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Decentralized Democracy

Member of Parliament

Chris Lewis

  • Member of Parliament
  • Member of Parliament
  • Conservative
  • Essex
  • Ontario
  • Voting Attendance: 67%
  • Expenses Last Quarter: $172,107.39

  • Government Page
Context: House Hansard - 159 - Feb/13/23
Mr. Chris Lewis
Mr. Speaker, in all sincerity, every day when I step into the House, it is like stepping onto the ice in the seventh game of the Stanley Cup series. I just want to thank the folks of Essex. I want to, once again, thank Tomi Hulkkonnen from the Carpenters Union and Karl Lovett from IBEW for helping me script the bill and for giving me guidance and understanding of what it really means in support for our skilled trades folks. I also want to take the opportunity to thank the member for Lambton—Kent—Middlesex, who seconded this bill and who will be speaking to it later on. Before I dive into the bill, my dearest condolences to the Gaffan family back in Kingsville. Jim Gaffan was the mayor of Kingsville for a long time. He passed away just a couple of weeks ago. He was a staple in the community as a local barber. If people needed to know something, they would go to Gaffan's Barber Shop. Mr. Gaffan was a man whom I very much looked up to. He was a man of the people, and I hope to at least bring some of his happiness forward. Again, my condolences to his family. Bill C-241 is an act to amend the Income Tax Act with respect to deduction of travel expenses for tradespersons. As I have said before, I like to call it the “fair travelling tradespersons bill”. It went to committee. I understand we did not break a record, but I believe it to be true that we were very close to breaking one. Today, I get 15 minutes to speak, but in committee it passed in 17 minutes. Therefore, if I draw this out for two more minutes, somehow we probably would have broken a record. The reason is that there were no amendments to the bill. This is such a simple bill. The only frustrating thing about this is that because it is so simple, because it is the right thing to do and because it has the support of the majority of the House, I am talking 15 more minutes, 15 more minutes that we are not looking out for our skilled tradespersons. I was caught at the Billy Bishop Airport for an extended four hours on Thursday night on the way home. I ran into a young man named Colin. He lives in the Windsor area and travels to southern Alberta for work because he can make a lot more money in the skilled trades to feed his family back in Windsor. I asked him how long he had been gone for. He said it had been 30 days and he was excited to get home to see his young daughter. I said, “Wow, you had to work for 30 days.” He said, no, that he worked for 10 days, then he was off for two, then he worked for 10 days and was off again for two days. I realized it is a long way to travel, but I asked him if he was able to get home to see his daughter. He would have loved to have gotten home to see his daughter, but he could not afford the cost of the flights. When he would go home after 30 days, the money for that flight was money that would pay for her diapers, her pablum, her medicines like Tylenol. He said that Facetime was as good as I got. If that real story does not tear at the heartstrings of each and every member of the House and to understand why Bill C-241 would be so impactful for our skilled tradespersons who travel across the country to build our infrastructure, quite frankly, I do not know what would. If that story does not get the House, maybe this one will. I was again at Billy Bishop Airport around October or November of last year. I ran into a gentleman named Andrew. He works in the mines in Timmins. He asked me for a picture with him. I do not know why. My wife does not even want pictures with me. I had a good conversation with this gentleman. He does not have a family but he has a girlfriend. He actually Facetimed his girlfriend while I was there and introduced me as her member of Parliament. I did not think too much about it. Shame on me When I arrived at Billy Bishop Airport to fly back to the House for the first week, a young woman came up to me and said my name. I asked her how she was. She wanted to thank me for my private member's bill, which she hoped would go through. She then asked me if I knew who she was. I told her she looked familiar but I was not too sure. That is when she told me she was Andrew's girlfriend and that she was on her way to Timmins. I remembered that I had taken a picture with him. I asked her if Andrew could not get home and she said that it would cost him too much so she decided to go see him. These are the real stories of the ones who we expect to build our roads and energy system, to turn our economy and get that engine moving again to make our country green. They are the very ones who sacrifice so much, but we forget about their loved ones. If we want to really incentivize our skilled trades, it is as simple as giving them the opportunity to be back with their loved ones. We continue to talk about the lack of homes or the shortage of them across our country. We know that the cost of a house is out of this world, but that is purely because we do not have enough. I am quite sure that all 338 members of the House have heard this time and again from their business owners, that if we gave them more people, they would put out twice as much product. Quite frankly, they do not have the people. We are far past the stigma of being in the skilled trades. We now understand that it is not only okay to be a plumber, a boiler maker, an ironworker or an electrical worker but it is a fantastic living that brings home a lot of money for families and puts tons of food on the tables of Canadian families. Now that we are past that the next question is how we get those people to the jobs. How do we give the support to those folks to get them to those jobs? Right before Christmas, I travelled to Nova Scotia. I met with people from CANS, the Construction Association of Nova Scotia. They said to me that to build roads and hospitals, all these projects, they needed people. They said that for the first time Nova Scotia was was not exporting its folks; it needed to import skilled trades. I hear this across the country. They said that my private member's bill, Bill C-241, which is not mine but the people's bill, would get people to the right place at the right time. I think about Windsor. I think about the Gordie Howe International Bridge and the amazing workforce that is building that bridge. At the same time, a $5-billion battery plant is being built in Windsor. As such, when I met with representatives of the IBEW in Windsor, they said that they would need thousands of people in Windsor to build this plant, let alone the bridge. The point is that this is as simple as doing what each and every one of us talks about all the time: building our economy, building our infrastructure and being fair. Recently, I met with representatives from WEST, which I had never heard of before. It does some pretty unique and amazing work based in Windsor. It trains mostly young women, a lot of them immigrants, on skilled trades. By the way, it is the only organization of its kind in Canada. I asked where they go once they are trained, and they said that they try to find them a job locally. I said it cannot be hard to find them a job locally. They said it is certainly not hard to find them a job locally, but many of them have roots and family in other parts of Canada that they want to go to, so if the job is here, they cannot be with their family. Kudos to WEST for doing what it is doing and recognizing the potential of our immigrants, specifically women. I really want to stay bipartisan here, because I believe that through working together in the House we can do something really special and unique. I want to thank the Bloc Québécois and the New Democratic Party at committee for supporting this bill going forward. I realize that there has been a tax deduction for mobility expenses by the Liberal Party for $4,000. I have heard that time and time again, and it is a great start. However, as I mentioned before, a businessperson can jump on a plane in Windsor and fly back and forth to Calgary, Vancouver or St. John's, Newfoundland as many times as they want and write off those expenses, such as hotels, meals and travel. To suggest that a skilled tradesperson can write off only $4,000 of travel expenses for maybe a couple of months' worth of work is putting a price on the heads of those in our skilled trades that is totally unacceptable and certainly does not go far enough. In closing, this is a common-sense bill for the hard-working, common people. It has been a year-long journey, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, and I now realize the number of people whose lives and families would be impacted by this bill. It is so far-reaching and so unique. Other parties have introduced very similar legislation in the past, and now is the time to finally get it done. Let us bring it home. Let us expedite this process so that we can get the proper folks at the proper place fairly. I will end this speech the way I ended my last one, because I truly believe it in my heart of hearts: If it is good enough for members of Parliament to write off their travel expenses, their apartments and their meals, then it better darn well be good enough for our skilled trades folks.
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