Mr. Speaker, thank you for giving me this time to speak on this very important issue.
I have to admit that I do not have a lot of corporations in my riding. Perhaps the corporate tax cut could provide the impetus for Abitibi-Bowater to expand the mill.
Mr. Speaker, I heard a member make comment about the mill. No, sorry, the mill is still closed.
Nonetheless, in this entire region, let us take a look at the idea of this corporate tax cut and how it seems to be a wonderful panacea to create employment in the area.
My area fared well during the last recession. It did fairly well for several reasons, a myriad of reasons. I just mentioned a mill closure. Right now we do have investment in Grand Falls Windsor where the mill was shut down. Housing prices are on the rise. One of the factors we have noticed and the reason it was not as devastating as we anticipated was the diversified workforce.
Back in 1992 and the years following that, there was a lot of money invested in retraining and skills development. A lot of people in my area, and other rural areas like rural Newfoundland and rural southern New Brunswick, are doing fabulously well because of the diversified workforce. When all that training money was available, a lot of people took advantage of it and were getting classifications for truck driving, for heavy equipment operation, for engineering technology, and they were applying these skills in other parts of the country where there were major investments in oil development and oil technology, such as Alberta and the offshore of both Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador.
That being said, a lot of people are now travelling back and forth, keeping their residence in my riding, yet going to areas like Saskatchewan and Alberta, as well as the offshore of Newfoundland and Labrador. They are applying these skills and making very good money.
All of that had very little, a minuscule amount, to do with the corporate tax cut that made its way through the system then. If it did make its way through the system, it was certainly back in the 1990s and the early part of this past decade when the Liberal government reduced it from 29% to 21%, all on the heels of a surplus.
Now we find ourselves in a situation with this $56 billion deficit where I would have to agree that cutting corporate taxes is not the prudent thing to do at this time. However, there is a good example. What do we do with the money that we do not provide for a corporate tax cut? What we can do with the money is provided by the example of the riding of Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, where there is a diversified and highly skilled workforce.
A lot of money went into basic education. A lot of people did not have grade 12 and a lot of people did not have high school diplomas. As a result, they were not as literate. Literacy training went a long way 10 or 12 years ago, and now we find people are getting skills and qualifications. They do not have to settle on one particular occupation in one particular place. For example, my father spent over 40 years in one mill. That does not exist any more, or at least it is minuscule. Now people have skills they can transfer all over the place.
I met a friend of mine at the airport. He was telling me that he is living in Bishop's Falls, Newfoundland, and is now working off the coast of Africa. Other people in my home town are working in Russia and in Alberta and Texas. The reason they are doing so is they have a skill that is transferable to far-flung areas like eastern Russia, where there is a lot of investment in natural gas.
If we look at the money that is to be saved from cancelling a cut such as this, we could put it into the education of an individual by allowing that individual to have that money in their pocket. It is a direct investment. The indirect investment, to a degree, will work. I agree with that, but timing is of the essence and we just do not have that timing.
Right now people find themselves unemployed. They may find themselves in their 40s, 50s, even into their 60s with no marketable skills, which puts them in a very awkward position. They cannot take advantage of their RSPs they may have collected over the years. They are too young to start drawing on their pensions because their disposal incomes would be very low. Therefore, they need to retrain. There certainly are programs available, but we wish we had a lot more. The amount of investment in literacy has been reduced since the arrival of this government in 2006 and, as a result, it is hurting our economy.
Where do we find, in this particular initiative, the incentives and positive news for small businesses? A hike in payroll taxes is certainly not going to help, and in many areas, and certainly in mine, small business is the vast majority, or virtually all of it is, with a few exceptions.
As a final note on this corporate tax cut idea, let us take a look at a very popular industry, the fishery. It is not what it used to be and is changing no doubt. Smaller boats are now bigger boats with crews onboard. However, the plants themselves, such as the OCI plant in Port Union or Bonavista, are a good example, although there are not as many as there used to be.
I say this because, over the past few years, any investment they have made, whether or not from an increased amount of revenue they received, came on the heels of several factors: the quality of the product; the exchange rate of the Canadian dollar versus the American dollar, which played a big role in this; and the workforce that was available, which was also a major factor because this is seasonal work. For all of these reasons, they were able to maintain a certain sales level. However, not once in my six and a half years as a member of Parliament did they attribute the increase in sales, or the increase in investment in the business itself or the employees, to a corporate tax cut. Not once.
Is it far too indirect for them to bring it up, or does it simply not matter as much? Therefore, let us take a look at the money that could be reinvested if this corporate tax cut were cancelled.
There are the EI pilot projects. I asked the gentleman who runs the fish plant in New-Wes-Valley what was the one thing he needed from the federal government. He said that by far, the most important thing he needed was that the EI pilot projects remained in place, or he would not have a workforce. He has never drawn EI in his life, most likely, but he needs these pilot projects or he cannot find the workers.
Essentially what it comes down to is that a seasonal worker is able to use his or her highest earning 14 weeks over a period of 26 to 52 weeks. As a result of that, a worker is able to obtain increased benefits and is therefore able to sustain his life in the particular area he lives; otherwise, he would have to move away.
Some people might think that if one has to move away, one has to move away. Perhaps the plant, or whatever it may be, can find other workers, or maybe the town can find another type of investment, perhaps as a year-round plant. However, it is hard to attract that kind of investment if there is no one to work in these plants.
Therefore, what I am saying in this debate in an indirect way is that I have no doubt that corporate tax cuts down the road will be a positive factor, but they nowhere near reach the positive levels of the other factors that have been diminished or not invested in at all, such as education and the EI pilot projects. However, in this particular case, the timing is off the rails and I think that in this particular case a more prudent investment in the individuals who work for these corporations would prove to be of far greater benefit, not just for my riding and Newfoundland and Labrador but also the entire nation.