Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-45. However, I admit that I am saddened by what the first omnibus bill did in the spring and by what this omnibus bill would do to the ability of the federal government to do what it is there for, which is to provide services for Canadians. They undermine the government's ability to do that.
I want to review what my colleague from Charlottetown outlined when he said that much of this bill, previous bills and previous policies by the current government will have and have had an impact on P.E.I. and the seasonal industries and, indeed, all of Canada, but specifically on Prince Edward Island. We are the only province without a passport office. We are the only province without a Citizenship and Immigration office, which the government closed. We are the only province that will not have a local office to serve veterans in person, as the government will close it. We are the only province that will have no CRA counter service because that minister who is from Prince Edward Island will close it. We also are a province that is being severely punished with changes to employment insurance, punishing our seasonal workers, our seasonal industries and our economy.
I see that the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food is here listening intensely. His actions recently in cutting AgriStability from 85% of the reference margin to 70% and cutting AgriInvest from 1.5% to 1% destroys the safety net for the farm community. His government has provided no assistance whatsoever for the hog industry, which is in serious trouble. We have lost researchers at the research station in both the potato industry and the grain industry, important to our number one industry, the agricultural industry. As well, we have had serious cost recovery fees at the Canadian Food Inspection Agency which affect our number one industry, which is potatoes.
I will read the notice to the potato industry on September 19 from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency. It reads:
The Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) will be phasing in user fees for potato cyst nematode...sample collection and analysis activities related to export certification of seed potatoes.
It is another instance of taking away services and downloading costs on to the primary producers in that particular case. It kind of makes one wonder where the regional minister from P.E.I. is because the services to Prince Edward Island have been decimated since 2006 when the present Prime Minister came into office.
However, let us look in general terms at Bill C-45 because we should mention some of the general areas where there is huge concern. It is a huge bill affecting some 60 pieces of legislation. This is a way for the government to take away the democratic right of Canadians to analyze each piece of legislation, to have a vote and to have their say on it. This bill rewrites the laws protecting Canada's waterway. It slashes tax credits for research and development and an investment tax credit that I once used myself on the farm. They are very good ways to invest and bring technology up. The government would cancel those measures. It would kill the investment tax credits in mining and in Atlantic Canada that have helped keep our economy strong.
Bill C-45 redefines aboriginal fisheries without even consulting the first nations community. The bill would eliminate the Hazardous Materials Information Review Commission. It corrects numerous mistakes in Bill C-38, including some relating to environmental assessment and fisheries. It also would suspend the EI financing board. It also would undermine the ability of the Canadian Grain Commission to do its job in this country.
We are seeing serious cuts to front line government services and a direct attack on those who require some kind of assistance. My colleague talked considerably about the changes that were made to employment insurance, such as the clawback while on claim and taking 50¢ on the dollar out of people's pockets who need it most. It is a change that did not need to be made and a change on which there was no consultation with employees or employers. It is a change that hurts our economy and our seasonal industries. It hurts them in four ways: first, the employees by leaving them less money; second, the employer who will have more difficulty finding employees; third, the economy; and fourth, it will cause problems because if a farmer, for instance, needs workers for a day and people say that they cannot work for half wages because the Government of Canada will claw back half their wages, then they will demand cash, and we do not want to get into that kind of an economy.
In fact, the minister of innovation and advanced learning for P.E.I. stated the following:
Our seasonal industries -- fishing, agriculture and tourism -- are the backbone of our economy.... We need the federal government to consider the strong seasonal nature of our province and work with us to ensure changes to the EI program do not negatively affect Islanders and our economy. Seasonal employees and employers are skilled workers who ensure our province's livelihood and they rely on employment insurance to bridge the gap between seasonal employment. Negatively impacting our seasonal workers and their employers will negatively impact our province as a whole.
That statement is absolutely true. With the actions of the government on employment insurance, this act should instead be called the drive people into poverty act. It likes simple names for acts and that is what it is doing in this case. The clawback is hurting people and now, after losing the five week pilot project, I do not know how people will to survive the consequences of that action. It is a serious problem and the government did not need to do it.
This bill follows on the spring omnibus bill, which went after old age security. It upped the age from 65 to 67. Now we know, with the information coming out, that the system was secure, as we said at the time. There is no real saving to the government as a result of that decision. Three one-hundredths of a per cent of the GDP of the country by 2030 is just a rounding error for the way the cabinet spends money. There were, as I said, changes to the Coastal Fisheries Protection Act in the spring which hurt services to Canada. There were changes to the environment and the National Energy Board, slashes at Parks Canada, and the cutting of the community access program. Those actions were done in the spring and now we have this, which will slash government services even more.
The last and most important point for Canadians is a quote from a report that was in the press on September 28. It states:
A new report from a federal spending watchdog concludes the Conservative government’s changes to health funding will ultimately download billions of dollars in medical costs annually to the provinces, something premiers and opposition parties say will erode public health care and provincial finances.
That is a hallmark of Canada's health care system and the government is cutting services to the public, downloading costs to provinces and not living up to its obligations as a federal government for the good of the country. It is a shame and the government should be ashamed of itself.
