Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is wonderful to be back in Ottawa. These are words I never thought I would hear myself saying, and they are words I do not think anyone has actually ever said in a truthful state. It is wonderful to be back in Parliament debating my colleague’s bill, Bill C-266. The author of the bill, the member for Richmond East—Steveston, and I had the pleasure of working together on the operations committee for several years, and I quite enjoyed working with him. Although there is technically nothing wrong with his private member’s bill, I question what the end value would be because it really would not do a lot. Conservatives are here to represent Canadians and to help Canadians. We are focused on saving Canadians money. I believe the Liberals are out of touch on this issue, and the bill before us shows part of that. The bill would not actually provide any action to help Canadians, and every day without action from the Liberal government is costing Canadians money. Bill C-266 has a lot of good points on paper, if it were to actually accomplish anything, but what would it accomplish in the end? It would accomplish a call for a national framework. It would not actually assist an electrician in Ontario to work and be recognized in Alberta. It just calls for a framework. In the end, that is what would happen, as the bill states, “The Minister must develop a national framework respecting skilled trades and labour mobility”. That is wonderful, but would it actually do anything? No, it is just paperwork to “develop a national framework”. The bill also states, “the Minister must hold consultations”. Well, that would be work for bureaucrats and hopefully hotels during the consultations, but in the end, after all these consultations, after all the work, debate and everything, our result would be the tabling of a framework. The bill continues: Within one year after the day on which this Act comes into force, the Minister must prepare a report setting out the national framework and cause it to be tabled That would be within a year. Maybe we could get through this in a month and then, in 2027, after another year without action, it would be tabled. The bill also states: Within one year after the day on which the report is tabled under subsection 4(1), and every year after that, the minister must prepare a progress report It does not state that he has to do anything. It is just a progress report. We have seen, with this government, lots of other frameworks and lots of other items that state it has to prepare progress reports. We have seen it in public accounts, where the Auditor General comes to say, “Yeah, for 20 years we have been doing progress reports, but nothing has changed.” The bill further states, “Within five years after the day on which this Act comes into force, a comprehensive review of the national framework must be undertaken by the committee of the Senate, of the House of Commons or of both Houses of Parliament that is designated or established”. We would have one year to study this, another year for a progress report and then, within five years, another review of the framework. It begs the question, why does the government not just get this done? Why do we need a framework? Why do we need a private member’s bill to ask the government to do what its job is, and why the delays? What should the government be doing instead? Well, it could be acting. One of the things the Liberals could act on would be to delete from their budget 2025 their intent to defund student loans for private colleges. There are 31 of these in B.C. and seven in Alberta that deliver apprenticeship training and such trade training privately, but the government is going to ban students from being able to access funding to attend them. One of the other things the Liberals could do that would be a lot more important, which I have spoken about repeatedly in the House and in committee, would be to end the scourge of trafficked and illegal workers on government-funded infrastructure projects. We have projects that are funded partly by the feds, partly by the province and partly by the municipalities where we have illegal, trafficked workers on the sites. The contractor will win the bid with a low bid and then immediately subcontract out the entire job to a subcontractor to create a layer, a distance I guess, so they can claim, “We’re innocent. It was the subcontractor who broke the law.” The subcontractor will then recruit from Mexico, Venezuela or Colombia to bring in workers under a visitor’s, vacation or other visa, and then they put them to work. I have presented to the Treasury Board evidence of how they are recruiting the workers. Two years ago, in the House, I spoke about it, and the government has done nothing. They will bring in these workers, abuse them, underpay them with $10 an hour in cash, make them work overtime, and then steal the overtime. Who are these workers bumping out? They are bumping out trades workers, the very skilled trades workers that this bill is supposed to help. The government talks about wanting workers from Ontario to be able to work in B.C., yet it turns a blind eye when workers are trafficked or smuggled into the country, which bumps out trades workers from working on government-funded infrastructure projects. One of the items we found is that nine of these trafficked workers, and this was in Edmonton, were forced to rent their accommodation from the wife of the subcontractor. There were nine of them in a one-bedroom house, and they were paying $3,000 for this. They were told that, if they complained, they would go back on a plane and go home. I visited one of the work sites on the Henday, the ring road or ring highway around Edmonton, which is actually in the riding of Edmonton Riverbend. Now, if the member for Edmonton Riverbend were to show up in Edmonton once in a while, he would perhaps see this work being done. We spoke to every single worker on the site during the construction. Funnily enough, every single worker was not a worker but a subcontractor. Now, if anyone has worked in construction, they know there is a general contractor. Perhaps they would sub out the drywall to a subcontractor who would then hire workers, but every single worker on this site was a subcontractor. Every single worker was from out of country. We spoke to the contractor. He tried to chase us off and run us down with his pickup truck, so I think we know how the contractor felt about that. Now, workers from Local 222, the cement masons, should have gotten the work on that Henday project, the bridge, but not one of them did. The government talks a lot about wanting to help work with the unions. It is actually in this bill that the government is going to consult with the unions. I am pretty sure, if they consulted with Local 222 of the cement masons, they would be told, “Let us work. Let our legal workers work on Canadian-funded infrastructure projects instead of trafficked workers.” We heard a story of a gentleman who was one of the illegal trafficked workers. He fell and landed on his head. Luckily, he had a helmet on. He fell 25 feet and woke up in the hospital. No one from the company or worker’s comp visited him. The only person who visited was the safety officer from the subcontractor, who told him that, if he told the truth to workers’ comp or anyone else, he would be fired on the spot and sent home. Three months later, after he got out of the hospital, on his first day back on the job, he was given his cheque and told he was fired, to get out. This is happening on the Edmonton LRT project; the Edmonton library, which just got built; sidewalk projects; and the Yellowhead. Again, two years ago, I had documented evidence of this. Two years ago, I placed it in the hands of the Treasury Board. I promised the Treasury Board that I would not make this public and that I would work with the government to get this done. A year later, I approached them again. I said, “You guys have done nothing. I’m going to start speaking about it. It’s now been two years and nothing has been done.” We tabled a motion in the operations committee to look at this, to help the trade workers that Bill C-266 is supposed to help. The Liberals voted the motion down rather than study this. It has been two years. The government talks about wanting to help trade workers. If it wanted to actually do that, instead of developing a national framework that is going to do nothing, the government should sit down, listen to the unions and crack down to end the scourge of trafficked and illegal workers being used on government-funded infrastructure sites.
