Mr. Speaker, it is with great enthusiasm that I stand tonight in this place to speak in support of my colleague from Davenport's private member's bill, Bill C-542, an act to establish a national urban workers strategy.

The bill stands in the spirit in which it is presented to this House, as a positive, constructive response to the economic reality of largely, but not exclusively, urban Canada. I will return to the positive and constructive momentarily. The bill also stands as an indictment of not just the current federal government as a wayward and destructive and/or delusional government, but as an indictment of successive federal governments, Liberal and Conservative alike, that have lost touch with the real circumstances of the vast majority of Canadians and the real concerns and anxieties of just about every Canadian, particularly in urban Canada. These governments have governed as though urban economies, environments, and communities do not exist, much less have their own peculiarities and needs and present their own great opportunities as well. We just heard a classic example of that from the member for Edmonton Centre.

Canada needs a federal government that understands that a national agenda must also be an urban agenda; a federal government that understands that in the 21st century, nation building is also city building. Successive federal governments have done nothing to respond not only to our own urbanization but to the fact that our own urbanization is part of a global trend. The world is connected through cities, and our Canadian cities are either fully global cities or rapidly globalizing cities. The implications of this are obvious. Economically, they are the conditions that this bill seeks to address. The mapping of this global urban transformation tells a story of growing economic exclusion and precariousness. The emergence of a large population that has difficulty earning a living in urban labour markets defined by, or increasingly defined by, high-end economic activity is a hallmark of the global and globalizing city.

The recent Metcalf Foundation report about working poverty in the Toronto region put it in the starkest terms. It states that Toronto and Vancouver, Canada's two richest and most global cities, are becoming:

...giant modern-day Downton Abbeys where a well-to-do knowledge class relies on a large cadre of working poor who pour their coffee, serve their food, clean their offices, and relay their messages from one office to another.

In only one of Canada's largest cities—Quebec City—did the percentage of working poor decline, and then just marginally. In the Toronto region, the report concluded, working poverty grew by 11% between 2006 and 2012. That is significantly short of the 39% growth in Toronto's population of working poor for the first five years of the new millennium under the Liberal federal government. However, it is particularly worrying that the number of working poor is growing at all, in the context of a shrinking number of those actually working; that is, in the context of Toronto's falling employment rate.

A study done in 2013 by the United Way and McMaster supports the findings of the Metcalf Foundation and the basis of this bill. It showed that, in the greater Toronto and Hamilton area, about half of all workers cannot find full-time employment with benefits and job security; 20% are in extremely precarious employment: temporary, variable hours, and no benefits; and 9% are in permanent part-time work; and so on and so forth.

The report also shows that people who work in precarious employment earn 46% less than those in secure employment; that they rarely receive employment benefits beyond a basic wage; that they are more likely to be new immigrants; that they often do not know their work schedule a week in advance; that they have limited career prospects and less job satisfaction; and that they often have to hold more than one job at a time.

It is into this context that the member for Davenport offered this private member's bill. The bill proposes to establish a task force that would consult municipal, provincial, and territorial representatives, as well as labour and industry groups and other relevant stakeholders, to develop a national strategy that would identify policy and legislative changes needed to address the issues facing Canadians in precarious employment, including but not limited to fixing employment insurance for all workers.

All successive federal governments have done is tighten the screws on people who lose their jobs and pilfer the El fund to the tune of nearly $60 billion, money that had been set aside by workers to provide income for workers when they lost their jobs.

From a high-water mark of 80% eligibility in the 1980s, eligibility for EI has fallen steadily down to about half of that on the national level. In Toronto, it is about half of that again. Only about 20% of the unemployed in Toronto are actually eligible for EI benefits.

It is about ensuring a livable pension for all. We have a public pension system in Canada that was designed around and meant to complement a private pension system in the form of a labour relations regime that would allow workers to negotiate deferred wages in the form of defined benefit pension plans and benefits. That labour relations regime has been attacked by successive federal governments and it has not kept abreast of changes to the nature of work. Therefore, we are the only country in the OECD with the number of seniors living in poverty actually on the rise. Since 1995, the percentage has tripled.

Clearly, the next federal government will need to restore the old age security eligibility to age 65 and ensure that the Canada and Quebec pension plans are more provident to ensure that seniors can retire in dignity and out of poverty. It is about addressing the lack of workplace benefits as well. As with pensions, that which is not covered by our public health care system was to be dealt with at the bargaining table under our labour relations regime. As with pensions, workers are increasingly without and all Canadians are increasingly paying out of their pocket for health care, if they have money in their pocket to do so. It is about strengthening labour standards to prevent the exploitation of workers and unpaid interns.

My colleague from Rivière-des-Mille-Îles has a private member's bill dealing with the issue of unpaid internships, so let me highlight the issue of job quality and worker protection.

Canada ranks 26th out of 28 countries on the OECD's index of employment protection. Canada ranks last amongst OECD nations in having the highest proportion of men identified as low-wage workers. Qualitatively, these kinds of assessments are confirmed domestically by the CIBC's Canadian Employment Quality Index. That index has fallen 15% since the 1990s, and 10% over the last decade. A 2013 study of labour markets in the east end of Toronto, entitled “Shadow Economies: Economic Survival Strategies of Toronto Immigrant Communities”, showed that just shy of half the respondents were paid less than minimum wage. The report went on to detail all sorts of other employment standards breaches.

At a minimum, it is time for the federal government to re-institute a minimum wage and set it higher and show leadership on this issue. My party's pledge is to re-establish a federal minimum wage at $15 an hour. There are of course other things outside the ambit of this bill that need to be done to make life more affordable for workers, indeed to even give them the opportunity to participate in the workforce. Most obvious amongst these is accessible, affordable child care. A recent City of Toronto report lays out the problem in my city very clearly. The cost of licensed child care for a single infant exceeds $20,000 per year, but there are only 65,000 spots in licensed day cares in a city with a child population of nearly six times that. There are only 25,000 subsidized spots in a city with almost 90,000 kids living below the poverty line. This is why the NDP's commitment to create nearly one million child care spaces at up to $15 a day is a critical part of the context to this bill and this discussion.

The world has changed dramatically over the last few decades, and Canada has changed along with it. The Liberal and Conservative parties have not. They have failed to recognize the importance of cities and urban economies to the fortunes of this country. However, it is clear to us, in the official opposition, that the goals we set for ourselves as a country and as Canadians will not be realized until we understand and respond to both the possibilities and vulnerabilities of our cities in this new context. I believe there is nothing inevitable about how we respond to this context.

We have choices to make and, on this side of the House, we choose to respond with an urban agenda that builds thriving urban economies with a prosperity shared more equally. We choose to put forward bills like the one before us today and we choose to support them and make life more economically secure for Canadians.

Matthew Kellway

Transcript

Private Members' Business

Discussions (0)