Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to be here to debate Bill C-9, what we would normally call the budget implementation act. In this particular case, however, we are looking at the jobs and economic growth act.
For the next 20 minutes, I will analyze some of the material in the budget that is deficient and some that may be construed as being positive. Dare I go that far, sitting in the opposition? I will just to be fair-minded. I also want to touch on some of the major issues that have come up in the last little while in my riding and in my province in some of the more traditional industries that are facing a crisis, to say the least.
Particularly today, there is a crisis in the fisheries in Newfoundland and Labrador for those who depend on the crab fishery, with the season opening and very few boats out on the water able to make a living. I will get to that a little later.
I would like to talk about the genesis of the economic action plan as described in the budget, titled “Leading the Way on Jobs and Growth”. I would not say that the economic action plan is leading the way. I do believe the sheer gist of our talented workforce, the education levels, our ability to innovate and the capacity by which we can get to the level to survive all economic crises certainly is leading the way but it is incumbent upon the individual to lead the way out of this.
However, there are areas in which there are weaknesses in our society and socio-economic factors that are at play, areas that the government needs to take action on. We need to play a role in the lives of people who have fallen through the cracks, people who are most vulnerable in situations, whether they live in Ontario, Nunavut or Newfoundland and Labrador. Many of them are going through a similar crisis when it comes to education, rates of literacy and certainly when it comes to matching the skills with a particular place or industry they want to be in.
I would like to suggest something for the House to consider and it is something I have talked about quite a bit over the past little while. We are seeing something taking place in the workforce. I will use my riding as strong example because of the talent and skills that people have developed over the past little while. A lot of work is transient in nature. Let us take the example of a particular individual with a skills set in the oil and gas industry. If people are thinking about Newfoundland and Labrador, they must be thinking that they work offshore. That is not the case. In my particular neck of the woods, a lot of people are transients from Newfoundland and Labrador who go to the oil fields of Alberta.
They work in some of the major plants, upgraders I think the term is, that go from one form of petroleum to the final product that is ready for market with regard to natural gas and oil but also for major infrastructure projects happening in Alberta because of the proliferation of the industry. I say that because even though oil prices dipped dramatically over last year, the infrastructure is in place, the people who work the industry are also in place and many of them travel back and forth. They spend perhaps three or four weeks in Alberta at the work site and travel thousands of kilometres to return home for two or three weeks. That is becoming the nature of many of the workers and jobs available at this point.
There was a dip in the demand for work simply because of the low price of oil. I say the low price of oil meaning relative to what it was two years ago when it was in some cases above $150 a barrel. Now it is at $83 a barrel and, therefore, workers have kind of slipped into a comfortable place when it comes to achieving work for those who are skilled in that industry.
How does that change the dynamic? It does in many ways. People are now taking advantage of skills training, whether it is federal or provincial, and that is a good thing. What is lacking is the ability of small, medium and large enterprises to match the work that is available. What I would implore the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to consider is a national program similar to what we would call a skills inventory database.
Let us assume for a moment that I possess a skill in pipefitting and I live in Newfoundland and Labrador. Where can I go to achieve work that allows me to stay at home but yet travel to find work elsewhere?
People need to put their skill sets into a national database, to go beyond their own backyards, in order to allow other companies to see that they exist. I know that sounds like a strange concept but work is now becoming so quick to attain. Industries are now transitioning from the old traditional style. Even the traditional industries of oil and gas and forestry are now transitioning. The forestry industry is going from not just pulp and paper or newsprint. It is transforming into furniture making, pellets for heating energy, whether it is at the home or at the business.
In the fishing industry, many of the smaller boats are now becoming larger vessels and they are fishing in areas further off shore.
Therefore, because these companies, whether they be small or big, are transitioning to a new type of work and a new type of business model, which means new types of revenue streams, it becomes problematic to find the workers who have the particular skills. The companies end up spending a lot of money, resources and time just to find those people.
However, we, as a government, can make that transition easier by providing that particular database of information so that it puts the worker, as well as the employer, into that same sphere and allows people to communicate.
There is another side of doing that which would be beneficial, and I humbly put this forward to the House as a token of debate. I will give members a good example. In Port Union in my riding, over 1,000 people used to work at the local shrimp plant, which at the time was owned by Fishery Products International, now owned by OCI. The plant went from a workforce of over 1,000 people down to about 100 or 200 people on a good day. It was highly seasonal work with somewhere between 15 to 20 weeks of work for the average employee.
Now, across the harbour there is an old plant that existed many years ago, the early part of the last century, and then was shut down. It was the focal point of a fishing industry when there were a lot more people involved in the fishery. It was owned by William Coaker, incidentally. The government is now investing into giving the place a facelift, let us say, making it more user friendly, not just for tourists but also for business. A company such as Iceberg is now going to produce bottled water. Bottled water from icebergs. My goodness. I remember a gentleman telling me one time that in his day, icebergs were the biggest nuisance around. Now icebergs have become a lifeline for bottled water and other products.
How do we go from transitioning from what was all fishery to now partially fishery and partially iceberg harvesting? We do that in the way that we spoke about, by trying to find the talented individuals who are able to work. The skill set needs to be there in order for them to set up. If a database exists, a company that wants to set up an operation, such as Iceberg or a water bottling plant, it can get a good idea about who in that community is available to work. Whether they have moved away recently or not, they can still be involved in that database by simply indicating where they come from. That would make it much easier for a company to find the workers it needs.
Mining is another example. A huge mine opened up outside of a town called Millertown and it is owned by Teck. It mines mostly for copper, nickel and zinc, but it is now mining for gold. By doing that the company needs the particular individuals talented enough to work in those mines. That is where the government could play a role.
I would like the government to consider this in its next budget or even as a policy over the summer or in the fall. If we to get serious about having a talented workforce, promoting it and ensuring it is able to mesh with anybody that wants to hire them, whether it be small, medium or large business, we need to have the playing field by which they can come together.
Let me return to the budget implementation bill and what was written in the book provided to us when the budget was released. The economic action plan promised a great deal of money for infrastructure and it promised a great deal on the back end for tertiary activity.
Intentions are paved with gold, if I may use the vernacular. The problem with that is the function of it has diminished in the past little while. Here are some of the problems we need to consider when this type of crisis happens again.
With respect to unspent monies, let me give the House a list of what was unspent in this situation. In the supplementary estimates (C), which were brought to the House, $1.4 billion worth of infrastructure funding were not spent in 2009-10. There were $870 million unspent out of the $2 billion for the infrastructure stimulus fund. There were $186 million unspent out of $200 million for the green infrastructure fund. There were $240 million unspent out of $495 million for the provincial-territorial base funding. Finally, for the building Canada communities federal component, there were $135 million unspent out of $250 million.
Let me illustrate to the House a point that I saw in particular where this money gets unspent. Cost-sharing is a large element of it. The government spends money to increase the infrastructure and improve the infrastructure for a particular community. I will use the town of New West Valley as an example. It wants to take advantage of a particular stimulus fund to upgrade its park for reasons of tourism and for its residents who take advantage of it for fitness, health and the like.
The problem with it is this. In a small town the municipal tax base is not as large as a medium or larger community. The business tax is not where it used to be. That puts it in a vulnerable position where it has to come up with its one-third share, which it cannot do.
The federal government needs to consider putting in flexibilities so smaller communities can avail the funding. Right now provinces do their part by allowing up to 90% available so the communities can up with 10%, and kudos to them for doing so.
I understand the rules and regulations of Treasury Board and all things financial, the regulations and accounting principles. However, the compassion has been taken out of this when the government insists on doing things such as major announcements, handing out cheques and the like. This is kind of a misnomer because cheques are not really handed out any more. Maybe they are, but I cannot get that straight.
Nonetheless, let me just go back to the situation we have on infrastructure. One of the other elements about this funding when it comes recreation. One-third of the spending is hard enough to come up with, but we have a program called RInC, which is recreational infrastructure.
In 1967 there was a rash of spending regarding stadiums, gymnasiums, swimming pools and municipal council buildings. Many smaller communities took advantage of the Centennial fund to build their town halls or stadiums and so on and so forth. A lot of remains. I will not say intact, because that goes too far. However, it is still there and through a patchwork of funding, not a lot from the federal government, it remains, barely in some cases.
What we proposed, and I say we meaning the colour red of Liberal, in the last election was that we have an incentive to put money back into these communities in the infrastructure we invested in 1967. I do not know if anyone has noticed a calendar, but 1967 certainly was not yesterday. We got the idea about these crumbling buildings and we were able to do that.
The Conservatives decided this, and maybe this was a good idea, but the problem was they instituted a program that was not just one-third, it was fifty-fifty. If people are to spend $200,000 to fix a stadium, and that is a meagre sum for a stadium that seats over 1,000 in a town of only 3,000 or 4,000 people, they have to come up with $100,000.
There are stipulations where they can go to the province, but that puts it on the hook too. The government said it would not clawback funds, but in a way that is a clawback. It says it believes in a stadium and gives the town the money. For example, Bishop's Falls will be, after the weekend, Hockeyville, Canada. I am somewhat biased. It will get $100,000 for winning Hockeyville. Only one stadium on the whole country, whether it is the other towns or Bishop's Falls, gets that money. It is pretty bad that for that one stadium, the major contributor to its infrastructure, on a federal level, is the Kraft corporation.
We should think about that one for a moment. Maybe we should look at this in the sense of giving these communities a fair shot at the funding they so need. They are told that they are getting $100,000 for their stadiums, then they pause and the cameras click and they get on the six o'clock news. Then when all that settles down, the lights dim and the news is over, those towns realize they have come up with $100,000 too. It is unfortunate the cameras are not around then.
I bring that up as an illustration only because I honestly think this is fixable. I would compel the government to consider these options as we go forward, whether it is a renewed program as such. It talks about program renewals. If the program where I could fix my home and get a tax credit for it were so good, so powerful and so wonderful, where is it now? Perhaps someone can find it because I know where it is.
If an evaluation is to take place and if we have to consider all the programs, let us start from scratch. Let us go right to the core of the issue here. Let us go to the spending needed for programs that are needed. What ends up happening is when program evaluators review a program review, they only look at the numbers. The faces, the stories and the communities get lost in the mix. The government program evaluators become simply black and white numbers, and all of us have to stop doing that.
I will give an example. It seems like the only time we listen to people and their stories of how good these programs are is when the programs are in trouble. Why should a program have to fight for its life when it is so good and so, in the end, salvageable? Let me give the best example I can, being a rural member of Parliament, and that is the community access program, the CAP.
I am not sure if the government wanted to cut it or not. Quite frankly, I do not think it is sure either. Let us go beyond that argument of who said what, where, when and why and what news release was correct and what bureaucrat got it wrong, whether minister or bureaucrat. Let is set that aside for one moment.
The Conservatives said that they would continue the funding for this program for another year. However, what they are doing is putting money into the other pile of money, which is all about infrastructure spending. They make it sound like it is the bottom line of just the digital world, when in fact it is a social program. It allows people with lower incomes to be on the Internet, to be engaged in the world that they endorsed.
Finally, I will talk about the fisheries very quickly. We have a situation—
