Mr. Deans:

Well said.

Mr. Deans:

I thank you very much-a very interesting interjection and typical of the Conservative party. Those who have jobs are afraid to spend because their jobs are in jeopardy. They are not at all sure of the future. Those who have no jobs cannot spend. The country's economy is on the decline and we get a piece of legislation which in essence, when looked at most carefully, enshrines the working poor as an institution in Canada.

You have to look at what is happening in this country. Perhaps the government would have been better to come forward now with an over-all program that speaks about what is really going to happen and shows that we are solving the problems we are facing. I am sure you are aware of this, Mr. COMMONS DEBATES

April 24, 1980

Employment Tax Credit Act

Speaker, having been involved for many years, but it is so simple and elementary that one is almost afraid to say it, and yet it is true. As consumer purchasing declines, manufacturing slows down. As manufacturing slows down, people get laid off. As people get laid off, consumer purchasing declines. As mortgage interest rates rise, people have less money to spend to purchase durable and non-durable goods. The cycle begins all over again. Consumer purchasing declines. Manufacturing slows down. More and more people get laid off.

It feeds on itself. It has a snowballing effect. It cannot be resolved with this employment tax credit. It cannot even begin to be resolved with this unemployment tax credit, because unemployment feeds on unemployment and, as more become unemployed, more become unemployed.

This program is aimed primarily at small businesses. However, if you look honestly at small business, the declining economy does not allow for small business to expand. As people cannot purchase, the small businessman does not need to hire anyone else. Therefore a program like this does not even being to address the major problem that confronts people looking for work. Small business relies to a great extent on a buoyant economy. Unless we create a buoyant economy we will not be able to solve the problems of unemployment or the problems that flow from unemployment.

Take a look at small business. I listened to members who have spoken and who made reference to small businesses and the difficulties that confront them. As they stand in their store or factory awaiting the orders to come in for the sale of the product that they either wholesale, retail, or manufacture, they build up inventories. Those inventories are dollars. They go to the bank.

I was in the bank yesterday. A friend of mine who owns a small business said to me, "When are they going to do something in Ottawa? Do they not understand that I cannot afford to carry this inventory any longer, that the cost of carrying the inventory is a cost that I cannot recover? I cannot recover it because I am in competition with big business and they are able to sell finance to a greater extent. 1 must therefore go into the bank and borrow. I must add the 20 per cent on to the cost of my inventory when I put it on sale in the store. The consumers, those who are still working and still have some money to spend, look at my price and they look at the price of the larger enterprise, the chain store operation or others, and they see they can get the same product at a much cheaper price elsewhere."

This does not help my friend in business. It does not help him a bit. He cannot hire anyone anyway because he does not have the volume, yet he still has to carry the inventory. He still has to borrow. If one were to look at how you begin the process of resolving the problems of Canada, you surely do not begin by bringing in this, but by bringing in some action that will stabilize interest rates.

I was particularly intrigued by the comments of the hon. member for Surrey-White Rock-North Delta (Mr. Friesen)

because they are, at least in one instance, right on. These are not 50,000 jobs for a year each. These jobs might last for a few weeks. That's it. Then they are back on the breadline again, or in the unemployment insurance commission office, or looking out of their windows wondering just where they are going next.

How many hon. members have been unemployed? How many know what it is to look at your kids and realize that you don't have an income, to realize that you cannot provide the things the other families on the street are providing for their kids? How many know what it is like to sit down with your family when Christmas comes and you can't do anything because you have not been able to find a job, or what it is like to realize that your mortgage is due very soon and not only are the interest rates rising, not only will you be faced with exorbitant increases over what you were paying previously, but to know full well that you will not be able to find a job and, by not being able to find a job, no matter what happens you are going to lose your home, the home you both worked for years to save the down payment for, the home you have put most of your dreams into, and maybe thought you would raise your family in?

Go talk to the people outside and ask them. This measure does nothing even to begin to address that devastating problem. We talk about unemployment as if, somehow or other, here in the House of Commons it really doesn't affect people. I shall not go into details about unemployment in other parts of the country because I intend to do that another time, but in the province of Ontario alone unemployment has now become the order of the day. There are very few, if any, communities where industries are not laying off workers. There are very few families which are not touched by it in one way or another. Yet we get a bill, Bill C-19, which will find two or three temporary jobs at minimum wage. We get a bill which does not begin to address itself to the major problem. That is the response of the government.

Do hon. members realize, for example, that in Talbotville on January 19, 3,100 people were laid off in the auto industry? In Oakville on the same date 3,400 people were laid off in the auto industry. In St. Catharines 2,400 were laid off by General Motors on January 22. In Brampton, during February, Gabriel laid off 20 people engaged in parts manufacturing.

In Hamilton, Firestone laid off 75 workers on February 8, and another lay-off is starting tomorrow. In Stratford the Sealed Power Corporation laid off 180 people engaged in parts production. A colleague in the Conservative party spoke of the situation in Brampton earlier tonight and expressed concern. Well, in Brampton 470 people were laid off on February 16. In Oshawa in the GM plant on March 1, 2,000 people were laid off. In Ajax, 18 people were laid off on March 6 and another 92 in April. This was at Chrysler. Leigh Instruments, another auto-related industry in Waterloo, laid off 130 people.

In Whitby, the Firestone Tire Company closes with 650 people laid off and we are still debating whether we should go ahead with the Michelin project! In St. Catharines, General Motors, 3,100 laid off; also in St. Catharines, 70 people laid off on March 29 by Hayes-Dana, the chassis manufacturing

April 24, 1980

firm. In Oakville on April 16, 1,400 people were laid off; in Windsor on the same date, 800 Ford employees laid off. In Scarborough on April 17-General Motors-131 more people laid off. In Ottawa-I mentioned this the other night-240 people were laid off by Beach Foundry, an auto parts manufacturer. Another 28 people were laid off by Kelsey-Hayes in St. Catharines and another 100 at Otter Lake, as I mentioned. At Stratford-Schwitzer-61 people laid off. And today, Massey Ferguson in Brantford announced that 85 were to be laid off with more lay-offs to come. Then, of course, we must consider the situation in Detroit, our neighbour, one which closely affects the Windsor area. General Motors announced today that 13,000 people are to be laid off.

That is unemployment, Mr. Speaker. And the effects of that unemployment are devastation for the workers and their families. The effects of such unemployment cannot be met by this ridiculous piece of inadequate legislation.

Mr. Ian Deans (Hamilton Mountain):

Mr. Speaker, I want to say a word or two about the bill before us, C-19. I was chatting with my colleague, the hon. member for Kootenay West (Mr. Kristiansen) just before I got up to speak. He brought to my attention a quote from John Foster Dulles that I thought might well be appropriate for the context of this debate. It goes as follows: "The measure of success is not whether you have a tough problem to deal with, but whether it's the same problem you had last year". I have to think that if you are going to measure success by that criterion, then this government certainly is successful. If anything, it is very successful given that the problem it is now dealing with is even worse than the problem it had when the legislation was first introduced by its predecessor.

Let me talk for a moment in a little different vein from my colleagues who tended to want to speak about the statistical problems and the values of this piece of legislation statistically. I want to talk about what unemployment really is. It is not a statistic that should be manipulated by politicians for their own particular needs. It is not 7, 8 or 9 per cent of anything. For the majority of people who face it, it is the single most frightening, single most soul-destroying experience.

The very result of unemployment breaks up families, and contributes to excessive alcohol and drug use. It is a symptom that is reflected frequently in child abuse and spouse abuse.

Employment Tax Credit Act

Unemployment is a major contributor to crime. If you were to stop and think about it for a moment, you would agree that unemployment is the single major problem with which we have to cope. If we could deal with the background to unemployment, we would to a great extent have dealt with the social and economic problems that confront the nation at the moment.

We are in a country that is facing a terrible crisis. We are faced with a piece of legislation which, under any other circumstances, would be unsupportable.

Mr. Deans:

In any other circumstances this kind of legislation would be totally unsupportable. I will come to that in a moment. When you look around you and you look at the crisis and the problems that confront us, and you look at this piece of legislation intended to deal even in part with the problems of unemployment, the tendency is to smile and walk away from it.

Here we are with a resource sector under siege from offshore, having great difficulty coping with the challenges of today, given the facts of the companies that operate here and abuse and take our resources, and have done so for many years. They are now using the money that they got from the sale of those resources to develop competitive resources in other parts of the world. This country has its energy prices dictated to it by OPEC nations. It has its interest rate policies set in Washington and New York. This country has a manufacturing sector that is being undermined by foreign ownership. The elderly of this country are in despair, and the young are beset with panic.

I have three children and they say to me, "Hey, Dad, what do you think I should be? What should I study? What are the opportunities? What sorts of advice can you give me with regard to where my future might lie in terms of finding a job?" I ask hon. members to think about that for a moment. What kind of advice do you give young people today when they ask you what they should study, where are the areas of greatest opportunity, and what chance is there for them? I certainly find it difficult to give them the kind of advice that I got from my father and I am sure he got from his.

Mr. Deans:

After they get it out of their mouth. Yes, the difficulty here is plain to see. For some of us it is plain, ordinary frustration. We should not be dealing here with this bill tonight. We should be dealing with the meat of the problem. We should be talking about the difficulties which are confronting people across this nation. We should be looking at primary legislation to deal with these things.