Sheri Benson

[Canada's Contribution to the Effort to Combat ISIL, February 17th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, the government has promised to accede to the UN Arms Trade Treaty which would help prevent the flow of small arms to terrorists and insurgent groups, including ISIL.

Would the minister explain the delay in this secession?

[Agriculture and Agri-Food, February 16th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, in opposition, the Liberals voted against the Conservative's measures to dismantle the Canadian Wheat Board. In fact, their leader at the time called the bill to kill the Wheat Board an affront to the rule of law. The Conservatives sold off half of the Wheat Board's assets to the Saudi-owned G3 Global Grain Group, leaving Canadian grain farmers to suffer $6.5 billion in lost income in the last two years.

When will the current government listen to grain farmers and restore the Canadian Wheat Board?

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, in my comments, I spoke of the good work that was done in that tripartite arrangement for reviewing the Labour Code and the recommendations put forward by all parties involved in order to look at how we can modernize the Canada Labour Code, which had not been looked at prior to that for over 60 years.

My view is that the previous government did not believe in that type of working together to find common solutions that took the needs of both groups to find common ground. At times, the NDP has supported important bills like this one, to say that we are prepared to move forward together, that we will challenge the new government on things we feel need to go further. That is the kind of negotiation and working together required, where everyone's views are brought to the table to find the best possible solution. Ultimately, we are talking about the lives of many working men and women in Canada, who need us to work on their behalf and with them.

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I am not quite sure what I can add to that, except to say that I do want to reflect to this House and to others that I have a deep value of the importance of protecting people's rights and the rights of workers and the rights of workers to join unions, to work with their colleagues to make life better.

I think we need to be reminded, in this House, that many of us are able to enjoy things like maternity leave, weekends, and the ability to share work, because a union went on strike, vulnerable people who had nothing, to say this was important to them.

That is why I am standing up to today to support the bill. It is a good first step. We need to go further, as I mentioned in my comments.

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, members can tell from my comments that I think it was a way to go through a back door in order to put labour legislation into place that would be detrimental to unions and detrimental to working people. I think the previous government just hoped that somehow it would happen and no one would challenge it constitutionally.

However, what we know from what we have heard from communities and from what we have heard during committee is that it was not the right way to go, and that provinces have that jurisdiction.

Why go that way? I think it is because there was an anti-worker, anti-union philosophy on value of that previous government.

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, there are some things I would like to clarify; specifically, around the fact that there are many organizations, private organizations, for-profit organizations, which receive government credit, government grants, which do not have the same type of reporting requirements that this bill was requesting of unions. We are going to disagree about this, obviously. That is the reason we say, and rightfully so, it was an attack on a particular group, and it did go in line with all the other attacks on all the other groups, including charities. The previous government worked behind the scenes in order to have audits done on those charities that disagreed with it. That is why I made the comment that we need to look at this in its totality.

The other thing I would like to mention is that although the member likes to talk about a secret vote as being sort of principle of Bill C-525, he needs to know that in that bill one of the secret votes was if a person was not there, somehow it secretly voted for him or her that he or she was against certification of the union. The fact that a person was not there and did not vote, it was a secret to him or her that he or she had voted “no”. It was just absurd.

[Canada Labour Code, February 3rd, 2016]

Madam Speaker, that will be a hard act to follow, but I think I will be able to provide the House with some more content, and perhaps clarification on some facts.

I would like to thank the hard-working Canadians in Saskatoon West who voted me to be their voice in the House of Commons. Today especially, I feel it is important and I acknowledge their support, because it is important to remind me of who I am here to serve and why. It is also important that all of us here remember exactly who is affected, positively or negatively, by the decisions we make each and every day. This is a responsibility I do not take lightly.

Many of the individuals in my riding work part time or contract positions. The majority of them work in the retail and hospitality sector. Quite a few of my constituents work in unionized workplaces. Others have been impacted by the slowdown in the resource sector. Some own businesses and have employees of their own. A great number of my constituents are new Canadians, immigrants or refugees, working two or three casual or part-time jobs, trying to balance a family, a new country, a new language, and an unfamiliar culture. Every one of these workers deserves to be protected.

With this in mind, Bill C-4 is beyond partisan politics. It is about the individuals who brought us here and about making things better for the people we all represent. That is why I support the bill. I support it as a person who cares about the rights and well-being of my constituents and my fellow Canadians.

Bill C-4 is a small step forward toward a return to recognizing and respecting the rights of the hard-working individuals, men and women, who make up our country. It is not hard for me as a member of the NDP caucus to acknowledge the support for Bill C-4. I guess it will not come as a surprise to anyone that our party supports the bill.

However, it should come as a surprise to all Canadians that the government is having to, with no small amount of shame I hope, return to the people of Canada their hard-earned rights, their constitutional rights, their right to privacy, their rights of freedom of association, and freedom of speech, rights that took decades to achieve. As such, today is a day of mixed emotions.

On one hand, we are happy to see critical rights restored to hard-working Canadians. On the other hand, we worry about the erosion of workers' rights that took place under the previous government. Today, we ask the current government to be vigilant in restoring each and every one of the rights stolen from the Canadian people. We also ask that it update parts of the Canada Labour Code that are about 60 years out of date.

A great way to help rectify that problem would be to immediately act on the recommendations of the final report of the 2006 review of the labour code. It is long overdue. Many of these recommendations and much-needed updates would benefit the many hard-working Canadians working two or three part-time jobs, trying to support a family and purchase or maintain a home, a home whose affordability is increasingly out of reach of most middle-class Canadians in Canada, let alone for those individuals working multiple jobs at minimum wage.

It is a simple and perhaps obvious truth that it is easier to destroy things than to build them. For anyone who has wrestled with a blank page, a canvas, a drafting table, or a freshly surveyed drilling site knows, creating something new is hard work. It takes time, persistence, and patience, and is not for the faint of heart. Destruction, on the other hand, is something we have been able to accomplish with ease since we were all very young. At the age of one, a child will happily smash, in a matter of seconds, a birthday cake that took his or her parents an hour and a half to create. Over the past decade, we have witnessed more than our fair share of destruction, a destruction far less playful and humorous than the smashing of the cake.

In a few short years, we have seen the dismantling of the rights for each and every individual across the nation, rights that have taken decades to create, nurture, and grow, rights that protect each one of us, but also, and more important, rights that protect the most vulnerable among us.

The previous government, in a few short years, trampled on and set fire to those rights most dear to individual Canadians, and certainly to those individuals who care about the environment, social services, workers' rights, women's right, the poor and every other marginalized individual and community in this great land; also to those individuals who care about good, honest fiscal management and the economy, and children's education and futures; and especially to those who care about indigenous communities, their languages, cultures and people. These are not and should not be seen as mutually exclusive things. They work together. Each of us is better off by including the other.

Thankfully, today is a new day, and Bill C-4 is a great first step. However, we must do better, be better, and dream much bigger, because we have a lot of ground to make up.

I implore the governing party to be bold, to take the time to recognize respect, and provide rights to individuals who brought them here, because these are individuals who make up our great country. Each of them is a hard-working Canadian.

Today we also know that many Canadians are hurting. Many have lost their jobs and are in danger of, or have already, losing their homes. Many regularly use food banks and emergency shelter that, in some cases, is becoming their everyday shelter. This is unacceptable in a country as great as Canada. We can and must do better.

Bill C-377 was an unnecessary, discriminatory law designed to impose onerous and absurdly detailed reporting requirements on a particular segment, on unions. The bill was pushed through Parliament by the previous government, despite widespread opposition from a wide variety of interests, not just unions. Why? Because the negative effects of the bill would harshly impact each and every Canadian.

Each of these groups and associations represent individuals whose rights they consider important, whether one belongs to a union or not. Some of those individuals and groups were constitutional and privacy experts, for example, the NHL Players Association, provincial governments, Conservative and Liberal senators, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, the Canadian Bar Association, and the insurance and mutual fund industry.

Likewise, along with the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, we believe this bill goes against the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. If not repealed, this bill will be defeated by the courts.

The New Democrats opposed the bill at every stage, because the legislation was as unnecessary as it was irresponsible. It corrupted the very idea of fairness and balance in negotiations between parties and undermined the fundamental right of free collective bargaining. It was a partisan assault on the men and women who went to work every day to provide for their families.

Canada needs a strong and healthy trade union movement. Historically speaking, unions in Canada have done much, not only for their members, but for Canadian society as a whole. When unions are weakened, all working people feel it. Why? Because, contrary to the rhetoric of those threatened by workers' associations, namely the wealthy 1% and a few misguided Conservatives, attacks on collective bargaining do not promote economic growth. Attacks like these promote inequality, not a healthy economy.

In 2002, documents based on more than 1,000 studies of the impact of unions on domestic economies, the World Bank found that a high rate of unionization led to greater income equality, lower unemployment and inflation, higher productivity, and a quicker response to economic downturns. A quick response to an economic downturn seems like it might be a positive thing right about now.

The previous government claimed at the time that it was acting in the name of transparency, but the Conservatives failed to mention that unions were already required to make their financial information available to their members. The bill is an unnecessary redundancy solving a non-existent problem.

Something we have not heard yet is that the bill would cost taxpayers a great deal of money to achieve absolutely nothing.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer estimated that it would cost much more than the $2.4 million allocated by the CRA to do this level of monitoring. In fact, it was estimated that Bill C-377 would cost the Canada Revenue Agency approximately $21 million to establish the electronic database over the first two years, and approximately $2.1 million per year for subsequent years. Many estimates were even much higher than that. I am being conservative.

As such, implementing the requirements in this bill will be ridiculously expensive for what is clearly redundant and unnecessary harassment. Repealing Bill C-377 would save millions of dollars annually, both for government and for unions, money that could be much better spent creating jobs rather than stifling them. In short, this bill should never have seen the light of day, and repealing it is just common sense.

Similarly, Bill C-525 was a private member's bill supported by the previous government. The bill was designed to make it harder for workers to unionize, and easier for unions to be decertified. Once again, the previous government was solving a non-existent problem.

Bill C-525 attacks the fundamental right of association by making certification of new worker associations or unions much more difficult and the decertification of existing unions much easier. The labour law changes were made despite there being zero evidence of a problem with the previous system of union certification.

A union, like any other type of association, such as the Association of Information Technology Professionals or the Canadian Society for Civil Engineers, exists to provide support and a voice for its members. What right does a government have to meddle in the daily management of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, for example? None. Therefore, why should the government meddle in daily management of a worker association or union? On the surface, it just seems silly.

It seems a government should have much more important things to accomplish with its time, its budget, and its efforts. However, the efforts of such destructive meddling are much more nefarious than a bizarrely childish obsessiveness with union busting, and these effects have a negative impact on all Canadians. Whether a person supports unions or not, the fact is unions have been a driving force in ensuring all hard-working Canadians, whether unionized or not, receive a basic level of rights, freedoms, and protections.

The health of Canadian unions is at the heart of the health of Canadian workers' rights for each and every working Canadian. Moreover, as mentioned previously, the organized association of working people is important to Canadians and the economy. Higher wages negotiated by unions improve the lives of everyday Canadians and inject an additional $786 million into the Canadian economy each week. Standing in the way of the well-being of hard-working Canadians is bad policy, bad governance, bad fiscal management, and bad for the economy.

As such, the NDP and Canadian unions are pleased that the federal government has tabled legislation to repeal the controversial bills, Bill C-377 and Bill C-525.

The CLC president, Hassan Yussuff said:

...these bills were nothing more than an attempt to undermine unions’ ability to do important work like protecting jobs, promoting health and safety in the workplace, and advocating on behalf of all Canadian workers.

Mark Hancock, the national president of CUPE, confirmed, saying:

This is good news for all Canadian workers. These bills were nothing more than political attacks on unions and we are happy that the new government is moving quickly to correct these wrongs...This is a good step in re-establishing a sense of respect for unions, the democratic voice of working people.

Likewise, Paul Meinema, the national president of UFCW, said:

UFCW is pleased to see the government tabling Bill C-4. Our union campaigned vigorously against the Conservative Government`s Bill C-377 in the last parliament. The bill was undemocratic, and part of the Conservative government`s campaign against workers and workplace democracy. It was also a major invasion of the privacy of individual union members and it infringed on provincial jurisdiction over labour issues. Repealing Bill C-377 is positive for all Canadians as this bill would have been expensive for the government to implement and monitor.

The NDP will continue to push the government to restore and enhance collective bargaining rights as well as fair working conditions for all Canadians. The NDP will continue to pressure the government to reinstate a federal minimum wage and to enact anti-scab and proactive pay equity legislation. Likewise, the NDP will push the government to repeal the previous government's dangerous legislation, just to confuse things also called Bill C-4. Larry Rousseau, in a 2013 article published by the The Huffington Post, called the previous Bill C-4 explosive, claiming the bill turned back the clock almost 50 years. A bill this backward, overtly ideological and explosive needs to be repealed, not just reviewed.

What value does a bill limiting a person's right to refuse unsafe work bring to the table? What exactly needs to be reviewed in a bill that does away with independent health and safety officers and that prevents federal public service workers from accessing the Canadian Human Rights Commission and tribunal over workplace discrimination and complaints? A review legitimizes this offensive legislation. It is time to just repeal it.

Having fought hard against these unnecessary and irresponsible bills, the NDP welcomes the changes tabled by the current government. The rights of working people have been under attack for far too long and the repeal of these bills is a good first step, but there is so much more to do for workers' rights and working conditions for Canadian men and women.

The NDP will push the government to restore good faith bargaining with our public sector workers. We will push the government to reinstate a federal minimum wage and ensure that workers have fair and independent health and safety protections. We will push the government to adopt anti-scab and pay equity legislation, because all Canadian workers deserve fairness and respect.

[Asbestos, February 2nd, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, asbestos has been called the greatest industrial killer the world has ever known and my colleagues have been fighting hard to get this carcinogenic and toxic material out of buildings and people's lives. This known carcinogen has claimed the lives of thousands of Canadian workers, so people were shocked to learn that while the federal government is spending millions to remove it from some buildings, it is installing new asbestos in other buildings.

Will the Liberals now employ some common sense, stand up for worker safety, and immediately put a stop to this?

[Income Tax Act, February 1st, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I want to note that Bill C-2 would provide maximum benefits to those wealthier Canadians, those earning between $89,000 and $200,000, while six out of ten Canadians would receive nothing. Although I appreciate that this is just one plank within a larger platform, or a first step, I feel it is a first step in the wrong direction.

Would the member comment on why the government does not look at reducing the lowest tax rate so many more Canadians will be helped rather than having a tax rate that helps wealthier Canadians?

[Income Tax Act, February 1st, 2016]

Madam Speaker, I agree with my colleague's comments about the Liberal tax plan providing the maximum benefit to wealthy Canadians while nearly 60% of the population will receive nothing. In my riding of Saskatoon West, the largest occupational group is people who work in the retail and service sector. That group will receive little to no tax benefit from this plan.

Would the hon. member join with me and the NDP to propose an amendment to the bill to see the tax benefit actually benefit more lower-income Canadians, because during the Conservative government, many in my riding did not benefit at all.