roads point to the urgent need for all-weather roads, and as wildlife is impacted, so are people. There must be immediate action.

Enough of the talk. First nations, Métis and northern people deserve a federal government on their side, one that works with them to take on climate change and crushing inequality. The Liberals are not the answer, and we cannot go back to the Conservatives. Only the NDP will fight for our north and our Canada.

[Pharmacare, June 14th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, people in our north and across the country are forced to make impossible choices because of the high cost of medication.

It is inconceivable that in 2019, in Canada, people have to choose between buying food and medication. Liberals have been putting pharmaceutical and insurance companies in the driver's seat, but the Hoskins advisory board is clear: Canadians need a universal, public, single-payer pharmacare.

This is what the NDP has been pushing for. Enough of the half-measures and the favours to the Liberals' corporate friends. Will the Liberal government implement universal, comprehensive, public pharmacare, yes or no?

[The Environment, June 14th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians want bold action on climate change, and they know that there is no time to waste.

The NDP has called on the government to invest in green jobs and green energy, but what did the Prime Minister do? He bought fridges and pipelines for his billionaire pals. Four years in power, and all we have seen from the Liberal government are more subsidies for big oil and its pipelines. This is not how we save the environment.

When will the Liberals stop siding with the big polluters so we can win the fight against climate change?

[Indigenous Affairs, June 13th, 2019]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the government betrayed the Dene in northern Manitoba and northern Saskatchewan. For years, they have been negotiating to pursue their right to land and resources north of 60.

They were so close to reaching an agreement. A few weeks ago, they were told one thing about consultations and initialling and then at the last minute, the minister reversed her position.

This is an egregious act of bad faith. It sets the Dene communities back years. It is the opposite of reconciliation.

What will the minister do to fix this major problem?

[Federal Trades Strategy, June 12th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to discuss the matter of the motion on a federal trades strategy, Motion No. 227, put forward by my colleague from Niagara Centre. This motion proposes a study of the creation of a strategy that would consider labour shortages in the skilled trades as well as the impact these shortages could have on major projects across the country.

We in the NDP welcome initiatives to gather more information and data on labour issues and shortages, and we will support this motion, but reluctantly, because this motion's stance is nowhere near what we need to tackle the problems Canadian trades workers and Canadian workers are facing.

First, this motion is missing a key fact, which is that rampant labour shortages in the skilled trades industries are not happening all across our country. There are labour shortages in some regions, and they need to be documented, but the context of these shortages needs to be appropriately discussed. While there are shortages in specific sectors and regions, it is not an industry-wide phenomenon across the country.

Focusing on the overall unemployment rate or job growth data is not acceptable when this data does not include important facts, such as the unemployment rate being higher among both youth and older workers, for example. We know that 10% of young people in Canada are unemployed, as opposed to 5% of the overall population.

It is also important to consider the perspectives of all parties in the study my colleague is putting forward. Any study on labour shortages must include vigorous consultation with unions and labour representatives, including rank and file labour activists, to understand the unique issues facing different industries, because it would be an uneven perspective otherwise. If one asks workers, they will say that despite labour shortages, wages are not increasing, which should clue the government in to the fact that the issue is not simply one of shortages across the country.

It is still taking Canadians just as long to find jobs as it did during the great recession of 2008. The average duration of unemployment during the great recession was 21 weeks, while the average duration of unemployment in 2008 was 15 weeks. In 2018, the average duration of unemployment was 19 weeks. It is taking workers four weeks longer to find work now than it did 10 years ago.

The CFIB put out a business barometer that found that nearly 47% of small and mid-sized businesses are being held back by a lack of skilled labour in several provinces. We know that in British Columbia, for example, multiple large-scale construction projects that are under way are facing a serious labour shortage. Provinces such as Ontario expect a shortage of 100,000 skilled workers within the next 15 years. Considering that unemployment is at a 43-year low, it is concerning that Canadian businesses are saying that they struggle to fill job vacancies, while at the same time, we know that Canadians are struggling to find employment. This kind of situation cannot stand.

What is the context for these labour shortages? FTQ Construction, the largest construction union in Quebec, told us about how industry workers are faring. Despite the labour shortages announced in the sector, the average construction worker in Quebec makes $38,853 per year. This compares rather poorly to the Quebec median income of $59,822. Moreover, 43% of construction workers make less than $29,999 per year, which is the living wage in Quebec for an adult with a child. FTQ Construction is right to affirm that “we will continue to say that there is no labour shortage so long as there are families who cannot make ends meet because they are not working enough hours”.

Basing the motion on broad labour shortages is simply not sufficient. If the government has not identified the problem correctly, it is not going to be able to find the proper solutions, no matter how hard it looks into labour shortages. There are solutions, but this pointless motion from the Liberals will not lead us to any of them. If we follow their lead on this, we will just be running in circles, and working-class families will continue to suffer from government inaction.

We must stand up for workers and their families. This motion will do nothing to help them, and it will not help anybody looking for a job to find one. Workers deserve a government that shares their concerns and takes wage stagnation seriously.

A recent OECD report found that 13.5% of jobs in Canada were at risk of automation and that 28.6% were at risk of significant changes due to increased automation in industries. Overall, more than 40% of the Canadian workforce is at risk of being replaced by automation in the next two decades.

Automation is a threat to the jobs of many workers and insisting that job shortages are a problem, while being unwilling to recognize the effect automation will have on employment, shows that the government does not get it and does not care about the workers who are most at risk of unemployment. Increasing access to both post-secondary education and jobs training will lessen the impending problems automation will pose in the future.

The NDP has solutions for helping workers. Canada's rural regions need help attracting labour, and that is why we are proposing to offer a tax credit directly to people who agree to move to our country's rural areas and stay there long-term.

We want to foster worker retention by offering a helping hand directly to workers. That is the kind of action that is needed to solve the problem.

We must also focus on finding legitimate answers as to why there may be shortages in the skilled trades. While it may be easy for Liberals to assume labour shortages are due to a lack of skilled workers, more research and data are necessary to reach conclusions on industries that have low job security. However, we will not find the solutions we need by proposing a motion where the premise of the study is that the only challenge the trades industry is facing is job shortages. The solution for labour shortages is to provide incentives that work for workers, not just for employers.

Furthermore, the topic of labour shortages is already under study in the human resources committee as of May 2019. This motion in front of us just shows that the Liberals are so dedicated to avoiding the real problems Canadians are facing that they would rather sponsor repetitive motions that will burden the HUMA committee and fail to help workers, than actually doing anything. Working-class Canadians deserve a government that is focused on supporting them with better education and living wages, not one that is just listening to employers by proposing motions under the incorrect assumption that the only obstacle the trades industry is facing is a country-wide labour shortage. This is simply not true.

It is not that a study to gather more information on the trades industry is a bad idea. It is just that this motion would not do anything worthwhile to solve the actual issues that are driving the labour shortage in the first place. Studying what should be a potential federal trades strategy should be seen as a good opportunity to help workers and promote investment in skills training. Any study that does not involve considerations of child care and access to education and training is not a study that would completely look at this issue.

Finally, this motion should prioritize workers' needs such as the right to make a decent living with a decent wage. Instead, it is just another meaningless gesture from the current Liberal government to feign its concern for the working-class people of Canada. The NDP believes that more can be done and we are proud to be on the side of working people in the fight against labour shortages and the fight for a decent living for working people.

[Federal Trades Strategy, June 12th, 2019]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his efforts on an issue that many of us care about.

My concern is really about the substance of what is being proposed. He and other colleagues on the Liberal side have felt that calling for a study on an important issue is good enough and that is simply not the case. I remind him and his colleagues that they are part of a government that could be taking action on a number of key issues facing working people, including labour shortages and access to the trades.

I have many more questions on my mind. Why are we not studying the stagnating wages afflicting so many working people? Why are we not addressing the root causes of the shortages that they face?

Would the member be open to broadening the topic of this study to issues other than labour shortages in order for the committee to have the full scope of the issues and for a trades strategy to truly be meaningful and make a difference for Canadians?