Pat Martin

[The Budget, March 27th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, back in 1995 the CHST when it was created was $19 billion a year. The Liberal government brought it down to $11.5 billion per year and is slowly incrementally jacking it back up. It went to $12.5 billion. In this budget it is supposed to go to $14.5 billion and even $15 billion. That is still $4 billion less in actual spending than it was before.

The government cannot use smoke and mirrors forever. Canadians do not believe it and they frankly do not accept this stuff about transferring tax points. They want cash on the barrelhead. They want to see the federal government's actual participation in health, social spending and post-secondary education. Those are the priorities we heard about when we consulted with Canadians. That is what they told us. They wanted the government to use this budget to fix health care, to stop the crisis in post-secondary education tuitions and to do something about social spending to elevate the standard of living for all Canadians. If that is not our goal, I do not know what is.

[The Budget, March 27th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am very glad to have an opportunity to take part in the budget debate. I should say at the start that I will be splitting my time with the member for Vancouver East.

I would like to make use of the time I have by pointing out not only what the budget does but certainly what it fails to do and how it affects my riding of Winnipeg Centre. I would like to point out missed opportunities. I would like to point out where the government has been out and out negligent and irresponsible in not doing obvious things that needed to be done and choosing as a priority to do things that were politically expedient and politically to its advantage. I hope by these arguments, Mr. Speaker, that you will be convinced as well that the government missed a serious opportunity.

The reason I say it is a missed opportunity is that the Minister of Finance started this process with a unique problem that we have not seen in many years: a surplus budget, a budget that could have been put to use to fix many of the social issues the country is demanding be fixed in short order.

To get the basic premise, let us look at where the surplus came from. The most obvious source from a working person's point of view is the EI surplus. People seem to have forgotten about this issue. The changes the government brought in to employment insurance made it more difficult to qualify. Claimants could collect for a shorter period of time and their weekly benefit would be reduced. Obviously the government would have a surplus.

I do not think, even in its wildest dreams, the government would have known it would enjoy a windfall of $700 million a month in surplus, taken directly out of the pockets of unemployed workers, the most vulnerable people arguably in our whole community. That is $700 million a month, not a year. That is staggering. We can see, as I have said before, it is a perverted sort of Robin Hood to rob from the poor and give to the rich in the form of tax cuts. We should be well aware of that before we go into the main arguments.

The government stumbled upon another windfall. It was a very calculated and cynical move which will have repercussions for every pension plan across the country. It took the surplus from the public service plan away from the beneficiaries of the public service pension plan. The government did not steal it, but it took it right out of that plan to use for whatever it wanted in its general revenue. I predict the government will pay the political price for taking those surplus revenues out of that pension plan.

We noticed the minister responsible for the Treasury Board had no sooner done his dastardly deed than he had to leave this place. There was no way politically he could survive taking $30 billion of surplus out of the public service pension plan, money that should have gone to improve the pensions of those beneficiaries. That is the second source of revenue.

It was not real sound fiscal management that led to the surplus. It was the finding of these buckets of money, stumbling across these buckets of dough. Anybody could do that.

The Liberals failed to listen to Canadians in the prebudget consultation. They did tour the country to listen to Canadians. Invariably everywhere government members went, Canadians told them they wanted one thing done and one thing only. They wanted the health care system fixed once and for all. There was no question. There was no debate about it. The number one priority was to fix our health care system.

What did we see done, even though the government had the astronomical windfall of a surplus? The government is giving $2.5 billion, not per year but over four years. And it is not just for my province of Manitoba. It is for the whole country. My province of Manitoba's share will be about $20 million a year, or enough to keep the hospitals open for two days.

The great renewal of spending on health care amounts to two days budgeting for the province of Manitoba. It is so small that it is almost insignificant. It is offensive frankly. It leads to greater cynicism in the electorate because they were consulted. They said what they needed and the government did not listen to them. Instead, what did the government choose to do? It chose to use the money, which as I pointed out it took from unemployed workers to a large degree, for tax cuts for the wealthy.

For every dollar in tax cuts that is given back into the system, two cents goes for health care. How is that for skewed priorities? Yet when Canadians were asked, tax cuts ranked number seven, eight or nine on their list of priorities. They wanted their health care system back. They wanted post-secondary education addressed so their kids would not have to graduate with a small mortgage. They wanted all these issues fixed.

Canadians wanted something done about child poverty. I should not have to remind members, especially those who have been here for any length of time, that in 1989 it was members of parliament who passed a unanimous resolution to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000. For the first time since 1989, we are in a financial position to that, yet no effort has been made to do so. Again, I point to a failure on the part of the government because the opportunity was there and it chose not to act.

Dante reserved a special depth of his hell for those who had the ability to prevent evil and chose not to. That was the lowest depth of Dante's inferno. Just as obnoxious and just as foul to me as those who had the ability to do something noble and honourable and elected not to is the failure of the people in this place.

I can point to another obvious shortcoming in that those people over there cut, hacked and slashed programs for many, many years without looking for other sources of revenue or for ways to preclude the need to do that, or what they thought was the need. Without being vague about it, I will point to one obvious thing they could have done.

I introduced a motion that was passed in the House of Commons a year ago to energy retrofit all of our publicly owned buildings. The federal government owns 50,000 buildings. It spends billions of dollars a year in energy costs. Many of those buildings are outdated, obsolete and are absolute energy hogs. They waste energy and they pollute.

If we undertook a serious initiative to energy retrofit all our publicly owned buildings, we would not only create thousands of jobs, we would reduce our operating costs by as much as $1 billion a year. We would also reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions as per our obligations under the Kyoto convention.

Again it was a missed opportunity because it seems that side of the House is devoid of ideas. That side is out of gas in terms of creative things to do.

Members on that side of the House voted in favour of that motion because they thought it was a really good idea. That was a year and a half ago. They have not done diddley-squat in that regard. They could be the example. They should set the example for the private sector to do the same. In this northern climate we should show the world how we can conserve energy and how we can use our precious energy resources in a wiser way, a way that works for us instead of being the victims of some international oil cartel. It was another missed opportunity.

The finest achievement any government can aspire to is to elevate the standard of the living conditions of the people it represents. That should be the goal. That is why we are here. If we can only keep our eyes on the ball, our job and goal should be to elevate the standard of the living conditions of the people we represent. If we did not deviate from that, we would not have so much confusion in terms of what we should do. Let us do what is right in a way that would really move society forward.

A basic tenet and truth is that society does not move forward until we all move forward together. If we leave a significant number of people behind, we do not really move forward. Freedom is only privilege extended unless it is enjoyed by all people. That is a basic tenet that we must adhere to.

The motion to eliminate child poverty by the year 2000 was one of the most significant things ever agreed upon in the House of Commons. Governments to this point through mismanagement by the Tories et cetera did find themselves in a disastrous financial situation, but in recent years money is no longer an excuse. If money is not an issue, what does that lead us to believe? That the government just does not care about that subject. Money is not a barrier. Money is not an obstacle. The government has barrels of money. It has money coming out of its ears.

I believe that a society shall be judged not by the might of its cities, not by the grandeur of its statues and not by the power of its armies. A society will be judged by how it treats its most vulnerable people: the unemployed, the disenfranchised, the poverty stricken.

When all the dust settles and all of us are in our graves, society will judge this piece of history by what steps we took to move that part of society forward. The budget does nothing to move society forward as a whole. We do not move forward unless we all move forward together. We are not moving forward at all when the gap between the rich and the poor grows ever wider and wider.

[Canada Labour Code, March 24th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I can honestly say, without any fear of contradiction, that in my own personal life this is the most important piece of legislation that I have had the opportunity to debate.

From my background as a blue collar construction worker and as a journeyman carpenter by trade, it has always been of major interest to me that all Canadians have the basic right to a clean, healthy and safe working environment; that no Canadian gets up in the morning to go to work to die; that they get up to go to work to earn a living. They deserve to earn a living without the fear of unnecessary risk by the conditions in their workplace.

I am very pleased to be here today to talk about Bill C-12, the much ballyhooed and long awaited amendments to Part II of the Canada Labour Code. What we have in front of us today is the product of four long years of consultation, consensus building and of the development of ideas and recommendations that now manifest themselves in this very worthy bill.

The working group of labour, business and government tried its best to do everything by consensus. There was no majority vote on these issues. They worked it around the table in a spirit and atmosphere of true co-operation because they realized the nature of the work they were doing was so important and had such a direct impact on the lives of all those employees or Canadian workers governed by the Canada Labour Code.

The Canada Labour Code actually has jurisdiction over about 700,000 Canadian workers. This is nowhere near a majority of Canadian workers but it is certainly a significant number of Canadian workers, such that it can set a precedent and form a standard that all other labour relations jurisdictions should look to in terms of setting their own health and safety standards. That is what makes Bill C-12 so critical.

Obviously the employees of the federal government fall under the Canada Labour Code. Many are crown corporations, et cetera. Some fall under the Public Service Staff Relations Act. The work that we do here today and the work that we will do when the bill goes to committee has a direct bearing and a very important effect on the lives of many Canadians. It is critical and it is absolutely crucial.

I began by telling the House how I got interested in health and safety. It was through my own background. My first job as a kid growing up was to work in the asbestos mines in the Yukon, which is not a good career choice. I would not recommend it to anyone, frankly. The only reason I raise this is that at that time asbestos was not recognized as a hazardous material.

As young workers, we were there happily working with asbestos and earning a living. We asked our bosses if there was any truth to the rumour that this stuff was bad for us and they told us that it was a harmless, white, fireproof substance. They told us to continue shovelling it and that we should not worry about a thing.

It was not until our union finally started to get active, to do some research and caution us that were realized that the stuff was not only bad for us but that there was no safe level of asbestos. One part per billion in the air was too much. At that time we became aware that on those issues the union was the only friend a working person had because everyone else was lying to us in the name of profit and greed. That taught me a lesson when I was very young.

Later on in my work life I became a journeyman carpenter. I became very active in my union and became a shop steward for my union. A very big part of my job was to make sure our members were not put at risk by some arbitrary production schedule. As I have said before, there is no production schedule in the world that warrants or justifies putting people's lives at risk.

I can honestly say that I have dedicated much of my working life to trying to elevate the standards of working conditions in terms of workplace safety and health in this country. That is why I am so very gratified to stand here today and not only debate Bill C-12 but to actually recommend Bill C-12 with some minor amendments and modifications that I will be speaking about later. It is very gratifying for me to finally be here doing something that is in such a positive light for Canadian working people.

It was not that long ago that this really was not much of a priority for government or industry in the country. There was a sort of acceptance that some jobs are just inherently dangerous and some people are going to get hurt doing those dangerous jobs. We can no longer tolerate that mindset: (a) there is no reason for it, and (b) it is morally and ethically reprehensible to even contemplate that mindset.

As the chief job steward for the carpenters on a hydroelectric dam, I was very proud that our dam was the first hydro dam in all of Manitoba that was ever built without killing anyone. On previous hydro dams as many as seven people would be killed on the job. There was a saying in the carpentry trade that every building is a tombstone in a way because it was so normal to lose a couple of guys. Companies would actually factor that into their cost and into their productivity.

Thankfully, we have moved away from those days but it really was not that long ago. As I say, in the late seventies we really achieved something by building a dam without killing anyone. I put it to the House that there is no reason that anyone should be dying on the job. All of those accidents are preventable with the right measures, with the right legislation and with the right enforcement.

I do not really have to say anything more in this speech. I could just stand here and say enforcement, enforcement, enforcement for the next 20 minutes and that would be the most important single message that we could deliver to the labour relations community, employers and employees across the country. It is so critical.

In recent years, partly due to shortages of enforcement officers, we have been seeing more and more governments relying on what they call voluntary compliance orders. A voluntary compliance order, frankly, does not cut it, especially in the private sector where some people still view safety as a cost factor. Even though it is a terribly outdated and obsolete way of viewing things, some people still look at stopping to put up a guard rail as a non-productive activity. Where is the payback? It will slow us down and it will cost us money. It is a terrible way of doing things.

I will give the House some figures that will illustrate how wrong-headed that is. We all know the good, moral and ethical reasons why we do not want anyone hurt or killed at the workplace. Let me tell the House some of the economics of workplace safety and health.

In my home province of Manitoba, we lose about 50,000 person days a year to strikes, lockouts and labour unrest. It is a productivity issue. In the same period of time, we lost 550,000 person days per year to time lost due to accidents on the job. If we are so serious about elevating the levels of productivity for Canadian workers, we could clean up the workplaces, stop the carnage and save ourselves half a million person days a year in Manitoba alone.

Frankly, that does not factor in the other detail that we have looked at in the union movement, which is the secondary impact of a workplace accident. This means that when one of our colleagues is struck down, falls or is hurt, injured or killed on the job, there is a ripple effect throughout the whole workforce. Productivity is slow on the day of the accident and does not get up to full speed until many days later. I have seen that happen many times.

The whole concept of workplace safety and health legislation in this country is really geared around three things; the right to know, the right to refuse and the right to fully participate in the health and safety aspects of our workplace. Those three things define and shape what we would like to see as a healthy and safe work environment. The right to know means that we have the right to know what hazardous materials we might be working with. We do have WHMIS legislation, Workplace Hazardous Material Information System, in this country where any worker has the right to say “Are you sure this chemical I am using is not bad for me? Prove it to me”. The onus is on the employer to prove to the worker that it will not hurt them. If we had that kind of legislation when I worked in the asbestos mine, I would have quit a lot sooner than I did.

It is a very complex field and it needs at lot of administration to make it work. It is very complicated now. We cannot just train people in WHMIS for eight hours and then leave them alone. We are dealing with very complicated materials now. There are secondary things that go off with the materials we work with. This element might be benign and that element might be benign, but put the two together in our kidney and they turn into a third element that will kill us. We need to know that. We cannot send workers in unprotected and ask them to do that kind of thing for the sake of economics.

Canadians are more cognizant of the issue of workplace safety and health and the issue of people injured and killed on the job. The evidence of that is that we now recognize April 28 as the International Day of Mourning for Injured and Fallen Workers. I am proud to say that the flag at the House of Commons is lowered to half-mast. It is recognized officially by a motion passed in the House of Commons. Canadians are sympathetic, aware and will be pleased that we are taking these steps to pass Bill C-12 and make their workplace that much safer. I am proud to say that it was the former labour critic of the NDP, Rod Murphy, the member for Churchill, who moved the motion to make April 28 the day of mourning.

As I said, we think Bill C-12 has a great deal of merits. We wish it to go speedily through the House, but not unamended. We have to point out a number of things that are seriously lacking in this bill. I will go through them briefly.

Almost everything in Bill C-12 was dealt with by consensus building in the committee with FEDCO, the federal employers group for the employers, the Canadian Labour Congress Workplace Safety and Health Committee for the employees and the government at the table. However, sometimes the language in the bill does not accurately reflect the consensus made and recorded at the committee. In places where we saw a gap between what we thought was agreed to and what is in the bill, we had to ask for that to be clarified and amended.

In other cases, we felt that there were things that showed up in the bill that were never brought up at the table. They are very minor details but surely nothing in this bill should be seen for the first time by our side because it was supposed to be developed by this consensus building process.

We find fault with one of the details that is not exactly as it was agreed to at committee. We would like to see a two tier appeal system. The recommendation in Bill C-12 is that we go to a single person being involved in the appeal process. That person would be an appeals officer, not the Canada Industrial Relations Board. We feel that is like the fox looking after the hen house. If one has a grievance about the activities of the health and safety division, a health and safety division officer should not hear the appeal.

The second detail we find fault with is the definition of health. It may sound like we are nitpicking but frankly it is very important. Definitions are contained in the preamble. If our definition of a healthy workplace and the government's definition of a healthy workplace differ, we will have a lot of problems. We thought we agreed to use the definition of the World Health Organization as such. Until a letter from HRD on July 12, 1996, we thought we had a deal. That was arbitrarily changed by the government side and we would like to know why.

We find fault with the government's definition of health because it specifically excludes workplace stress as a physical disease, mental illness or compensable condition. We wholly disagree with that. We believe that workplace stress is a factor in a person's general health and must be included in the definition.

There has never been any complaint about stress due to traumatic events. If one witnesses a terrible tragedy in the workplace and is unable to work as a result, it is considered a compensable lost time condition because it was due to a trauma. We believe that workplace stress in general can also lead to that condition.

We find fault with article 126(1)(j). We call it the rat clause. Employees are obliged to inform on a colleague who they may feel is causing unsafe circumstances. The onus or the burden should not be placed on employees to rat on other employees. The matter can be brought to the attention of the employer but they do not have to rat on fellow workers. We want that changed.

Articles 126(1)(k) and 139(1) call for mandatory tests and medical examinations. Mandatory medical tests are now illegal under human rights law and international practice. Ontario has recently changed its law in this regard. Section 28(3) of the Occupational Health and Safety Act, Revised Statutes of Ontario, 1990, reads:

A worker is not required to participate in a prescribed medical surveillance program unless the worker consents to do so.

We believe these two articles violate International Labour Organization technical and ethical guidelines for workers' health surveillance which was ratified by Canada in 1997.

Four conditions must be met for medical examinations in the workplace to be all right. First, they must be completely voluntary. Second, individual test results must be strictly confidential. Third, workers should have the right to choose the examining doctor. Fourth, there should be no cost whatsoever to the worker. Only under these conditions could we agree to have any kind of mandatory testing program or to contemplate it within the Canada Labour Code.

With regard to health and safety committee meetings, Bill C-12 calls for mandating nine such meetings per year. Our working committee believes that it should be twelve and that they should be monthly. That is what we should be shooting for.

Sometimes we do not get them all done. They have to be cancelled now and then, but at least we should set out to try to do it once a month. The single most important aspect to keeping a clean, healthy and safe work environment is the communication between labour and management. There must be a co-operative attempt to work toward a clean, safe and healthy work environment. Twelve would be the minimum.

There are provinces which already mandate that. British Columbia requires monthly meetings in its health and safety act.

In terms of pregnant and nursing employees we believe we should add the following language to section 132. We think it should be more rigid and state, once it is established that there is a risk to the health of the pregnant or nursing mother or to the fetus or child, that division 7 of the Canada Labour Code, part III, the reassignment section, shall apply. For greater and absolute certainty we would like to make reference in part II of the code to the provisions of part III of the code that ensure the safety of the nursing or pregnant mother.

There is another aspect currently in subsection 147.1(1) that will need some attention and of which we are critical. This clause would guard against malicious or vexatious use of the right to refuse unsafe work provisions. We realize that complaints under the right to refuse unsafe work can almost constitute industrial sabotage in a place where the labour relations climate is so hostile that the employees may seek to disadvantage the employer by somehow exercising their right to refuse in a malicious, vexatious or abusive manner.

There was a consensus among the working committee that such a clause could be present because neither party can deny that such a possibility may be raised. It was felt that the language put forward by the government did not accurately reflect the intent of the agreement made. The proposed language we will be putting forward as an amendment will achieve the same objective but in language that we believe will be more balanced. The burden of proof is clearly on the employer to demonstrate malice or mischief, and not on the employee.

The final thing I will talk about is what we see as a huge omission, a huge oversight and a lost opportunity to include what was voted on and ratified in the House of Commons a few days ago, and that is reference to the Westray motion. We passed a motion in the House that the government should amend any pertinent legislation to pay deference to recommendation 73 of the Westray inquiry by Justice Richard. Recommendation 73 states:

The Government of Canada, through the Department of Justice, should introduce in the Parliament of Canada such amendments to legislation as are necessary to ensure that corporate executives and directors are held properly accountable for workplace safety.

We read that to mean to amend the Criminal Code of Canada to contemplate the concept of corporate manslaughter and corporate murder. The Canada Labour Code should point to the directive of Justice Richard and the amended criminal code.

If people are found guilty of gross negligence causing workplace accident or death, they will not only be fined and penalized under the Canada Labour Code workplace safety and health provisions but will also be charged under the Criminal Code of Canada for manslaughter. That is what Justice Richard was talking about. That is essentially what we believe we ratified in the motion the other day. We would like to see some reference to it in the Canada Labour Code.

Other than that, we look forward to dealing with the bill at committee stage. We hope to work with business, labour and government to see it through the House for the betterment of all Canadian workers.

[Municipal Grants Act, March 24th, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, from the point of view of the NDP caucus and the investigation that we have done on the bill, we do recognize that the bill represents over two years of exhaustive consultation with all the parties, a cross-country tour and I think a genuine effort to allow all the stakeholders to have an adequate say and adequate input into developing what we think is a very important bill.

I will go even further by saying that I believe this type of consultation process could even serve as a model for other pieces of legislation because it was such a well thought out process. All of the parties came away fully satisfied that the consultation was thorough and that they had adequate opportunity to make a difference and to help shape and craft this type of legislation.

We would like to see this happen more frequently with other bills and we would hope that all of the parties, to any piece of legislation that is crafted, could feel so positive about their opportunities.

The NDP caucus believes firmly that Bill C-10 will be a direct benefit to almost 2,000 communities coast to coast to coast. We believe that it succeeds as a piece of legislation because it will enshrine, once and for all, the principles of fairness, equity and predictability in the management of our federal payments in lieu of taxes, principles which I believe are important to all members of the House on both sides.

I congratulate the members of the joint technical committee, which was made up of representatives from the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, Treasury Board representatives and other government representatives. I would also like to recognize all of the municipal representatives, mayors and councillors who met with the consultation tour during 1998. They also played such a valuable role in crafting this legislation.

All members of the House realize that the Government of Canada enjoys a constitutional exemption from local taxation. Nevertheless I think we all recognize and agree that we have a moral obligation as a property owner to help pay for the costs of local government. We are major occupants of space in the municipalities and obviously we use the services of the local government. It is only fair and right that we should be paying for them. Federal operations should contribute to the social and economic well-being of the community and certainly should not be a burden on the local taxpayer.

Over the past 50 years federal governments have adopted the policy of paying grants in lieu of property taxes in recognition of the valuable direct and indirect services that it gets from the municipalities. These payments are now in excess of $375 million annually, which represents a significant transfer of federal dollars to local communities.

These federal payments contribute to the local economies. They are of great benefit and as such contribute greatly to the well-being of Canadians in general. Imagine the impact on the finances of a region like Ottawa-Carleton or the city of Hull if the Government of Canada reneged on its burden as a property owner and stopped making payments in lieu of taxes. It would be devastating.

It is fair to say that we all recognize and accept the rationale for these payments. Canadians realize their value and their necessity. That is not at issue today.

Bill C-10 deals with ways to improve the administration of the payments. Taking into account the far reaching changes that have occurred in the municipal taxation front over the last two decades, the legislation needed to be revamped and upgraded.

The NDP caucus is satisfied that Bill C-10 will bring about positive, constructive and lasting program changes. It will confirm that the federal government does have respect for the standards set for other property owners and that it values the services it receives from municipal governments.

The goal is to make the process more predictable and to strengthen the foundation of fairness and equity on which the program was built and on which it has operated over the last five decades. We want to make federal payments in lieu of taxes resemble the taxes paid by private landowners as much as possible. We believe that Bill C-10 takes us one step further to that equitable position and still recognizes the federal government's constitutional exemption from local taxation.

Bill C-10 will change the name of the legislation and the program. In future, grants in lieu of taxes will be referred to as payments in lieu of taxes. This more accurately reflects the more explicit and respectful relationship between the two levels of government. The type of language used is very important. The term “payments” rather than “grants” more accurately reflects the mutual respect between the two levels of government.

Bill C-10 also includes a goodwill clause that confirms our commitment to fairness and equity in the administration of the federal payments in lieu of taxes. This is a very positive and necessary aspect of this newly redefined relationship.

Changes in legislation include a commitment by the federal government to endeavour to meet the payment schedules put in place locally. When payments are unreasonably delayed, the Minister of Public Works and Government Services will have the power and the authority to make payment of a supplementary amount to the municipality to compensate for the delay. This is also something which municipalities needed to be able to rely on as a stream of revenue from the federal government so that their own services would not be interrupted by some late payment on the part of the government.

Bill C-10 addresses the issue of resolution of any kind of disagreement between the two parties. Any kind of relationship like this has to have some kind of mediation process that is fair and impartial and one with which both parties are comfortable.

For all those reasons Bill C-10 will be of service to the municipalities. We believe the local politicians in the municipalities are comfortable with it. They have had a satisfactory opportunity to have input. We believe the whole process should serve as a model for the development of other types of legislation. The NDP caucus will be happy to vote in favour of Bill C-10 at third reading.

[Employment Insurance, March 23rd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, the 1996 Liberal government changes to UIC did three things. They made it harder to qualify for benefits, they reduced benefits so there was less money per week, and they shortened the period of time that benefits could be collected. The predictable result of all this is now the EI fund shows a surplus of $600 million a month, not per year, per month. Some $7.2 billion per year is being taken out of the employment insurance fund and being denied as benefits to the people who need it most, the most vulnerable, to be used for whatever the Liberal government likes.

What does that mean in my riding of Winnipeg Centre, the third poorest riding in the country? It takes $20.8 million a year out of my riding. It is sucked right out of there down to Ottawa. Money that used to be transferred to Winnipeg for the use of income maintenance for desperately unemployed and poor people no longer comes to my riding. Imagine the impact that has on a relatively small community like my riding. Imagine what we would do if we could attract a business that had a payroll of $20.8 million. We could pave the streets with gold to attract them to our riding. The inverse is also true. The impact is the same in reverse when it gets pulled out. And that is just Winnipeg Centre.

In St. John's, Newfoundland, $75 million a year is pulled out just by the 1996 changes. I wish my colleague from Montreal were still here. There is $512 million a year less in income maintenance for the unemployed in the city of Montreal alone. This was by design of the Liberal government so that it could use the employment insurance fund as a cash cow, as a revenue generator, so that it could use the money for whatever it wanted to and certainly for anything but income maintenance for unemployed people.

These changes have left some staggering statistics. Less than 40% of unemployed workers now qualify for any EI benefits. What kind of insurance fund is that if people have a less than 40% chance of ever collecting? Less than 25% of women, as verified in a recent report, qualify for any benefits. Less than 11% of young women qualify for any benefits. What kind of a program could possibly survive such a failure to achieve its mandate for what it was set out to do? Less than 15% of youth qualify for any benefits.

The point I am trying to make is this system is broken. It is busted. The wheels have fallen off it and Canadians know that. Therefore the motion of the member for Acadie—Bathurst is absolutely appropriate, timely, practical and necessary. Every member in the House should enthusiastically support it so we can all take a look at the employment insurance system and see what is wrong with it and hopefully put it back on track.

As I have said in the past, if money is taken off a person's paycheque for a specific purpose and then is used for something completely different, at best it is a breach of trust. In the worst case scenario it is out and out fraud to tell workers that money will be deducted from their cheques so that if they happen to become unemployed they will qualify for a benefit and when that worst case scenario happens and they find themselves unemployed, we say “Sorry, the rules have changed. There is no money, no income maintenance. Your family does without”. I believe it is a breach of trust.

To add insult to injury, to take that money off workers' paycheques, deny the benefits to the unemployed and then use the money out of general revenues to give the wealthy a tax cut is some perverted form of Robin Hood that robs from the poor and gives to the rich. It is fundamentally wrong and Canadians will not tolerate it.

Here are the changes we would like to see when the review comes forward. At least 70% of all unemployed workers should be receiving EI, at least 70%. Then we would know the program works somewhat. Weekly benefits should be maintained at 60% of a claimant's weekly pay. That is a basic. The divisor rule, the intensity rule and the benefit clawbacks all have to be eliminated. Those are the changes that were made which suck the level of benefits down to such a ridiculously low level. The EI fund must be separated from general revenues. It should be its own independent, stand alone fund that is there for a specific and dedicated purpose, which is to provide income maintenance and possibly training for unemployed workers to help get them back into the workforce.

EI must not be used as a federal debt reduction instrument. It must not be used for tax cuts. It must not be used for spending on government programs. It is a dedicated insurance fund, nothing more, nothing less. To use it for anything else is fraudulent and a breach of trust.

The employment insurance system is in an emergency situation right now. It does not work. It is broken and the wheels have fallen off. Canadian workers know this. This is the second and third year now that seasonal workers have had to deal with this inadequate system. This is the second or third year in a row that they have had to deal with reduced benefits.

I used to run the carpenters union and I know the people in that union very well. There are examples of guys who entered the system this year who are getting $120 a week as their benefit, whereas two or three years ago they were receiving $425 a week. That is the difference the intensity rule, the divisor rule and the clawback rule make to seasonal construction workers who pay into the fund.

I remember when I was a carpenter we would be paying $45 or $50 from every paycheque into the fund which was matched by our employer so we would receive benefits when we happened to find ourselves seasonally unemployed. That does not happen anymore.

Perhaps the most cynical thing the government did when it came to the building trades was to no longer fund the apprenticeship programs through EI. The government used to buy blocks of seats at the community college so the apprentices could go to school without having to pay tuition because they and their employers were already paying every hour that they worked in the industry. The government stopped that.

Today a first year carpenter's apprentice has to pay a $600 to $800 tuition fee. He does not get his first two week waiting period paid for anymore. There are no allowances for travel or child care. All those have been eliminated. The government now says that we need a national training strategy. Well it just gutted a damn good national apprenticeship training strategy by pulling the rug out from under it when it made these changes to UIC in 1996.

All of these things combined add up to gross failure and all the more reason why this motion is entirely appropriate, timely and necessary.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, March 23rd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member for Calgary Northeast as he was talking about the Chinese migrant boat people. I also dealt with that in my remarks. As a member of the citizenship and immigration committee, we certainly heard about it over and over again, mostly from the members of the Reform Party.

It is true that when the first boatload of people landed on the shores of the west coast, the Reform Party members had a press conference demanding that the boat be turned around and sent back in its present state. They did not even want to give them a new boat. They just wanted to send them back where they came from, obviously not recognizing the 1985 supreme court ruling that once people have laid their feet on this soil they do have a right to a hearing.

Obviously the Reform Party members wanted to be judge and jury both. They wanted to take one look at these people and claim they were not refugees because they did not deem them to be refugees as they did not look like us and send them back to where they came from without even a hearing. This is absolutely absurd because everybody has a right to due process and a hearing, and that is exactly what is going on right now.

I do not expect the member for Calgary Northeast, who has not sat on that committee for a long time, to be fully up to speed on what people are doing to deal with this issue. However, for the member for Calgary Northeast to say that nothing is being done about people smuggling and nothing is being done to deal with the backlog of these desperate migrants who have washed up on the west coast, is absolute baloney.

These people have been locked up and are awaiting hearings. They are being dealt with one by one. In the hearings so far it has been found that most of them do not fit the category of refugee and they are being sent back to where they came from, to the Fujian province. Five or six have been found to be genuine refugees and they are being welcomed into our country.

For the hon. member to stand up and help fan the flames of hatred in this country with misinformation like that is inexcusable. I personally will not sit here and listen to it. I hear it too much on the immigration committee as it is. These members are the architects of the misinformation that is actually turning into an anti-immigration movement in this country built around 500 or 600 desperate people who are seeking a better life on our shores.

I notice there is an organization now called the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee. I am just wondering if there is any connection with the Reform Party because these hate-mongers are saying exactly the same thing as this political party, and there is also the commonality with the names. I am just wondering if they are not more constitutionally connected or associated.

That will be my question. Is there a direct connection between the Reform Party and the Canada First Immigration Reform Committee, which is the purveyor of hate in this country when it comes to anti-immigration?

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, March 23rd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by summarizing somewhat.

I did start my remarks with a statement that in my belief there is no higher honour one can have than that of being a citizen in a democracy. I mean that quite sincerely. I believe that all Canadians value that in their lives as indicated by the fact that we had an overwhelming outpouring of representations by Canadians to the citizenship committee on this bill. Thirty-seven presenters brought forward their points of view and many of those points made it into the actual bill and now form what we know as Bill C-16.

I did make the connection between the concept of citizenship and the building of community. There are really three things: the idea that a citizen is part of something larger, the sense of community, and how we in the New Democratic Party view that sense as being at risk somewhat in a day that champions the individual, it seems, more than the collective. Operating as a collective is much more a Canadian point of view. Canadians make that connection and value citizenship.

The bill that we are looking at today started life as Bill C-63. Most of Bill C-63 is still contained in Bill C-16. We brought recommendations forward at the various stages of Bill C-63 hoping to improve the bill because many of the groups that came to see us on Bill C-63 were not entirely enamoured with the bill as it stood. They had serious reservations about aspects of the bill and as is proper, they brought those concerns to the committee. We listened carefully. We tried to make meaningful amendments to try to satisfy some of their concerns. As it stands, we believe that Bill C-16 is an improved version of Bill C-63.

The real point that has been made today by other speakers as well is that we would like to get on with this bill. We would like to finish with debate on the bill and get it back to committee. We would get through the final stages and put it to bed because most Canadians are quite anxious to address other immigration and refugee matters, issues other than Bill C-16.

Citizenship as such deals with people who have already landed in the country, who have already made it to our shores and have settled in for a number of years and are now at that final stage of becoming a new Canadian and going through the act of getting their citizenship papers.

The real concern that most Canadians are bringing to my attention as the critic for the NDP is the much broader issue of immigration to Canada. How do we attract the right new Canadians to this country to help us grow the economy and help the country grow? How do we seek out and find these people? How do we convince them that Canada is the country they should come to? There is growing competition around the world for the skilled workers of the world and certainly we need to do more outreach than we have done in the past in terms of reaching out to people and offering what we have to offer in a very public way. We have to advertise and promote ourselves if we are to attract more people to these shores.

I made the point earlier that we in the New Democratic Party believe that immigration is an engine of economic growth. We would like to see more immigration to this country and we are very critical of those in the country and some in the House of Commons who would argue that we should close the doors now on immigration. This is an attitude that has been largely driven by fear or ignorance, I would say, and fear generated by some of the recent events of this summer which saw migrant boat people drifting up on our shore on the west coast.

If I could take one moment just to talk about that one subject. It has been a source of great frustration to me as this whole issue got blown so badly out of proportion. There were 500 or 600 desperate Chinese migrants who landed on our shores looking for safe refuge, looking for sanctuary, looking for a better life. The reaction of certain Canadians was “Oh my goodness, our borders are a sieve, it is a threat to national security in some way, we have to slam the door shut and lock these people up and send them back”. In fact, the Reform Party had a public press conference when the first boat landed and said that we should send them back without even a hearing, that we should just simply put them on another boat and send them back where they came from without any knowledge of what their circumstances were or if there could have been legitimate refugee claims.

Thankfully, this country has better policies than that and our policy is that everyone deserves the right to a full hearing, the right to counsel and the right to have their case heard. Some will be eligible and some will not.

We in the New Democratic Party went a bit further. We wanted to understand a little bit more about this idea of the migration of people throughout the world. It is getting to be very common for people to seek better economic situations and to move around the globe. We did a bit of research on the Fujian province, from where these people originated. We learned that the Fujian province is one of the first places in China that had what we call free economic trade zones.

I spoke earlier in my speech about the globalization of capital threatening the concepts of citizenship, the nation-state and democracy. Here is a graphic illustration in these free economic trade zones.

The ILO did some research to say that one should be making about 85 cents an hour in these trade zones to have a standard of living comparable to a working class Chinese person in that area. These trade zones, where all kinds of western goods, such as clothing and toys, are manufactured, pay on the average 18 cents an hour. Here are these people making western products for you and I and our children to enjoy who are making one-fifth of what it takes to have the standard of living of a Chinese peasant in a fenced compound in China and having some knowledge of the western world, that there is a better world out there.

Their motivation, I suppose, was to elevate their standard of wages and working conditions by getting out of there, but there was no legitimate way to get to some place like Canada, to get to the west. There is only one place to go to get papers to apply for a Canadian visa or a permit to come to Canada and that is in Beijing. It is a heck of a long way from the Fujian province. They cannot get here from there. There is no legitimate way for them to apply to come to Canada and, under the current rules, they probably would not qualify anyway.

When we know a little bit more about the people who wound up on the shores of B.C., we are a little less threatened by them. The fear and the ignorance will hopefully dissipate as the story really gets out on who these people are and how we should really be dealing with them. I wanted to speak to that a little bit as we do get calls. Even as recently as today, we got faxes from Canadians who are not as open-minded about this issue. I hope the truth is finally getting out.

We have been dealing with the estimates, the spending of the government and various aspects of government. I would hope that as we get through the estimates regarding the immigration department that more money is put toward the promotion of immigration than it is toward the enforcement of immigration rules, which are really designed to keep people out.

It has always been of great frustration to our caucus that much of the energies and resources of the immigration officials and bureaucracy are dedicated to keeping people out of the country and not to welcoming them in. It sends absolutely the wrong message. The more barriers, obstacles and roadblocks we put in the way of people who are coming or who seek to make Canada their home, the more the message spreads out around the world that it is a difficult place to come to, that they will be frustrated and that it will not be easy. They will then go someplace else.

If we are serious about building this country, we had better change that perception. That means some resources will need to be spent in specifically targeted parts of the world where we know workers with the skills we need reside. We can invite and attract them and promote this country so that they choose to come here and make Canada their home.

With regard to the citizenship bill, in the last minute or two that I have I will deal with some of the specifics and some of the reservations we have about Bill C-16. We are eager to see it go back to the committee so that we can deal with it in further depth and we can hear a few more groups make representation to us to see what they think about its current form as opposed to its format under the former Bill C-63.

One of the things raised at length by the member of the Bloc Quebecois was that there was some objection to having the Queen referenced in the citizenship oath. Frankly, I think that is a matter so minor and insignificant that it does not even warrant comment in the House of Commons. Surely we have better things to dwell on than an issue such as that, but we did hear quite a bit of debate on that subject from other speakers.

There was some really serious concern that the abolition of the citizenship judges would be a step backward if they were replaced with citizenship commissioners in terms of getting a fair adjudication. This work would now be done by bureaucrats who may not have the same abilities to weigh the variables in a complicated citizenship case.

We also believe that the citizenship tests should be available in either official language and, if translation is needed, it should be available. I believe that has been addressed and we are happy to see it.

I have one remaining point that I need to comment on. We believe that the rules regarding the actual physical presence of a person in this country are too stringent. Under the current rules, one has to be physically present for three of the last six years before citizenship papers are granted. We believe that places an undue burden on those who may have interests outside the country and who may often need to travel outside the country to take care of their business interests elsewhere. We would like to see that addressed at the committee stage and we will soon have an opportunity to do so.

[Citizenship Of Canada Act, March 23rd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to be able to take part in the debate surrounding Bill C-16.

Someone much wiser than I once said that there is no higher honour that one can have than that of being a citizen in a democracy. I firmly believe that and I believe that Canadians are doubly blessed and feel even more strongly than some in that regard.

Canadians, first and foremost, do value their Canadian citizenship and their right to belong to this great country. Coming with that privilege also comes obligations and responsibilities, both of which we also welcome and value as part of our Canadian citizenship.

Obviously most Canadians hold this issue very dear and very close to them by virtue of the fact that we had 37 groups and organizations make representations to the committee as it studied Bill C-63, which was the immediate predecessor of Bill C-16. Thirty-seven groups from all across the country felt strongly enough and genuinely motivated enough about this issue, which really only amends the Citizenship Act in quite minor ways, to give of their time to share their ideas with our committee. We took their representations very seriously and I believe crafted the better part of their recommendations into what we have before us today as Bill C-16.

I am proud to say that our caucus too is fiercely proud of its Canadian citizenship. We consider ourselves fiercely proud Canadian nationalists. We consider ourselves champions of this country. Our citizenship is the vehicle by which we are given the licence to advocate on behalf of our country and speak loudly and proudly about it wherever we can here and elsewhere.

I lament the fact that somehow being a fiercely proud Canadian citizen has somehow fallen out of fashion. It is not nearly as common or as typical in this place to hear even what was heard 20 or 30 years ago when members of the Liberal Party at that time occupied themselves to a great degree on the issue of Canadian nationalism, foreign ownership and concentration of foreign ownership. There were people such as Walter Gordon in the old days who would stand up in the House and speak passionately about keeping Canada Canadian, not losing our economic sovereignty and not selling out to foreign ownership. It is now creeping higher and higher to the point where Canadians really have to question who is running the show and if we really do have economic sovereignty.

When we talk about citizenship we cannot help but think of those things and that thrust we feel sometimes. It is time and maybe this bill gives us the opportunity to review the whole subject of taking back our country with our pride in our Canadian citizenship.

Citizenship is not only how we define ourselves as part of the nation-state, another threatened concept frankly in today's globalized economy. The whole idea of the nation-state in its very best light is at very grievous risk of surviving this new globalization in the economy. It is also how we view ourselves as a part of a community. As a citizen it makes us part of a community and it is by virtue of that fact that we can build community. We feel very strongly that this is also at risk in an age where there is a growing importance attached to the individual and not to the collective.

Being a citizen means that one is part of a broader community that is greater than the sum of its parts and that is a very healthy thing. It is one of the reasons why so many Canadians were motivated to come out to share their ideas with us. They feel passionately about this too and they also feel threatened by these very things that I have raised.

The whole globalization of capital and global trade agreements, such as the MAI, WTO or NAFTA, threaten three things which we hold as very dear and precious to us. First, they do threaten the whole concept of citizenship. Second, they threaten the concept of democracy. Third, they certainly threaten the concept of the nation-state as we know it today and as we view Canada in such a proud way as a strong, healthy national government. I put it to the House that all those things are at risk and that is why we saw such a high level of interest in this bill, a disproportionate level of interest given the fact that the bill really only amends the citizenship practices in a very modest way. It gives people a forum to raise this much larger picture.

We look at examples such as what happened in Seattle as growing evidence that young people are very seized of this issue. Young people are very concerned that globalization is in fact chipping away at the concepts of citizenship, democracy and the nation-state. People asked me how I could make this quantum leap from talking about citizenship to talking about the globalization of capital. Frankly, it is self-evident that as we confer more and more powers on unelected bodies, corporations, if you will, and grant them nation-state status, they then have primacy over the freely elected officials, such as the ones in this room, and our ability to govern our own economic sovereignty.

There are perfect examples, recent examples, that we could point to where our own country is feeling this pinch. The Ethyl Corporation lawsuit is a classic example where we, as democratically elected officials who have chosen that we do not want a certain product circulated in our system because we feel it is a hazard to the common good, get our wrists slapped by this senior power, this higher power, this corporate power that says we cannot do that because we are interfering with its opportunity to make a profit and it will sue us for lost opportunity. That is a classic example of the threat to democracy, the threat to the nation-state and the threat to citizenship as we know it.

When we take power away from the freely elected politicians and give it to this other third party, another power, we are gradually eroding our ability to conduct our own affairs and be masters of our own domestic economy.

Canadians I know across this country want the bill dealt with expeditiously. In fact most of us, certainly in our caucus, would like to see it dealt with today and finished with in the House so it can go back to committee, follow through the process and ultimately become law for the simple reason that Canadians want to talk about more important aspects of immigration and refugee issues.

The actual citizenship bill, as I pointed out, makes quite minor changes to the way that we deal with the citizenship issue. The larger issue, the issue that Canadians are really seized with I believe, is the bigger picture of immigration as a whole and what immigration means in terms of growing our economy.

Canadians want basic questions dealt with. The first question they want to deal with when it comes to immigration is how big should Canada be. Has anybody ever really had that debate in the House? How big should Canada be as a country? Until we have that debate, how can we possibly make good rules regarding how much immigration we should have and how many people we should let in every year? We need to know what our goals are and then make meaningful rules to help us achieve those goals.

We have the cart well before the horse in this case because here we are dealing with issues regarding immigration without ever having had that basic, fundamental debate. We can take guidance as we enter that debate about how big Canada should be from our predecessors in the House. Wilfrid Laurier stood up in this place and said “By the year 2000 Canada should be a country of 100 million people”. That was the goal. Pierre Trudeau said and the Economic Council of Canada in the late 1960s said “By the year 2000 Canada should be a country of 50 million”. We are still way off. We have failed to achieve those goals, even although they are modified somewhat.

At the current rate of immigration and growth we are just about right to remain stagnant, which means in 50 years we will still be a country of whatever we are today, 30 million people.

[Human Resources Development, March 22nd, 2000]

Mr. Speaker, it can be very frustrating, just when you learn the game, that they change the rules on you.

The riding of Winnipeg Centre was told in no uncertain terms that it did not qualify for any TJF money. Only now that the program is over do we learn about flexibility, pockets of unemployment and all this stuff.

Could the minister explain to the people of Winnipeg Centre why pockets of unemployment in her riding qualify for millions and millions of dollars and pockets of unemployment which are all too real in my riding qualify for not one cent of TJF money?

[Supply, March 21st, 2000]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate the member for York West for an excellent maiden speech. I know how difficult that is and she did an excellent job. I also want to thank her for mentioning the carpenters' union in Manitoba, which is the union I used to lead. In fact the program she mentioned, the literacy program for the carpenters, is the program that I initiated.

I want to ask the member if she is aware that in the area of Winnipeg Centre, which I represent, an area where the unemployment rate is 14%, we were denied access to any transitional jobs funds even though many individuals made inquiries to my office asking how they could get in on the transitional jobs fund. They were told over and over again by HRDC officials that the overall regional rate of unemployment was too low. We knew nothing about the pockets that everybody has referred to. Is the hon. member aware of that fact?