Peggy Nash

[Helping Families in Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I share the member's goal of wanting to help families in need. Right now, fewer than 4 in 10 unemployed Canadians are getting EI benefits. This is an historic low in this country at a time of tremendous economic transition. We see massive deindustrialization of the manufacturing heartland in this country. It is a disgrace that we are losing our manufacturing and economic powerhouse in central Canada. Yet, as working people go through this transition, they are losing one of the anchors of benefits to help them transition to other kinds of employment.

So, while I share his agreement with the goal of the bill, the measures, as they are proposed, do not coincide with an election promise of the government. We believe they would be problematic, not just for the families for whom these benefits are intended, but for all Canadians who today or in future hope to get employment insurance.

[Helping Families in Need Act, September 27th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-44. This is a bill that we support at second reading because obviously this is an issue of helping families. It is not a question of ideology or partisan politics; it is about helping families in their time of need.

As members well know, Bill C-44 would amend the Canada Labour Code, the Employment Insurance Act, the Income Tax Act and the income tax regulations to allow workers to take leave and draw EI in the event of their child's serious illness, disappearance or death due to crime. These are all very serious and challenging circumstances which unfortunately too many Canadian families are dealing with.

It goes without saying that we agree with supporting families in their time of exceptional need and at a time when there is suffering and trauma going on in a family. However, I do want to remind the House that during the 2011 election campaign the Conservatives campaigned on a promise to fund this measure from general revenue and not the EI fund.

We note that the grant for the parents of murdered and missing children would be paid from general revenue. That is what is being proposed here. However, it appears that the Conservatives have ignored their own campaign promise, in that the benefits to be paid to the parents of critically ill children will not be paid through general revenue but will be paid through EI.

This is by far the more costly of the benefits because of the number of people involved. This is at a time when the cumulative deficit for the EI fund is at $9 billion. This is at a time when we have a sluggish economy, persistent exceptionally high unemployment in Canada, and sadly at a time when the government has been attacking and rolling back the benefits to which Canadian families can have access. That is extremely problematic.

The Conservatives are making this proposal at a time when more than half of Canadians who are unemployed cannot access EI benefits. That is simply unacceptable. New Democrats will continue to fight for an EI system that is fair, accessible and available to Canadians right across this country in their time of need.

I do remember some years back when the Conservatives also agreed with that. At one point in time they had called unemployment insurance, as it was called at that time, the best adjustment program that we have in this country. It is an adjustment program that is necessary during periods of downturn in the economy, but also during periods of great economic change in our society.

New Democrats have spoken many times in this House about the deindustrialization that is taking place under the watch of the current government and the previous government. We have seen hundreds of thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs leave this country. Far too many people ultimately do not get access to EI benefits. They end up in jobs that are very low paying, contract or temporary positions, and face a dramatic decline in their standard of living.

The EI system was designed to help working people during these periods of adjustment in a changing economy. What has been so grossly unfair is that the current government and the previous Liberal government plundered tens of billions of dollars out of the EI fund to balance the books. The money in the EI fund was paid by workers and employers across the country and ought to have been available to people in their time of need when they faced unemployment.

Today we are left with this legacy of more than half of unemployed workers not being able to access benefits. We have a deficit in the fund, and benefits have been reduced. I want to make the point that further tapping into this fund for a new benefit, which is in complete contradiction to the Conservatives' campaign pledge, is simply not acceptable. Of course we do support the principle of helping Canadian families in their time of need.

There are many tragic stories of Canadian families that have been affected by the critical illness of a child or children who have been victims of very serious crimes, including murder.

Recently I spoke with a constituent in my riding of Parkdale—High Park in Toronto, a mother who is a strong community activist. She lives in Toronto community housing, so it is a family of limited means. This woman is a single parent and her only child, her son, was walking in broad daylight on a Saturday afternoon and was the victim of a drive-by shooting. Fortunately for all concerned, this 15-year-old man survived, but the bullet went through his abdomen. He was severely injured. He remains at home. He has been completely traumatized by this incident. He will have a permanent disability as a result of his injuries. This is through no fault of his own. By all accounts from people in the community, he is a good kid who does well in school and helps out in the neighbourhood, but he was the victim of a random crime in his neighbourhood.

It is frightening. I am a parent of three sons, and I imagine that could happen to children anywhere in this country. The woman said that because her son has been so traumatized, he has not been able to return to school. They are being forced to move not only out of the Toronto community housing building, but they are looking to move out of Toronto because her son has been so traumatized. He does not want to go out of their apartment. He is afraid to go to the window because he fears for his life.

This is one example. We get a sense of what some families are dealing with because, through no fault of their own, they have been victims of crime. We support the goal of assisting families in their time of need, whether it is a child who has been a victim of crime or whether it is a child who is critically ill. This means parents have to take time off work. In some cases they have to travel some distance to deal with the crisis they are facing.

We have difficulty with imposing more costs on the EI system at a time when this fund is already stressed, at a time when more than half of unemployed workers cannot claim the benefits for which they have paid and to which they ought to be entitled.

I hope that we can have a good debate about the best way to implement this goal of helping Canadian families. I hope the government will take the opportunity to consider constructive proposals to make the bill better so that it serves the needs of families in crisis, but also does not negatively impact the far too many Canadian workers, more than one million, who are unemployed.

[Foreign Investment, September 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, when oil industry executives have more concern about Canadian sovereignty than the government, we know there is a problem.

People are concerned about opening the floodgates to other foreign governments buying up our natural resources. No matter how much the Conservatives furrow their brows and point to their shoelaces, if they refuse to act we will have the slow hollowing out and the nationalization of our resource sector by other governments.

What is it going to take to get one of those ministers up on their feet, listening to the real concerns of Canadians?

[Foreign Investment, September 26th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, because of the Conservatives' improvised and uncertain economic framework, oil company executives are asking the government to put in place clear rules regarding ownership of the oil sands, which the Conservatives are not doing. Instead, they are holding discussions behind closed doors about Nexen.

Will the Conservatives listen to the concerns of Canadians and business owners instead of ignoring them?

[Business of Supply, September 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, if companies feel economic insecurity, they will not be investing. It just shows the failure of the approach of the present government and the previous Liberal government to not tie any tax reductions to specific job creation, innovation or economic stimulus, and we are feeling the impact of that now. It is creating a sluggish economy. Unemployment remains high. We know we can do much better with measures that are tied to job creation. That is what an NDP government would do.

[Business of Supply, September 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I know that in the member's riding and region of the country many seasonal workers are seriously affected by these changes. These changes disproportionately hurt those at the lower end of the income scale. Of course there are regions of Canada where there are more seasonal workers and, therefore, those regions are disproportionately affected.

The hon. member asked me directly about my riding of Parkdale—High Park. We also have people who work seasonally in the tourist industry and in the arts and cultural sector who do not get full-time full-year work. They, too, are negatively affected by these changes. The clawback seriously hurts far too many Canadians, especially those who can afford it least, those at the lowest end of the income scale.

[Business of Supply, September 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, as I said very clearly in my speech, the first basic tenet should be “do no harm”. Rather than the serious cuts the government has already made, which are impacting Canadians across the country, the cutting of services and taking people, who currently get more benefits, to a position of reduced or, in some cases, no EI benefits, we should stop doing that. We need to continue to invest in the services and programs that Canadians want and need.

Yes, we do need to deal with reducing the deficit but we do not need to be as aggressive and accelerate even the government's own measures and own timeframes for deficit reduction. We are seeing that is increasing inequality. Ultimately, if the government uses those gains to create new tax measures that benefit only the people at the top, it will increase inequality.

[Business of Supply, September 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to this motion on income inequality. I will splitting my time with my colleague, the hon. member for Hochelaga.

Inequality is another inconvenient truth of our era. Its growth is every bit as unsustainable for our communities, businesses and economy as climate change. If we cannot reduce it, it will hobble growth and opportunity for the next generation.

We cannot afford to misuse our economic strengths in this way. Canada is among the most fortunate of nations, with the 10th largest economy in the world. We have the resources, natural, economic and financial, to create the kind of society that we want. We can afford to share our prosperity. The good news is that shared prosperity leads to more prosperity. Greater equality is not a trade-off but an investment into our future.

Income inequality remains one of the most serious challenges our country faces today and has been on the rise in Canada for the past 20 years. We in the NDP welcome all efforts to reduce, not accelerate, income inequality. We are glad that the Liberals are finally on board and we appreciate the suggestions in this motion.

However, what needs to be done is not just embroidering the cloth but repairing the fraying fabric of our society.

Sadly, the Liberals presided over increased income inequality while they were in power during the 1990s and 2000s and they have consistently supported Conservative budgets that have led us down the wrong path.

We welcome this opportunity to spend today debating this motion. It is an important issue that gets far too little attention in the House and from the government.

Our former colleague, Tony Martin, has made reducing inequality his life's work, including when he was in the House, and we miss him.

Here are some facts. Most Canadians' real income has been stagnant for several years. Over a period of 33 years, average income rose by just 5.5%. According to the Conference Board of Canada, income inequality is increasing more rapidly in Canada than in the United States.

The Conference Board of Canada recently gave Canada a C grade for incoming inequality and ranked us 12 out of 17 peer countries. The OECD has noted that Canada's level of inequality is now above the OECD average.

Much of the increase in inequality is being driven by income gains by the top 1%. The richest 1% of Canadians saw their share of total income increase from 8.1% in 1980 to 13.3% in 2007. The richest 1% in Canada took home almost one-third of all growth in incomes between 1998 and 2007, at the expense and to the detriment of other income groups.

At the same time, unemployment and economic growth are highly divergent across this country. Over 43% of unemployed Canadians live in Ontario alone. This increase in inequality has serious implications for Canadian families.

Household debt has reached record highs, suppressing demand and hindering economic growth.

Lars Osberg at Dalhousie University argues that:

Over the 1981 to 2006 period, the life experience of most Canadian families changed--the “new normal” has been that entering cohorts of young workers earned less in real terms than their parents’ generation did at a comparable age.

Our young people are also facing high unemployment. The unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 24 is more than double the national average at 14.8%. This means that there are 400,000 youth in Canada who are looking for work and cannot find it.

Women, aboriginal people, racialized communities and recent immigrants also suffer from disproportionate poverty relative to other Canadians. Such inequality has serious societal consequences.

A 2009 groundbreaking book on inequality by British scholars, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, empirically demonstrates that inequality, more than GNP, has a significant impact on a range of social indicators, including health outcomes such as average life expectancy and other measures of human development such as rates of literacy, teenage pregnancy or incarceration.

This is not the legacy that we should be leaving to the next generation. However, rather than taking action to correct these imbalances, the government has chosen to pursue an austerity agenda that has only exacerbated them.

The first thing we should do is support Canada's middle-class, not attack it. We should not stand idly by when giant corporations cut half the pay of workers or the workers lose their jobs, as in the case at Caterpillar. We should not intervene in private sector collective bargaining to force lower wages than even the employer was prepared to offer at the bargaining table, such as at Canada Post and Air Canada. We should not happily ship value-added jobs out of the country to the U.S. or China by focusing on exports of bitumen rather than upgrading resources right here at home in Canada.

We need to raise the floor, not lower it, by increasing the low wage, low skill sector of the economy with temporary foreign workers and instead sanction employers who pay them less than Canadians doing the same work.

In an era of increasing inequality, the government's attack on OAS, GIS and employment insurance, along with reckless cuts to the services Canadians rely on, is only adding to the problem.

When the Liberal and Conservative governments plundered the EI fund of billions of dollars and then told unemployed Canadians that they would have to accept lower benefits, that was simply unacceptable.

The Conservative government continues to promote a “you must accept less” doctrine for the vast majority but a “the sky's the limit” approach for the high rollers.

Before the mid-1990s, Canada's tax benefit system stabilized inequality as effectively as systems in Nordic countries, offsetting over 70% of the increase in income inequality.

However, redistribution has become less effective since then. The OECD has noted that taxation and benefits now offset less than 40% of the increase in inequality.

The Conservatives put a lot of stock in the economic spinoff approach to wealth distribution, claiming that higher incomes for the rich will eventually trickle down to the rest of us.

However, tax cuts for big corporations and the wealthiest Canadians have resulted in growing income inequality, stagnant economic growth and a higher unemployment rate.

Income inequality is a serious problem with serious consequences, and Canadians want us to do something about it.

According to an EKOS poll, income inequality is Canadians' primary concern.

If we cannot reduce equality, it will hobble growth and opportunity for the next generation.

Instead of tilting the playing field increasingly to the advantage of the most powerful and affluent in our society, we need a government that takes a first “do no harm” approach.

Rather than eliminating the deficit even faster than promised so that the government can introduce new tax cuts that will benefit Canada's most affluent households, it needs to invest in the services and programs that Canadians want and need right now.

We need strong, balanced job creation right across Canada and a living wage, including for all contracts and procurements with the federal government.

Sadly, in Canada we have seen weak leadership that has turned its back on the daily struggles of most Canadians, but we can change that. Canadians can count on the New Democrats to work for a future where Canada is prosperous for all and where no one is left behind.

[Business of Supply, September 25th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, with only one job available for every five unemployed workers in our country and with only four out of ten unemployed workers getting EI benefits, we have seen that unemployment is persistently high, it is not coming down and yet the government continues the practice of the previous Liberal government in using EI funds to balance budgets, at the same time restricting access to EI.

Could the member explain why his government is increasing inequality by denying workers access to basic EI benefits for which they have already paid?

[Government Accountability, September 24th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, if the Conservatives are so proud, why are they so afraid of giving some basic information to the Parliamentary Budget Officer?

The Parliamentary Budget Officer is forced to take an unprecedented step and go to court to get some basic information he is entitled to because the Conservatives refuse to respect their own law. They seem to have no problem leaking top secret documents from our allies.

Why are they refusing to give the PBO the information he needs to do his job?