44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 14, 2023 10:00AM
Madam Speaker, I will explain to the member, because he clearly does not quite get it. Part of the reason we have more labour strife in this country is, in fact, the inflationary spending of the current government. The excessive borrowing is causing everything to go up in price, and people in organized labour, like everybody else, are struggling to put food on the table. That is why I am referring to these issues. It is why I am referring it back to an issue that is completely connected to organized labour, and that is housing, which is the foundation of society: a warm, safe bed to sleep in at night. There are people working all across this country, whether they are in a union or not, who are struggling to make ends meet. That is causing labour strife.
My point about Bill C-58 is that it is the government's attempt, along with its coalition partners, to deflect from the real issues and from its failures as a government, including the massive borrowing and spending it has done for the last eight years, that is causing everything to go up in price and causing labour strife. If the Liberals understood the impact of their inflationary policies, things like Bill C-58 really should not be the top priority. It is an important discussion to have, but what we really need to do is get the cost of living down in this country. We need to make life more affordable for Canadians. Whether or not it is their inflationary borrowing and excessive spending, I know that the Liberals believe that the best way to solve any problem is to hire more bureaucrats and make the government bigger. However, in fact, the best way to make life more affordable for Canadians is to get out of their pockets and give them a break.
Bill C-58 is—
Some hon. members: Oh, oh!
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Madam Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in the House. I am certainly very proud to rise on Bill C-58, an act to amend the Canada Labour Code and the Canada Industrial Relations Board Regulations, to end the practice in federally regulated workplaces of being able to bring in scab labour. This is something that New Democrats and the labour movement have fought many years for, and we are determined to make this a reality.
At the outset, I want to thank the member for South Okanagan—West Kootenay who spoke about the history, because history is important. He mentioned the history of the Rossland miners and the Western Federation of Miners, and the transformation they brought across this country.
I am proud to be from Cobalt where the 17th district of the Western Federation of Miners was formed under Big Jim McGuire. The fact that the fight for the eight-hour day began in the mines of Cobalt on April 28, the international day of mourning for workers killed on the job, relates directly to the Cobalt Miners Union winning the right to workers' compensation in 1914.
My grandfather, Charlie Angus, died at the Hollinger Mine, and my other grandfather, Joe MacNeil, broke his back underground at the McIntyre Mine. Both were members of Mine Mill and then the Steelworkers. When I was growing up, anybody who came from a mining town had a relative who had been injured or killed on the job. However, organized labour fundamentally changed that.
The right of labour to organize, the right of labour to fight for a better future, is the history of our country and of the United States. They talk about the birth of the middle class in the United States as being the 1938 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan where the auto workers were not going to put up with precarious work—
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Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise in the House of Commons today to speak about Bill C-58, the bill that would ban the use of replacement workers.
What this legislation would really do is strengthen workers and unions by strengthening one of the pillars of people power, the bargaining table. I come from a proud union town, a proud union town that knows how to build things. For over 100 years, we have been building cars and machines and tools for Canada, and we are darn good at it. What our unionized workers, brothers and sisters, have also built is a strong community of resilient and caring people who look after each other, and not only look after each other but fight for one another.
One of the ways we have been able to build this caring and generous community is through the bargaining table, with hard-won victories that improved wages, working conditions, health and safety and workers' rights and that provided time off to be with families.
In 1945, 14,000 Windsor auto workers at Ford went on strike. For 99 days they protested layoffs, unfair wages and working conditions, and after 99 days, they prevailed. Those Windsor workers stabilized the labour movement in Canada and provided the labour movement in Canada with a gift. It is called the Rand formula, which establishes and protects a union's right to collect union dues.
Every September, thousands of residents march in the Labour Day parade to celebrate all of the hard wins of the past and all of the hard wins of the present, while also recommitting to the next fight on the horizon to improve the lives of workers. I was proud to walk with Unifor, LiUNA, IBEW, the millwrights, teachers, nurses and so many others who work hard to provide for their families but also work hard to build their communities.
I want to take a moment to thank the Unifor bargaining committee that entered tough negotiations with Ford, Stellantis and General Motors just this October. Those were tough negotiations, tough bargaining, and our unions came away with the largest wage and pension increases in generations. Those hard-fought and hard-won improvements not only lift our auto workers but they lift our entire community.
That is the power of the bargaining table, and that is the power we are protecting here today with Bill C-58. It is the power of the bargaining table that we are strengthening.
In the last two years, our Liberal government has worked hand in hand with unions and workers to deliver some of the biggest wins in the history of our community of Windsor—Tecumseh. It is true solidarity. Together, we delivered the EV battery plant, which is just one example, the single-largest auto investment in the history of our community of Windsor—Tecumseh.
To understand the significance of the battery plant investment and to understand the importance of labour and the bargaining table and working together in that partnership, one has to understand the road my community has travelled—
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- Dec/14/23 3:54:40 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in my friend's comments, he referred to other pieces of legislation the Liberals overturned that Stephen Harper had put in place. When I look at this anti-scab legislation, it was part of the election platform that the member and I ran on. I am quite happy with the legislation.
I posed this question to other opposition members. We know the Bloc and the NDP are supporting it. We are not sure what the Conservatives are going to do as of yet, though they say they are for workers. Would it not be wonderful thing for the debate to collapse so that the bill could go to committee before Christmas and a wonderful gesture for the union movement in Canada?
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- Dec/14/23 3:55:36 p.m.
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I wish a merry Christmas to all my constituents.
Those two pieces of legislation made it very difficult for unions to operate. It made it difficult to certify their members, easy to decertify them and tried to bury them in red tape. I was pleased to run under that banner and run again when we put pro-union and pro-worker legislation in our platform. This is a promise made and a promise kept.
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Madam Speaker, I am so pleased to be able to rise in the House today to speak to this important bill, Bill C-58, which I do want to note is a part of the confidence-and-supply agreement that we have with the government. I want to quote from a section of that agreement under the heading, “A better deal for workers”. It reads:
Introducing legislation by the end of 2023 to prohibit the use of replacement workers, “scabs,” when a union employer in a federally regulated industry has locked out employees or is in a strike.
That was an important part of the agreement. That is why I am so happy to see this bill. We need to stand in this place every single day as representatives of our constituents and show that we are here to fight for workers. They deserve our respect, better wages and better working conditions. When we look at the history of collective bargaining in this country, it is the union movement that has done that.
I think of my own riding of Cowichan—Malahat—Langford, going back to the 1920s and the 1930s. I come from a part of Canada where the forestry industry was dominant. If members ever go out to British Columbia, to the beautiful forests of Vancouver Island, they will see trees that they would have thought could only exist in their imagination. There was a massive timber industry. It was back then during the labour unrest of the 1920s and the 1930s from the absolutely brutal working conditions that workers were subjected to, with low pay, dangerous working conditions and everything else, when the worker militancy in the forests of British Columbia was born. Those workers used their power to fight for rights. That is a small part of the history of Canada. I am so proud of that heritage from the part of the world that I come from.
I am so proud to be a member of a party that is of the workers and for the workers. Everyone knows, of course, that our party, the NDP, was formed in 1961 as an alliance between the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation and the Canadian Labour Congress. We carry that heritage proudly with us to this day.
This bill is particularly important because, in the last 15 years, the NDP has introduced eight anti-scab bills. The last time they came up for a vote in 2016, it was the Liberals and the Conservatives that teamed up together to defeat it. We often are accused of having a short memory in this place, so I will say that into the record. In 2016, it was the Liberals and the Conservatives that teamed up together to defeat our last attempt to bring in anti-scab legislation.
I do not know where the Conservatives are going to stand on this bill. They have tried so desperately and spent millions of dollars to try and recast themselves as a party for the workers. They like to make their YouTube videos. I have yet to see the Leader of the Opposition out on a picket line. I still do not know where they are going to stand on this bill. Every time it has come to actual action to stand up for workers, they are more interested in their words. This is a moment to stand in this place through a vote to show that they are in favour of actual legislative change that is going to help the working movement.
I am proud that we have not given up on this issue. That is why we can stand here proudly, offer our support to Bill C-58 and show the workers of Canada that we are committed to moving this forward, to making sure that the Canada Labour Code is there for workers and that it has that important change. We know that this bill would not be moving forward if it had not been spelled out in the agreement and we know that this bill will require multiple party support to advance to the next stage.
I have a few theories as to why the Conservatives have been so absent in this debate. The few times that they have gotten up and put speakers on this bill, they have talked about anything but the bill. In fact, we have often had to raise points of order in the House to try and bring them back on topic. One of my theories is that the Conservatives, under the previous prime minister Stephen Harper, have a long and brutal legislative track record against workers, particularly ones who work under federal jurisdiction.
We can go back to 2007, when the Conservatives introduced Bill C-46, the Railway Continuation Act. That was back-to-work legislation against railway workers. It forced 2,800 members of the United Transportation Workers Union at CN Rail back to work: the drivers, yard-masters and trainmen. It forced them back to complying with pretty brutal demands from the employer. Fast-forward to 2011 and Bill C-6, the Restoring Mail Delivery for Canadians Act, which forced 48,000 locked-out postal workers back to work and imposed wage raises lower than what the employer had agreed to earlier. Fast-forward to 2012 and Bill C-33, when again the Conservatives intervened, this time between Air Canada and its employees—
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Madam Speaker, I am talking about Bill C-58, but in talking about that bill, we need to put it in a historical context of why the Conservatives have been so anti-worker and so anti-union and have been repeatedly unafraid to use a legislative sledgehammer against workers and their unions in federally regulated sectors. That is what Bill C-58 is designed to protect, and Canadians need to understand they have a long history of being anti-worker and anti-union. This is a chance for them to try to redeem themselves from that shameful history.
Before the Liberals think they are going to get off the hook in my speech, let us turn to the Liberals and back-to-work legislation because both of these parties are equally guilty when it comes to that.
In 2018, the Liberals brought in Bill C-89, which ended the postal strikes and forced the Canadian Union of Postal Workers back to work.
In 2021, there was Bill C-29, which ended the strike of CUPE local 375 and its fight against the Port of Montreal.
Before my Conservative colleagues get a little too high on their horse, I would like to point out for both of those bills the Conservatives supported the Liberals, showing that when it comes to controlling workers and fighting against their interests, these parties more often than not have been voting in lockstep.
This is important, because if we look at the different lines of work that are covered by the Canada Labour Code we are talking about federally regulated workers in air transportation, banks, grain elevators, feed and seed mills, most federal Crown corporations, ports, marine shipping and ferries, canals, bridges and pipelines, postal and courier service, radio and television broadcasting, railways and many more. This legislation would impact thousands of workers, and it is important we show a united front and demonstrate that as members of Parliament we have their backs and are putting in legislative safeguards.
The history of Canada is one of labour fighting for its rights against corporations. There has been too much corporate deference over the last number of decades, and I am proud to see how that pendulum is starting to swing back into workers' favour these days. They are becoming more militant, more assured of their rights and more ready to use their collective bargaining to achieve those more powerful working conditions and better paycheques for themselves. I am proud to be able to stand in this place and offer them support.
Seeing as I am in the closing minute of my speech, I want to take this final opportunity I have in the House to wish all of my colleagues from all political parties a very merry Christmas and a very happy new year. We have had strong and principled debates and arguments in this place, but I hope everyone in this place has the opportunity over Christmas to spend some much needed time with their families and their friends and to reconnect with their constituents. I look forward to seeing everyone back here in 2024 as we continue the hard work of governing this country.
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- Dec/14/23 4:09:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, in the past year, I have been visiting work sites throughout the Lower Mainland and on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. The Leader of the Opposition has been there, and we have had a great response, whether from the forestry sector, fishers, shipbuilding, welders or trades unions. They want to get pictures. They want to be there. They want to share their concerns.
What concerns union workers the most is the cost of living. I talked to one welder at Seaspan Shipyards who said that he has to work seven days a week, 12 hours a day just to make ends meet. He cannot give his body a rest because of the cost of living caused by the inflationary spending of the Liberal-NDP government.
I wonder if the member would respond to that, the real bread-and-butter issues for workers.
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Madam Speaker, it gives me great personal pleasure to stand in the House today to speak to Bill C-58, an act to amend the Canada Labour Code, which would finally ban the use of replacement workers or, as we in the labour movement call them, scabs, in federally regulated workplaces.
Prior to being elected in 2008, I had the honour of working for 16 years with the Teamsters union and, unlike many people in this place, I had the opportunity to experience, first-hand, how important this legislation is. I have been on and walked on many picket lines in my life, unlike most members in the House. I sat at bargaining tables, negotiating collective agreements.
I represented workers at labour board hearings and saw unfair labour practices, where employers would fire workers who did nothing more than exercise their rights under the Canada Labour Code and under the Charter of Rights. I have seen what happens when employers use replacement workers to undermine unions and workers as they are exercising their constitutional right to strike.
The NDP has been Canada's political party for workers for many decades. Prior to its formation as the New Democratic Party in 1960, it took the form of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation. In all of its iterations, it has always been a party that puts at the centre of our being the need to make sure that workers in this country are protected.
We believe, as New Democrats, that Canadian workers deserve respect, dignity, generous wages, proper benefits, and safe and healthy working conditions. We know that workers are the backbone of the Canadian economy. We believe that all Canadian workers should get a fair share of the fruits of the wealth their labour, talents and skills play such a pivotal role in creating.
In this venue or milieu, no entity has done more to achieve these goals than Canada's labour movement. It is through the hard work of unions, their efforts, their courage and very often their sacrifices, that Canadian workers have come to enjoy the many benefits that they do today.
I want to touch on just a few of the benefits that were fought for by unions, benefits that Canadian workers take for granted today. In many cases, these were fought for by unions, demanded at bargaining tables and, in many cases, paid for by the blood, sweat and sacrifice of Canadian workers on picket lines. They include the 40-hour work week; overtime; paid vacations; pensions; health and welfare plans providing workers and their families with eyeglasses, dental services and prescriptions; paid sick time; a voice in the workplace; and, most importantly, the opportunity for workers to collectively bargain the terms and conditions of their work instead of simply taking whatever their employer is dictating to them.
These and many other rights were not given to workers. They are the products of hard-fought bargaining, often by workers who had to suffer great wage losses by striking or being locked out for these gains. They won these rights through collective bargaining and, incidentally, all workers, whether they are unionized or not in this country, now enjoy those benefits, paid for by those unions and the workers who sacrificed for them.
They never had to make these sacrifices without pain. These people did not do this only for themselves. They did it for other workers and for their children and generations to come. Many of these workers made these sacrifices at great risk to their personal safety. Canadian labour history is replete with horrific examples of employers hiring private security forces, often goons, to attack striking workers.
Some workers, many workers, even died. As they were laying down their tools and forgoing their wages to exercise their right to strike for the betterment of their fellow workers and for generations to come, many had to watch unscrupulous employers hire replacement workers, scabs, to cross those picket lines to perform their work.
What is the impact of that? When replacement workers are used, it undermines the workers. Workers lose money while they are striking, but employers continue to profit and operate during the strike, so that tilts the bargaining table in favour of management. It also prolongs strikes and lockouts. On average, labour disputes where scabs are used last six times longer than when they are not. It leads to picket line violence, divides communities and causes family tension and suffering.
I will go through a few examples in Canadian history. People may remember the Giant Mine strike, one of the most tragic events in Canadian labour history, which happened in Yellowknife. At that time, in 1992, Royal Oak Mines locked out its workers and decided to use replacement workers in that small community of Yellowknife. Canadian mines had not seen a replacement worker used in the previous 50 years. The scabs were used explicitly as strikebreakers. It undercut bargaining, enraged the local workers and split families in the community. The tragic result was that nine workers died in a bombing incident.
I personally experienced this kind of violence myself. The Gainers strike in Edmonton in 1986 was a strike that lasted six and a half months, and Peter Pocklington, the owner of Gainers, hired strikebreakers to break the strike of workers doing some of the hardest, most physical, unpleasant work there is working in a rendering plant. I watched as Peter Pocklington brought in scabs and saw first-hand the violence that caused on the picket line.
I remember the Zeidler Forest Products strike in the 1980s, where I saw scabs speed up as they were driving their cars toward the men and women on the picket lines, narrowly missing them and, in some cases, hitting them as they sped by, impervious to the striking workers' welfare. Lest we think this is a relic of the past, just this month I visited a picket line in Vancouver at Rogers Communications, which had locked out its workers in British Columbia and used scabs to cross the picket line to do the striking workers' jobs.
I also want to talk about the fact that the Liberals and Conservatives only seem to care about the rights of workers to strike in this country when the impact of those strikes is strong. They will order Canada Post workers back to work, and they will order port workers back to work, but right now, as we speak, there are hundreds of people on strike at the Sheraton Vancouver Airport Hotel. They are going into their third year on strike, and they are mainly women and immigrants. Maybe the impact of this strike is not as strong on the economy. In that case, the Liberals and Conservatives will let workers rot on the picket line for years, but if workers have any real economic clout, then, all of a sudden, their rights have less meaning.
The answer to this is to ban scabs. British Columbia has done it in this country for many decades, and so has Quebec. The NDP has introduced anti-scab legislation eight times in the last 15 years, and the Liberals and Conservatives voted against it every single time. Today, make no mistake, I want every Canadian worker in this country to know that Bill C-58 is the product of one party in the House, and that is the NDP. We forced the Liberals to put this in as a demand in our confidence and supply agreement. That agreement is not a mutual agreement. It is a series of 27 demands that the NDP made of the Liberals in exchange for our support of the government.
I have heard the Liberals bragging in the House about their 2021 platform. I looked at it, and in that platform, for the first time in history, the Liberals talked about banning replacement workers, but only in the case of a lockout. They did not care about banning replacement workers if workers exercised their right to strike. It was only in the narrow instance where an employer might lock out its workers that they were prepared to extend the ban of replacement workers. It was the NDP that said, no, we must ban replacement workers in all labour disputes, both in lockouts and strikes.
I want to thank organized labour, the CLC, the building trades and the Teamsters union. I also want to and give a shout-out to all my brothers and sisters in Teamsters Local 31 and Teamsters Canada across this country, who have been fighting for decades for this very basic and equitable measure in Canadian labour law.
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Madam Speaker, I will begin by talking about democracy, union democracy.
There are some people who think that unions do whatever they want, however they want, but that is not at all true. First, it is a recognized right, is it not? Then, people at the head of unions are elected. I feel like saying that sometimes these are ejection seats when members are not pleased, are not satisfied. Union leaders do not do whatever they want, however they want, and their power is limited by the will of their members. I know something about that, having been the president of a 10,000-member union for 10 years. Democracy applies, as I always say.
Now that I have explained that a union is a very democratic body, I will come back to the matter at hand.
In nearly every one of their speeches, my colleagues have said from the outset that the Bloc Québécois is very much in favour of this important bill. I would like to add a few points. We will have hoped and waited a long time for something like this. As the saying goes, better late than never. Anti-scab legislation is a legislative tool that allows workers who, in order to gain respect and decent working conditions, must use the ultimate pressure tactic, a strike, to achieve that. Nobody is ever excited to have to go on strike.
My speech will be largely inspired by a file on this subject prepared by Unifor. Unifor was founded by two major Canadian unions: the Canadian Auto Workers Union and the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union. Unifor has a few more members than my union. It has 315,000 members, 696 locals and 29 sectors. The people at Unifor know what they are talking about. I see this legislation as nothing less than a matter of fundamental respect. I will take my cue from Unifor and share its premise:
Scabs tear apart communities, pull down workers and prolong disputes—something, we at Unifor, know all too well.
Since Unifor formed in 2013, our three longest labour disputes in terms of overall days lost involved the use of scabs. Labour disputes that involved scabs lasted on average six times longer than those without scabs.
Scabs remove any incentive for the boss to bargain fairly and they tip the balance of power away from workers trying to exercise their right to withdraw services when an employer is unreasonable.
What Unifor said on its website is clear.
It is always a good idea to remind the House that Quebec implemented this sort of legislative framework in 1977. There are, perhaps, a lot of people here who were not even born yet or who were not very old at the time, and so they may not be as aware of the harmful effects that the lack of such legislation can bring about. It is a matter of conviction. It is a matter of perception. However, the Quebec law has its limits. It does not apply to federally regulated employees.
At the core of all this is the idea of respect, respect for workers and their loyalty. It is also about respecting their legitimate request to be heard by their employers. It is about ensuring that, when the time comes to renegotiate an expired collective agreement, there is a real possibility of engaging in negotiations that are as productive, honest and fair as possible.
Scabs are a direct attack on the right to strike, as is the use of special back-to-work legislation. Canada has used that tactic extensively. I remember it happened with Canada Post, I believe, when I was first elected. That, too, is an attack.
The Supreme Court writes, “The right to strike is an essential part of a meaningful collective bargaining process in our system of labour relations.”
It is clear that the right to organize and the right to strike to improve working conditions are both recognized rights in this country.
It is high time this law be brought into the federal framework because workers in federally regulated sectors in Quebec have essentially become a different category of salaried employees. The same can be said in British Columbia, which passed similar legislation in 1993. This means that, in Quebec and British Columbia, not all employees have the same rights.
Here in the House of Commons, the Bloc Québécois has tabled 11 bills since its creation. There have also been NDP bills.
Our esteemed colleague in the House, the longest-serving member of our assembly, waited 33 years for this result after introducing the first anti-scab bill back in 1990 and 11 others after that. The member for Bécancour—Nicolet—Saurel must be reliving a few highlights from those days now.
I would now like to return to the background document prepared by Unifor.
The scab might be the single most polarizing figure in the world of labour relations. For employers, the scab represents an effective means of applying economic pressure when contract talks with the union break down, either taking some of the financial sting out of a lockout, or undermining the effectiveness of a strike. For picketing union workers, the scab represents a breach in the strength of the line, and a loss of solidarity and collective power. At the same time, the use of scabs completely destroys the essence of a labour dispute, that is, a withdrawal of labour creating a cost to both the union and the employer.
The provisions of Bill C‑58, starting with the prohibition against using replacement workers, including subcontracted workers—except in very specific situations—along with the prohibition against crossing the picket lines and fines for non-compliance, are the basic components of this legislation.
These clear prohibitions form the basis for additional provisions, such as those specifying time limits for each intervention or the powers conferred on the minister to regulate the setting of penalties.
Is it any wonder that business groups, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, are concerned about Bill C‑58? The answer is no. I am thinking of the activities of lobbyists. I will come back to that shortly.
Employers do not want to lose that competitive edge over their workforce, namely the ability to settle a labour dispute without any industrial or commercial impact when other people are being paid, ever. Their position is that, if the bill passes, it would deprive employers of the opportunity to mitigate the harm caused by prolonged work interruptions and lead to further problems in supply chains still recovering from COVID‑19-related shutdowns.
COVID‑19 is clearly an excuse for everything. My question, however, is this: What about the harm being done to workers, for goodness' sake?
In 2023, it is frankly disappointing to see such organizations shirking their responsibilities. I would say that it is archaic to think that workers are not being harmed in any way, and that it is mostly employers that are harmed when their business declines.
The Government of Canada's delay in implementing this legislation leaves me, as a former union president, with a bad taste in my mouth. There is no need to wait 18 months after a bill receives royal assent for that legislation to come into force. We have never seen anything like it.
It is not required for the government, whose role is to legislate, to give in to the demands of employers. Which brings us back to the issue of lobbies, who always use their clout, in every area, to weaken legislation and regulations.
I will close by reading an excerpt from The Scab, by Jack London.
In the group-struggle over the division of the joint-product, labor utilizes the union with its two great weapons, — the strike and boycott; while capital utilizes the trust and the association, the weapons of which are the blacklist, the lockout, and the scab. The scab is by far the most formidable weapon of the three. He is the man who breaks strikes and causes all the trouble.
I am going to be realistic and end on that note. We should not celebrate too soon. It could take a while. Could there be obstruction? Could there be an early election that causes Bill C‑58 to die on the Order Paper?
Although there is still a long way to go, the Bloc Québécois is delighted that workers covered by the Canada Labour Code will soon have the same rights as all other Quebeckers. This will correct a major inequity.
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Madam Speaker, I would like to start by wishing everyone a merry Christmas on these final strokes of the parliamentary calendar for this year.
I want to talk a little bit about the context of Bill C-58. I believe there is 100% agreement among all members, and probably among all Canadians, that we need more great-paying union jobs in this country. I want to talk about how we get there, how we make sure that there are more great-paying union jobs here in Canada.
The challenge right now is that, as a nation, we have a productivity crisis in our country, and productivity is what powers our economy. Let us imagine the economy of the country as a business itself. If, in fact, the business is producing things efficiently and effectively, then guess what? If there is a strong union in place, good wages should follow, and that is exactly what we want for the nation. Unfortunately, the factory that is our economy is not keeping up with other OECD countries.
Let us unpack productivity. What does “productivity” mean? In layman's terms it basically means how efficiently and effectively we are delivering goods and services. How efficiently and effectively is our economy running? The answer is that it is not great, unfortunately, because of a number of standards. Productivity in itself is basically a three-legged stool. One leg is technology; another is capital investment, and the other is workers. I will go through those legs one by one to make sure we understand what the challenges are and why, unfortunately, the government is just not meeting the challenges.
I will start with technology. It makes sense, and it has been true since the Roman Empire and even before it, that a society or an economy that has leading technology will have the ability to bring prosperity, or prosperity relative to the rest of the world, to its shores. Unfortunately, in Canada, we have a government that is stifling technology and innovation. For multiple years, going on almost a decade, in fact, we have been calling on the government for open banking legislation that was supposed to be here a year ago, and a year before that. Finally, in the fall economic statement, we got a promise for another promise to have open banking legislation. It was supposed to be here years and years ago. In the U.K., open banking has saved customers, depending on which academic or economist one approves of, between $1 billion and $10 billion. That is money we are leaving on the table every year because the government cannot get out of its own way.
We can look at legislation with respect to innovation. Around the world, there is a lot of innovation about how we nurture the small or medium-sized technology companies and make them into the behemoths that they are. Unfortunately, in Canada, we are struggling with that. We have innovations like a patent box, which is available to the government as a tool. We have special regulatory and tax breaks that we can give companies, not just to move factories onto our shores by giving multinationals billions and billions of dollars, but also by creating businesses here at home, and we are failing there when it comes to the technology aspect.
Another element of the technology world where we are letting people down is real-time rail. Most, if not all, G7 countries have real-time rail. People at home might ask me what the heck real-time rail is. Real-time rail is just having money travel instantly. A person may say that when they do an electronic funds transfer to their friend to pay half of the dinner bill, it seems to go immediately. However, in reality, while it seems to go immediately, what actually happens is that the financial institutions are fronting the money, and then the money comes back.
Our current money transfer payment system is really held together by duct tape and a dream. It will break down, mark my words, at some point if we do not have some legislative innovation to allow a real-time rail system, which most of the other G7 and OECD countries have. That is an issue because the flows of capital and the flows of transfer are incredibly important to an innovation economy.
We have some great start-ups and great fintechs across this country, but the government seems to be doing everything it can to stifle their development. There are tremendous opportunities. By the way, these are not partisan issues. It was, I believe, both in the Liberal policy items and in the Conservative policy items in the last election to have open banking, but we just need to deliver. That is the problem. Many times, my issue with the government is not so much ideology; it is just competency. These are things every other country seems to get done but that this country cannot.
Second, the other leg I talked about was capital investment. This is the money that powers the technology that powers the worker. We have decisions to make as a society as to how much money we put into the public sector, which is incredibly important, and how much money we put into the private sector, which I would argue is just as important, if not more so. The private sector is that economy; it is what is driving the money flow. If we do not have a vibrant private sector generating revenue and income for the rest of our economy, that means we will not have a vibrant public sector, because the taxes come from the private sector. They come from the small business owner who is working 20 hours out of a 24-hour day.
However, our current regulatory regime, as well as our taxation regime, is not fair to these individuals. In fact, even the government's approach to business is stifling growth. It is preventing winning from happening. I say this not for partisan reasons per se, but it does sort of illuminate where the government stands with respect to business. When it called small business owners tax cheats, that not only affects the bottom line; it also affects the way people think about business. It shows the way the government thinks about business, when in reality, without strong businesses, without entrepreneurs and without doers in our society, we will not have the revenue we need to fund our very important public sector programs.
The final leg I am going to talk about today is with respect to workers. Our workers are, I think, and in fact I know, the best in the world. We have so many intelligent, hard-working women and men across this great country who go to work every day, but what has happened to them over the last eight years is just not fair. I do not know how else to put it. Let us start by discussing what the government is doing directly, and then we can talk about what it is doing indirectly, to our workers. There is something called the marginal effective tax rate, which is how much one pays to the government for the next dollar. That involves both taxation and clawbacks. It is shocking to me that there are Canadians earning less than $50,000 who, on their next dollar earned, will be giving upwards of 70¢, 80¢ or even 90¢ back to a government. Can one imagine?
For those of us who have children, imagine saying to them that they are going to be given an allowance. They are to shovel the snow, which is no doubt coming, or rake the leaves, or whatever, and they will be given $10 an hour to do it. However, by the way, $9 an hour is going to be taken back. It is unbelievable the impact that taking away from workers would have.
In sum, we need to improve the productivity of our country through reductions in red tape and reductions in taxation so we can have the productivity we need to make sure there are great high-paying union jobs across this country.
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- Dec/14/23 5:26:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I did actually outline the Conservative position on the bill in the first 30 seconds. I am sorry the member missed it.
What I will say is a microcosm of the way Conservatives see the world as opposed to NDP folks. I do have a ton of respect for the member, but that being said, in order to have strong union jobs, jobs that pay the bills, we need a strong economy, and that is what Conservatives are committed to bringing to Canada.
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