Pat Martin

[Income Tax Act, March 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I do withdraw the remark. In my enthusiasm I used profane language, but I will finish the story.

This is coming full circle. The unions, through free collective bargaining and the right to withhold their services in the event of an impasse, drove up the average middle class wage in the United States to where it was a living wage, a consuming wage, a wage one could raise a family on. People had workplaces that were safe and healthy workplaces, because they had enforcement of health and safety provisions, because they had a union workplace safety and health committee on that work site. Coming from the construction industry, I know that every building built in the old days was a tombstone because men died on those jobs. That does not happen anymore because we made those workplaces safe.

As the government smashes the labour movement, as clearly it has given the indication it intends to do, declare war on labour on the left, not only will workers' wages diminish. How is that good for the economy? Also, workplace safety and health provisions will diminish. People will be dying in the workplace again just like in 1912 in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory.

Do not groan at me from over there, because I can tell members it is a fact that conditions will diminish if we do not have a strong and healthy trade union movement to protect the gains we have made in the last hundred years. Bill C-377 should go on the trash heap of history. It is an insult to working people in this country.

I want to recognize and pay tribute to the push-back of the building trades unions, especially my own union, the carpenters union, which is doing a job trying to lobby members of Parliament and trying to point out the folly in smashing the only thing that has elevated the standards of living wages and working conditions in this country. That is a free, vibrant and healthy trade union movement.

This is a cornerstone of any western democracy, the free and healthy trade union movement, the right to organize, the right to free collective bargaining and the right to withhold one's services in the event of an impasse. It is a cornerstone we are proud of. It is one of the very things by which we define ourselves as a free and open democracy. This piece of legislation has no place in a western democracy that prides itself on the rights of ordinary people and its citizens. It makes one wonder whose side the Conservatives are on.

[Income Tax Act, March 13th, 2012]

Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I have almost made it through the whole shift and I have not apologized to anyone yet today, so I would rather not start now. However, I will suggest that it is perhaps this piece of legislation that I find gutless and cowardly and not the member who put it forward.

I am offended by this piece of legislation, personally. I used to be the head of the carpenters union in my home province of Manitoba, and the carpenters union in my industry is the only friend a worker has. The only friend a carpenter has is the union that is looking after his fair wages, his pension plan, his health and safety, his apprenticeship and his training. I started my carpenter apprenticeship indentured to the carpenters union because I could not find a private employer who would sign my apprenticeship documents, and that was the vehicle by which I got my post-secondary education, which is my journeyman carpenter's papers.

I started my career in the asbestos mines, as a labourer. I was 17 years old. Believe me, there was no friend in that mine except for the union too, because we were the ones going to the company and saying “Isn't it true that asbestos is bad for you?” They said, “No, get back to work; this is Canadian asbestos; this is benign asbestos; this asbestos won't kill you”. The only friend a working person has, frankly, is the union.

Let me take this opportunity to use this completely meritless piece of legislation to celebrate some of the contributions the labour movement has in fact made and explain why this war on labour on the left that the neo-conservative right wing zealots and reactionaries are so intent on pursuing is in fact folly economically. There is no business case for smashing the labour movement.

I challenge members to look south to the United States. The United States' greatest strength and greatest asset was a consuming middle class that received fair wages that could feed and sustain a family, which led to consumerism and led to the greatest economic powerhouse the world has ever known. Somehow, in their wisdom, the neo-conservatives during Reaganomics decided they should smash the labour movement. By cowardly, gutless legislation like this, they systematically, by legislation, dropped the unionization rate in the United States from 33% down to 6%. With that went fair wages. With that went the right to organize, the right to free collective bargaining, pension plans and health and welfare benefits. All these things are just a pipe dream now. The American dream is over. If we were to talk to working people in the United States, those lucky enough to have a job, we would find they are earning $8 or $9 an hour with no benefits. In whose best interest is that?

In the short time I have, let me give one illustration of how far we have come and how far we have fallen. This year will be the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire. In New York City, in 1912, 700 women were working in a sweatshop in the Triangle Shirtwaist factory. A fire started and hundreds of women were killed. That was the impetus of the workplace safety and health movement that led to the cleaning up of workplaces all across the United States, and by extension, all across North America. It was the birth of the trade union movement in the garment industry.

I had 43 garment manufacturers in my riding. I know full well the contribution that UNITE and those unions have made to the safety of those workers. That was a hundred years ago. Then we got cleaned up. We had health and safety provisions, clean workplaces and fewer accidents. Then Reaganomics came along and smashed the labour movement.

In 1995, in Durham, North Carolina, there was a chicken processing plant, non-union of course, with mostly black women working in there. The assembly line would go so fast that, with the number of cuts they made per minute, often they would not even know they had cut themselves until they saw the blood on the floor. A fire started. They had locked the doors from the outside because the women were taking home giblets and pieces of neck and wing tips to make soup with, to supplement the crappy minimum wage they were getting. What happened? They had bolted the door shut from the outside so the women could not steal the goddamn byproducts of the chickens. And what happens? Another fire—

[Income Tax Act, March 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to follow my colleague from Nova Scotia, my fellow NDP caucus colleague, to express our points of view about this appalling piece of legislation, Bill C-377.

Usually when a bill is private member's business, other members of Parliament are less likely to attack it, because they understand it is the single hobby horse of a single MP who has a right to put forward his or her point of view. In this case, there is strong reason to believe that is a planned, orchestrated plant of this offensive, odious piece of legislation, using the member for South Surrey—White Rock—Cloverdale as a vehicle for the government to express its views of contempt and prejudice against the labour movement that has given us so much throughout the history of this country.

My first observation is it is too bad this document is not written on softer paper, because then we could put it in the outhouse next to the Eaton's catalogue and use it as it more properly deserves to be used.

This is a gutless piece of legislation put forward by a cowardly member. If the Conservatives are so serious about attacking labour on the left, let them put forward a piece of legislation that is a government piece of legislation and put this—

[Air Service Operations Legislation, March 13th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, it is a fundamental cornerstone of any western democracy to have a free and active trade union movement that recognizes and enshrines the right to organize; the right to free collective bargaining; and in the event of an impasse in the process of free collective bargaining, the right to withhold services as an economic lever to command a fair living wage in the labour free marketplace that we recognize and respect.

There is something about this piece of legislation that is being rammed through in one day, without hearing witnesses at committee, with only a few hours of debate, that is so corrosive to everything we stand for, to every right and freedom by which we define ourselves as Canadians. This is the kind of corrosive erosion of those fundamental rights and freedoms that we on this side of the House are dedicated and committed to opposing with every possible tool we have.

What is the definition of the contempt of Parliament? It is enshrined in this document right here, as the Conservatives try to undermine the collective rights of people to free collective bargaining with a piece of legislation that in the same process offends the sensibilities of any person with a democratic fibre in their body, by ramming through this legislation in the dark of night, under the shroud of secrecy, hoping the general public will not catch up to the fact of the sheer brute force and ignorance associated with this piece of legislation. It is the very epitome of contempt.

Where I come from we have an expression that fair wages benefit the whole community. The Conservatives talk about trying to protect the economy by undermining these workers' rights to try to achieve a fair wage from their employer. What about the economy when the whole working class is driven down to wages that cannot sustain their families? That is what happened in the United States. The American dream has been lost because the neo-conservative right wingers in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s smashed the trade union movement.

It was the trade union movement in the United States that created its greatest asset, a consuming middle class, families that had money in their pockets that they could buy things with and provide a decent standard of living. When the Reaganomics of the right wing neo-conservatives drove the unionized workforce down from 30% to 6%, with that went jobs that paid a family a living wage. Now everyone is scrambling at $8 and $9 an hour in these crappy jobs, with no pensions and no benefits. Is that the vision the Conservatives want for Canada, to follow the Americans to a place where there are no decent paying jobs?

[Foreign Investment, March 12th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, foreign takeovers of our strategic industries should only be allowed if it can be clearly demonstrated that these are in the best interests of Canadians. I cannot imagine any upside to losing our domestic control over grain production and grain marketing.

Will the government commit to doing a full review and undertaking regarding the takeover of Viterra by Glencore Xstrata? Will it agree to intervene if it cannot be clearly demonstrated that this is in the best interests of grain producers and the general public for their food security and their domestic control over our food supply?

[Petitions, March 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present a petition signed by literally tens of thousands of Canadians who call upon Parliament to take note that asbestos is the greatest industrial killer that the world has ever known and that Canada remains one of the largest producers and exporters of asbestos in the world even though more Canadians now die from asbestos than all other industrial causes combined. They also point out that Canada spends millions of dollars subsidizing the asbestos industry and blocking international efforts to curb its use.

Therefore, the petitioners pray that the Government of Canada should ban asbestos in all of its forms and institute a just transition program for asbestos workers and the communities they live in; end all government subsidies of asbestos, both in Canada and abroad; and stop blocking international health and safety conventions designed to protect workers from asbestos, such as the Rotterdam Convention.

[Committees of the House, March 8th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour to present, in both official languages, the fifth report of the Standing Committee on Government Operations and Estimates in relation to its study of the supplementary estimates (C) for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2012.

I am pleased to report that the committee considered a vote under Privy Council and reports the same to the House.

[41st General Election, March 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as they say, the member's response should not be dismissed lightly. It should be dismissed with great force and with ridicule and derision because his answers get more absurd with each passing day.

The people have a right to know if their government is giving sweetheart contracts to a very shady company with very strong Conservative ties. RMG and its parent company have been involved in bilking charities, violating do-not-call lists and selling fake memberships. Did it also give RackNine the money to make these phony phone calls and carpet bomb the country with lies, trying to deceive people from their right to vote. We have a right to know what contracts it has with RMG.

[41st General Election, March 7th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, we are providing information. I must remind the Prime Minister that it is only the Conservative Party that is being investigated for election fraud, again I might add.

In the last election, 94 Conservative campaigns filed that they had made payments to RMG. In 48 of those, it was the same amount, $15,000. So we know the Conservative Party gave massive amounts of money to RMG but what about the contracts with the Conservative government? What is the full extent of the relationship between the government and RMG? What government departments gave it contracts? What were the services rendered? Were those tendered or sole source and what was the dollar value?

[41st General Election, March 6th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I will simply ask, what is the full extent of the relationship between the Government of Canada and RMG, or any of their subsidiaries or their American parent company Xentel?