Rodger Cuzner

[Business of Supply, May 6th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Peace River talked about demonizing. The inconsistencies and the different messages we are hearing from the government are causing concern in the minds of the Canadian public.

We heard the former Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development that the government has taken the shackles off, is opening it up, and will allow employers to pay 15% less. Then the minister stood the other day and said that all they have done since 2002 is tighten it up.

Does my colleague from Papineau agree that it is the inconsistencies--

[Questions on the Order Paper, May 2nd, 2014]

With regard to Enterprise Cape Breton Corporation’s (ECBC) responsibility for the former Cape Breton Development Corporation’s Early Retirement Incentive Program (ERIP) and Compassionate Disability Benefit (CDB): (a) what year did ECBC become responsible for the ERIP and CDB; (b) what is the total number and outcome of decisions by year rendered by (i) the Nova Scotia Workers’ Compensation Board (NSWCB), (ii) Nova Scotia Workers’ Compensation Appeals Tribunal (WCAT), (iii) the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia related to the ERIP and CDB; (c) how many cases did ECBC utilize in-house legal services and third-party legal services in (i) the NSWCB, (ii) the WCAT, (iii) the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia cases related to the ERIP and CDB by year; (d) what was the total cost to ECBC for in-house legal services and third-party legal services in (i) the NSWCB, (ii) the WCAT, (iii) the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia cases related to the ERIP and CDB by year; and (e) what specific fund and or budget does ECBC in-house legal services and third-party legal services get billed to relating to (i) NSWCB, (ii) WCAT, (iii) the Nova Scotia Supreme Court cases related to the ERIP and CDB?

[Employment, April 30th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the minister bragged about that program yesterday, the reciprocal aspect of it that was a benefit to all. The reality is that there are three times as many foreign youth workers in this country than there are Canadians working offshore. Look at Poland, with 753 Polish workers here in Canada. How many do we have in Poland? We have four. Look at Croatia, with over 300 Croatian workers here in Canada. How many do we have there? We have two.

With 225,000 fewer youth jobs under the government's guidance, how can he accept that as reciprocal?

[Employment, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, listening to anybody would be a good start. We know that this temporary foreign worker program under the Conservative government has grown by over 200,000 workers. We know that it equates to one in five jobs that have been created going to somebody other than a Canadian. The country has lost confidence in the government. Canadians do not trust Conservatives to run the program. They do not trust them to fix the program or certainly to undertake any kind of a study.

Will the minister, on behalf of companies across this country and Canadian workers, at least ask the Auditor General to come in and do an urgent and immediate review of this program, please?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will adopt the approach the minister has taken to take the politics out of this and look at the facts. He referenced the reciprocal agreement with other nations where Canadians could go to a specific nation and it in turn could send people to Canada.

If he thinks that program is working really well, we know that there are about 380 Croatians working in Canada. Meanwhile there are four Canadians working in Croatia. He can check the order paper. These are actually stats. My numbers are off a bit, but about 700 people from Poland are working here and about 4 Canadians are working in Poland. We are getting jacked on those beautiful arrangements too. Therefore, let us take the politics out of this.

I am going to defend my NDP colleagues for a second. The Conservatives have attacked the NDP for soliciting support. There are aspects of this program that are essential to maintaining Canadian jobs, and I stand by that. However, let us open this up. Let us fix this problem so it serves Canadians and not discriminates against them or hurts them.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives like to say that this is an isolated incident and that they have taken corrective action but we know better. We have seen it in the mining sector, the banking sector, the service sector and so on.

I have a fundamental question for my colleague. One in seven jobs that has been created in this country has gone to a temporary foreign worker. Is my colleague comfortable with that? Does she feel that is right?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, obviously, we want to what is best for Canadians. Decisions have to be made based on actual evidence. Could my colleague share with us what bank of evidence the government would have gone to two and a half years ago to go forward with an accelerated LMO process and the ability to pay 15% less to temporary foreign workers than to Canadian workers? Did it use the same bank of data and information to revoke those initial changes that it had put in? Where is the reference to the data?

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, that pretty much frames the situation. That is exactly how the program should work. Those temporary foreign workers brought in for that short period of time help to support the entire tourism sector in Prince Edward Island. Anne of Green Gables is Prince Edward Island. It puts heads in beds. It puts bums in seats at theatres and restaurants. People are buying gas. They are staying in accommodations. That is what it is all about.

I remember the government taking a shot at our leader because he had supported an application by a high-end Japanese restaurant in his riding that needed somebody to come in for a short period of time to pull together the menu and specifically train the kitchen staff. The government said the leader of the Liberal Party was looking for a temporary foreign worker. Yes, he was, and that is how the program is supposed to work.

We need less rhetoric and more study. The government should bring forward some quality recommendations and fix this program for Canadians.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, she has caught me off guard here. I know that the government takes all votes in committee. I sit on the standing committee on human resources and skills development. The member might want to have a chat with her colleague, the official critic, on that, because the official critic knows where I stand on the issue of temporary foreign workers.

Again, the proof is in the pudding. We have put this motion before the House before. We have brought motions before the committee before and challenged the government to do what is right and what is best for the businesses in this country that need access to workers and workers who need access to jobs. I will stand today, as I have been, to ask the government to take this issue seriously so that it works for all Canadians.

[Business of Supply, April 29th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for his well thought out and impassioned speech. He brought a lot to the debate today and hopefully I will be able to contribute a bit more myself.

I was able to dust off notes from the debate we entered into a year and two weeks ago when I presented a motion in the House calling for the government to embark on a full review of the temporary foreign worker program. Since that time we have seen another glaring example of the current government's ineptitude. We have seen the government's ineptitude time and time again, whether it is with respect to the fair elections act or something else. Any legislation that has gone well for the Conservatives would be on an incredibly short list.

The approach that the Conservatives have taken toward developing legislation is often in error, seldom in doubt. They are adverse to seeking the opinion of the people who know the issues. They are reluctant to study specific issues, or take any kind of recommendations or amendments from the opposition parties because they know it all. That attitude has placed the Conservative Party in trouble many times. Canadians are catching on. Canadians understand that full well, and nowhere is it more obvious than on this particular issue of temporary foreign workers.

One of my colleagues mentioned the letter we sent to the Auditor General. The Auditor General was aware of this issue back in 2009. It was the Auditor General who triggered great concern about the explosion in the number of temporary foreign workers in this country. As my colleague from Winnipeg North identified, in 2006 the number of temporary foreign workers in this country was 160,000. That number is about 360,000 now.

Two and a half years ago the former Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development took the shackles off this program, let the program run wild thereby accelerating the LMO process for businesses that wanted to bring in temporary foreign workers, and provided employers with the opportunity to pay 15% below market rates for their temporary foreign workers. This program was identified at that time as a great concern because it would put downward pressure on wages and impact the unemployment rate. That is what we are seeing now. We knew that was going to happen.

The government has said that this is an isolated case and that the minister has taken action. Make no mistake, this is not an isolated case. We have seen it many times. We have seen it in the mining sector, the banking sector, the service sector, and now we are seeing it in the fast-food industry.

The temporary foreign worker program is an important program in this country. At one time Canadians had a great deal of confidence in it. Many parts of this country do not have an agricultural sector. Nova Scotia would not have an agricultural sector if it were not for this program. The temporary foreign workers who work in these industries provide support to Canadians. They provide an opportunity for Canadians to maintain their jobs and continue to raise their families.

The government's mismanagement of the program has brought it into disrepute. Canadians think the program is like the Senate: we should just get rid of it. That does a great disservice to the program because it deserves to be saved.

I presented a motion this morning. The opposition parties, certainly the Liberal Party, with regard to this program, want to mend it, not end it, but that cannot be done in isolation. We have seen the government make one-off changes to this program, and every time it made a change, it created an unintended consequence and an even greater degree of mess.

Just to pick up on a comment from my colleague from Winnipeg North, whenever there is a question asked, the minister dismisses it. He has been particularly hard on the NDP this week, saying the NDP has asked for more temporary foreign worker support.

He threw that at me one time. In fact, six years ago, I wrote a letter of support for a company in my riding. ExxonMobil needed, for a short period of time, a very specific type of engineering that was within the realm of the company. I wrote a letter of support once for that company for the particular work that it needed done. That is the intent of the program. That is what that was all about. Then the minister gets up, beats his chest, and says, “The member for Cape Breton—Canso supports this program. He wrote a letter of support”, and all the backbenchers gloat.

That is what is wrong with it. That is what is wrong with the government. Rather than trying to get to what works for Canadians and supports Canadian enterprise and business, it tries to score these cheap-shot, sucker-punch little answers to stuff like that rather than trying to find some real answers. It is a huge disservice to our country and the people who are trying to do business in this country.

One of the problems—and I am sure I can get support for this not just on the opposition benches but from most Canadians as they realize this now—is that rather than trying to seek out the best evidence and information on which to base some kind of logical decision and way forward on whatever the issue might be, the government will take whatever is in the paper and anecdotally say that this is what the government should be doing. It does this rather than researching the issue and trying to get facts. Everything around job skills development has been based on that type of information rather than on actual labour market data.

We heard the Prime Minister talk about the skills shortage crisis and say that Canadians have to be seized by this crisis, but we know that opinions from some of the most respected people in this country, such as Don Drummond with TD Economics and most recently the PBO, have all provided actual evidence that debunks the government's approach to the temporary foreign worker program.

In his labour market assessment, the PBO said that Canada is not experiencing a skills and labour shortage but that a higher portion of temporary foreign workers in the private sector could also be putting downward pressure on private sector job vacancies. We see that the C.D. Howe Institute is attributing an increase in unemployment by four percentage points in western Canada right now to the temporary foreign worker programs.

If we were to actually investigate this particular program, as has been requested by the House on a number of occasions over the last number of years, and if recommendations were brought forward to the government and a full debate took place, then we would be serving Canadians. We would provide temporary foreign workers to companies that need them, but we would not be putting downward pressure on wages or putting Canadians out of work. It is shameful what the government has done with this program and the disrepute it has brought upon it.

Liberals will be supporting this particular motion today.