Wayne Easter

[Business of Supply, February 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. The motion before us today is not about the fair elections act. The government already invoked closure on the fair elections act in this chamber. The motion before us today is about whether certain witnesses should appear and whether the committee should hold cross-country hearings. That is the motion. I submit that the member is out of order in his remarks by talking about the fair elections act. We are not talking about it.

[Business of Supply, February 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member's remarks, and on his last point I would have to ask him how much our democracy is worth. Is it a matter of dollars? I do not think so. The member went on, with some great lines, that it has been referred to committee. Keep in mind that the bill was referred to committee after closure was placed in this chamber on the most important umbrella document in terms of how elections work and how people are elected.

The member said they would hold 26 hours of hearings. That is nothing. He asked if there is any other legislation. I remember lots of legislation by previous governments, even with the fisheries committee, that took hundreds of hours. Look at the GST hearings that were held by the Mulroney government, because they were big comprehensive issues and Canadians needed to be heard in their own areas.

Is not the real reason the government is so intent on holding hearings in Ottawa that it can basically manipulate the committee more easily, as it has done in the past? Committees have become an absolute farce. If members move a motion, the government shoves it into secret and Canadians cannot even see or read how members voted. If the committee hearings are held in Ottawa, it is easier for the whip to hold backbenchers in line on the Conservative side, who do not have the backbone to stand and speak for Canadians. Is that not the real reason why Conservatives want committee--

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the simple answer is that it is absolutely shameful. The government does a lot of tinkering and has a certain number of pet peeves and is trying to cater to a certain area. Conservatives do not govern for the country as a whole.

In terms of Pacific salmon, I understand that industry relatively speaking. I used to be chair of the fisheries committee and toured the salmon industry in western Canada. It is a very important economic contributor.

The report is a good one. Those recommendations would build that salmon economy in the west for the future, but the Conservatives ignored it. They did not look at it, which is an absolute shame. But the problem is that there are so many other areas they did not look at either.

I should make one point on broadband because we heard a lot about that from the other side. The CEO of Xplornet, Allison Lenehan, expressed concern about the announcement of a federal broadband program in the budget this way: “We are concerned that the government may be trying to fix a problem that does not exist.... The only thing standing between rural Canadians and faster speeds now and in the future is spectrum, not funding and not technology”.

I ask the government to take note of that statement that maybe the problem is not funding but getting spectrum to the right company.

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, oh my gosh, are we really going back that far? The current government and the Mulroney government have added so much to the deficit. Since the government came to power it has added $169 billion to the deficit. The finance minister should be called “deficit” because that is what he has produced.

If the member wants to talk about what the previous Liberal government did, I was proud to be a part of it. We balanced the books. We had nine surpluses. We turned over a $13 billion surplus to the current government, which blew it in a matter of time. We had the biggest health accord in Canadian history. We put in place the infrastructure programs for this country. We increased research and development. We improved the education system across Canada through scholarships. I am running out of time, but the list is a lot longer.

That member should stand and say “thank you, former Liberals, for what you have done to this country because you gave us a foundation”, but which the current government has undermined.

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Winnipeg North.

I would say that I am pleased to speak to the budget, but I am disappointed at the uselessness of the Minister of Finance's document in dealing with the problems many Canadians face and at the absolute failure of this minister and the government to put Canada on a footing for economic growth.

This book, Creating Jobs and Opportunities, is basically a piece of fiction. Yes, there is a little tinkering and a little programming there, but it does nothing to deal with the big-picture items of creating economic growth, really creating jobs broadly, and unifying the country from coast to coast with a vision for economic development. In fact, in the budget the Conservatives are in many ways splitting the country asunder.

I will quote from an editorial article in today's Guardian. Everybody in this House would know that The Guardian covers the island like the dew.

The article states:

It’s not often that any finance minister will try and camouflage a balanced budget while preferring to take credit for a small deficit. A sheepish Minister of Finance did his best Tuesday to convince Canadians this was the case but really fooled no one. This budget is, for all intents and purposes, balanced.

The federal finance minister prefers to speak those sacred words next year, an election year.

It goes on from there.

That is the context of the budget: setting the stage for partisan purposes to try to regain election next year, and that is irresponsible on the part of a government. A government's responsibility is to govern for all Canadians, and the government has failed in that responsibility. A government's responsibility is to plan and implement policies that benefit all Canadians, and a government's responsibility is clearly to deal with some of the issues out there at the moment, issues that came with the Conservatives' previous budget and that some of their previous policy decisions created. Many Canadians are hurting as a result of those issues.

In my area in particular, and I have spoken about it several times in this House, one of the greatest areas that has caused hurt, split families, and hurt communities is the employment insurance changes. Yes, the government has the authority to make changes, but it should make them in a way that would contribute to the economy, not undermine it.

The employment insurance changes have affected seasonal industries and our seasonal workers very negatively. Because of the clawbacks, they have less income than they had the previous year. Businesses cannot get workers because the timeframe has been set such that people's is being clawed back. As a result, there is a very serious negative impact on three of our major industries in Prince Edward Island: agriculture, fisheries, and tourism. That is a result of the EI changes.

The budget especially failed my province of Prince Edward Island, but it is not only P.E.I. The unilateral decisions taken by the Minister of Finance failed the other provinces as well.

I picked up an article in Inside Policy, a magazine of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. The article is by Stanley Hartt, who used to be a well-known deputy minister in Ottawa. The headline reads:

Budget making process requires provinces, feds to understand each others' goals and intentions

It goes on to talk about federal-provincial jurisdiction in this country and the need to work together to build a stronger Canada, that each sector has implications for the other and that they have to work together on the economy especially, building policies that would in fact strengthen the economy from coast to coast to coast. In that area, the current government has failed terribly. The Conservatives do not communicate with the provinces. They do not co-operate with the provinces. They unilaterally make decisions that download costs on the provinces, that change programs in the provinces and, in fact, can negatively affect those provinces' economies.

That is what happened with EI previously. However, in this one it was bad enough that the Government of Canada pushed the Canada job grant, actually spending $2.4 million in false advertising. The minister knew the provinces opposed it and yet he went ahead and put in place the Canada job grant, albeit somewhat changed after discussions with them.

However, for Prince Edward Island, this would replace a $2.1 million labour market agreement that was used for employment assistance for businesses and the unemployed. Folks who worked in that system were just transferred from HRSDC a few years ago, when it was a federal program, and downloaded to the provinces. The money was given to the provinces and they were to be in charge of labour market development. Now they find that the whole program will be changed unilaterally by the federal government against their wishes.

Additionally, in terms of Prince Edward Island, the government unilaterally eliminated the immigrant investor program. I spoke to people at the government level yesterday. There was not a word of discussion. That program is very important to the economy, very important for us to attract people into the province. It was just cancelled like that and a new program came into place. There was absolutely no consultation.

For many retired public servants, veterans, and RCMP in Prince Edward Island, the tax grab of increasing the cost of health benefits would be almost criminal. Retirees paid into those plans in good faith and felt that their retirement was secure, but retroactively changing the rules as the Conservatives plan to do is absolutely wrong. They are trying to balance the books on the backs of public servants, veterans, RCMP, and others who worked their lifetime securing their retirement, and now the Conservatives will increase their health premiums.

Moreover, while the Conservatives are claiming in this document, this so-called budget, that they just deferring their military procurement, it should be seen as nothing other than a cut. For Prince Edward Island, shipbuilding in Georgetown would certainly be affected, undermining our economy and possibly creating a loss of jobs. What will happen to shipbuilding in Halifax, which was a huge program, we do not know.

Furthermore, the government has failed to ensure that major industries like agriculture are on a competitive footing with other countries like the United States. President Obama signed the U.S. farm bill last week, with $1 trillion over 10 years for its industry, enshrining in legislation country-origin labelling that has already cost our beef industry about $5 billion. Yet, this Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food will cut programs. So we are not even on a competitive footing any more. The bottom line is that the current government will even create divisions in agriculture as a result of the budget. The Conservatives aim to put in place a price-support insurance program, but only for western farmers, with nothing for the backbenchers here in Ontario or Atlantic Canada. Do they not know that we have a livestock industry right across this country? Our livestock producers deserve that price-insurance program as well.

In conclusion, the budget is an absolute failure in ensuring economic growth and meeting the needs of Canadians.

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about having 65% of rural MPs. What do the Conservatives do? They certainly have not spoken up for rural Canada. They certainly have not. They do their trick. They stand up to say “yea” when they are asked to. We would call that—well, maybe I had better not use that kind of language in this House.

The member claims he is defending rural Canadians, and he is from western Canada. Well, right now in western Canada, 53 ships are sitting empty in the Port of Vancouver. Grain prices have been discounted by some 40%. Farmers cannot get their grain to market. The reason they cannot is that the current government, the government the member is a part of and the government that he said “yea, yea, yea” to, failed, when it killed the Canadian Wheat Board, to realize all the logistics carried out by the Canadian Wheat Board.

Now it has a crisis on its hands that the backbench members in that party are responsible for, and that is one of the reasons rural Canadians in the west are finding it difficult in the agriculture sector at the moment.

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the member was talking about debt and the government balancing the books. That is a joke. An op-ed in the Ottawa Citizen this morning stated, “Number of budget deficit targets hit by Finance Minister - 0”.

We know this is really a pre-election budget. The Conservatives should have balanced the books this year but did not, because they are leaving that until next year for strictly partisan reasons while leaving many Canadians out there with serious hurt.

My question to the member for Medicine Hat relates to the farm sector. I am looking at the reference in the budget to the farm sector. The member must really find it painful to go home on weekends when out west right now, in his area, grain continues to pile up. Fifty-three ships at the port in Vancouver are waiting for grain. Grain prices have been discounted 40%. All of this is a result of the decisions the Conservative government made previously relative to the Wheat Board, not in terms of its structure but in failing to realize what the Wheat Board did in terms of the logistics of transportation by collecting of the grain and getting it into the hull of a ship in time.

How come there is nothing in the budget to deal with the crisis that exists in the western grain sector? Why did the government not step up to the plate and deal with that problem?

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoy working on the public safety committee with the member who just spoke.

I am interested in the energy question. The government seems to emphasize just one part of the energy sector, with no attempt whatsoever to develop a national energy strategy for the country that would encompass everything from wind, to biomass, to oil, to hydro, and that is what we should be doing.

My question relates to the budget itself. I know the government likes to attack unions, but the very title of the budget is “The Road to Balance: Creating Jobs and Opportunities”, and I have not found anything in this document, other than the red seal, that might assist young people to gain jobs. I do not see anything in it that will create jobs. I see the Conservatives have failed to fix a lot of the damage they have already done in seasonal industries, which is taking jobs and opportunities away from people in my region.

Does the member see anything in the budget that is creating jobs and opportunities for Canadians, other than leaving in place the great corporate tax breaks where corporations are sitting on $500 billion and not creating investment in new technology?

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I also want to touch on the veterans issue, because one of the clear responsibilities of a federal government is to bring in policies in the interests of all Canadians. This budget would do anything but; it is very selective in what it would do. Also the responsibility of a government is to redress some of the concerns that it may have created, and one of them certainly is the closure of veterans services offices.

I will relate my example. A person went to Service Canada, not to get service as a veteran but to get a passport, and waited 40 minutes. How do members think a veteran with some serious problems is going to feel standing in a line at Service Canada? Is it going to help him or her?

I wonder if the member could expand on that a little more and what the government's real responsibility is in the interests of all Canadians, which is not in this budget.

[The Budget, February 13th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I would say that it is not only northern Ontario that the government seems to hate and have a dislike for; it is also Atlantic Canada and basically rural Canada everywhere. There is nothing with respect to the grain crisis in western Canada, which is a result of the government's previous decisions.

The member mentioned the $40 million over four years for the apprenticeship program. On that we agree. There needs to be an apprenticeship program. It accounts for about 3,000 people. What about the other 259,000 youth that are underemployed or out of work? What is in this budget to address their concerns?

Members know that one of the problems with the government is that it tinkers a little here and a little there, announces a little program here, but then it leaves 90% out, in terms of program availability. That is what it has done with young people in this country. We do need apprentices. However, other young people need opportunities too. Why is there nothing in this budget for them?