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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 170

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 21, 2023 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 170 - Mar/21/23
Hon. Andrew Scheer (Regina—Qu'Appelle, CPC)
Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure for me to rise in support of this excellent piece of legislation from my colleague from Essex, which is a great part of Canada. The good people of southwestern Ontario have gotten behind this hon. member, and our leader, the new leader of the Conservative Party, visited that part of the world. There are lots of skilled trades workers in southwestern Ontario, and a massive rally came together for our leader's visit there. Over 1,500 people came out to hear the positive Conservative message about making sure that work always pays. There are so many people in this country right now working so hard, juggling different jobs, often more than one job, trying to pick up extra shifts and always looking for new ways to earn a little more. People will always want to do better for their families. People will always want to leave more for their children and give their children the types of things they never had when they were growing up. That is a pretty standard, constant human emotion, especially here in Canada, but with the inflation crisis that the Liberals have created, the need to pick up extra shifts and to have a little more money at the end of every day is even more pronounced, because the dollars people are earning are not going far enough anymore. As the Prime Minister devalues the value of the paycheques people bring home, more and more Canadians are forced to work more, for longer and longer hours, and work harder and harder at their jobs. Construction workers and skilled tradespersons often have extra costs that office workers do not. We all know that people in the skilled trades have to spend a lot of money on tools, for example, and various governments understand that. The previous Conservative government wanted to recognize that cost for skilled trades workers and brought in special tax measures for tools that skilled trades workers have to spend their money on. This bill, though, would not be a tax credit. This bill would be a great way to recognize the costs that are often associated with travelling to work by allowing those workers to deduct those costs from their income altogether. If someone goes to a restaurant and pays for a burger, maybe it costs five dollars. We know that the restaurant owner does not have to pay tax on the full five dollars, because that five dollars of revenue first has to go to pay the cost. It has to pay the cost of the meat that is in the burger, the bun and the worker who cooked it and put it together, so the business owner has to pay tax only on the profit from that five-dollar cheeseburger. We are kind of applying the same logic to the skilled trades here. When workers have to travel a long distance, the payment for that work should not ignore the reality that the workers had to pay money out of their own pocket to get where they had to go. A great example is in the province of Saskatchewan, which I am so proud to represent. We have lots of large-scale infrastructure projects, mining projects and natural resource projects that take place far away from large urban centres. We have potash mines where big companies are investing big dollars. They are desperate for workers to fill those jobs, and there are workers who would love to go and work there, but they cannot relocate their families for a short period of time. They do not want to pull their kids out of school, sell their house and move to, in come cases, a very small town that may not even have housing available to them, so what do they do? They commute. They might rent a place nearby or they might literally drive there and back every day, and they are doing that to work. They are doing that to fill a need in our economy, like a project or a job that needs to get done, and they are doing it for themselves, but their paycheque and the taxes that are charged on that should reflect the cost they had to spend to do the very job they are qualified to do. This, by the way, happens in the corporate world. Companies that have to spend money on transportation to fly their staff to various parts of the country or to transport materials are allowed to deduct those costs against their revenues and pay tax only on the difference. I view this measure as tax fairness for skilled trades workers. One point of differentiation between the Liberals and the Conservatives is that every time we hear the Liberals talk about tax fairness, we can be sure of one thing: They are raising taxes. That is literally the only way the Liberals know how to even think about tax fairness. When the Conservatives think about tax fairness, we think about lowering taxes and getting government out of the way. One thing that has been so inspiring to watch is how the leader of our party is showing Canadians how many barriers and obstacles to growth and prosperity exist all around the country. We just had a fantastic announcement. The Leader of the Conservative Party announced that a Conservative government would bring in what is called a blue seal program. It would allow highly skilled, trained medical professionals to travel from one province to another, or move from one province to another, to fill a need. For people who have credentials from outside of Canada, credentials would be recognized so they could fill badly needed positions in our health care sector all across the country. This type of initiative builds on that. This type of initiative to encourage workers to go to where the work is, removing the impediment, the obstacle to prosperity, is an incredible method to get people working and to get big projects built again. This initiative is needed, because the investments that go into a lot of these large-scale construction projects are cyclical. If we build a bridge, we do not need to build another bridge for many years, but another municipality might need a bridge. Our skilled workforce has had to become very mobile and very flexible. Workers need to be able to go to where the work is. Let us take mining companies, for example. They can only do so much exploration every year. They can only do so much drilling. They can only do so much infrastructure building because of their equipment barriers. They tend to rotate and move around where they focus their investment. One year it might be in Saskatchewan and the next year it might be in British Columbia. We need to ensure that our workforce can be flexible too and that we remove this barrier. If we do not, there may be a job that goes unfilled. There may be a worker who could do it, but with the salary offered for it, they think that by the time they fly in and out several times a year or drive the long hours, their costs will become more and more significant, as the Liberal carbon tax makes the cost of fuel go up. The worker might say they are not that much better off if they take the job. At the end of the day, by the time they pay for all those out-of-pocket expenses and pay their taxes on the money they have earned, they are not even further ahead, even though they have done all this work and spent all this time away from their family. This bill removes that barrier, that obstacle, and makes it that much easier for a worker to say, yes, they will take the job and take the skills they have learned over the years and apply them to the job that needs to be done. Everybody wins. The worker wins, our overall economy wins and Canadian pension holders win as Canadian companies do better and better. My colleague from Essex has found a win-win-win solution to help all aspects of our economy with this great initiative. I cannot say how shocked I am that the Liberals are going to vote against it. I say that and then I realize that I should not be shocked at the hypocrisy. When the Liberals say one thing and do another, it is more disappointing than shocking because we see it all the time. They talk a good game. They like to make announcements. They like to go to conventions full of workers whose votes they are trying to win over. They like to have fancy meetings with the heads of some of the unions. However, when it comes time to actually do something and deliver, the Liberals say no. The Liberal excuse for saying no is so flimsy. They claim they have another type of solution, but it is not going to benefit workers in the same way this bill would. Because of how my colleague from Essex has designed this bill, it would allow workers to deduct expenses right off the top and would be a massive tax savings for them. However, overall, it would not be that much of a cost to the economy. Instead of looking at it as a reduction of revenue for the government, we should be looking at this as an expansion of the work that is going to be done all over the country. That economic activity is going to lead to even more economic activity. Once again, I am disappointed but not shocked that the Liberals have said one thing during an election and done another thing after the votes were counted. That has been the story of the Prime Minister and the government. However, the Conservatives have shown the way again. We are showing how we are going to bring home better jobs and better paycheques, and the money left over in Canadians' pockets will go farther when the Leader of the Opposition becomes Prime Minister of Canada.
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