The Hon. the Speaker: Senator Deacon’s time has expired.

Senator Deacon, are you asking for five more minutes to answer more questions?

Senator C. Deacon: If it is the will of the chamber.

Senator Downe: Thank you. Let me join the pile on Senator Deacon because of his earlier comments. I know he’s well aware of Prince Edward Island, because he lived there for many years, but he may not be totally up to date. We have the lowest wages in Canada, and the highest inflation in Canada. Those two coming together are an incentive for people not to seek employment — when their incomes are so low because of the wages being the lowest in Canada. We have to be very conscious of what’s going on in the overall economic picture.

Senator Deacon, like you, I support the subamendment. I think it expands the range of options we can hear and gives time for more reflection. I was not aware of the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s report until Senator Ringuette raised it — and I thank her for raising it, because it’s important. The Parliamentary Budget Officer, as we know, does very good work. Senator Deacon, what other witnesses would you suggest, in addition to the Parliamentary Budget Officer, if you were selecting them for this review?

Senator C. Deacon: I would recommend speaking to chambers of commerce, construction associations, tourism associations and restaurant associations to understand what’s happening on the front lines of businesses across the Island — to make sure we’re understanding what the effects are, right now, of labour shortages on the Island. And we can get to the core of whether this is, in any way, related to it — perhaps it is not, and maybe the issues don’t touch on this. I believe there is something to be considered here. Certainly, our witnesses in the Agriculture Committee, when we heard their testimony back in May, said that labour shortage was a big part of their motivation for wanting to see this change. I encourage the committee to consider those sorts of witnesses.

Hon. Colin Deacon: Honourable senators, I think it’s wonderful to hear this focus in the Senate of Canada on those who are marginalized and disadvantaged in Prince Edward Island. It shows we’re focused on a very important part of our job, which is to represent regions and to represent issues that are not being as well debated sometimes as they need to be and where Parliament may not be acting in a way that serves every issue.

I would like to speak in support of the subamendment because the issue of Bill S-236 gets to the core of a very important national problem that we have, and it’s a business crisis in terms of labour shortage.

I want to speak to a bit of history I have on the Island. When I first worked there in the 1990s, I worked in a job where I had a board that I reported to, and sometimes I would come forward with issues that were concerning to employees and where employees were really hoping to have certain advancement so they could do their job better. I would often hear a response that was: Well, they’re just lucky to have a job in the first place.

At a certain point in time in this country, that was very much a perspective: that there was a line around the block for people to replace you in a position, and if you didn’t want to do the job as you were told, you could see yourself being replaced and you were lucky to have that job.

Things are different today. Twenty-five years later, Prince Edward Island actually has the youngest population in Atlantic Canada — it’s the fastest-growing population in all of Canada — and it has seen a tremendous change since the 1990s. I remember when former premier Wade MacLauchlan was president of the University of Prince Edward Island, or UPEI, and the crisis was so dire with an aging population and a lack of a vibrant working environment that he said, “Would the last person to leave P.E.I. please turn off the lights as they head out the door?” It was a really tough time on the Island.

Just to give you an example, between September 2021 and September 2022 there were 2,300 net new jobs, relatively speaking, created in the month of September on Prince Edward Island, mainly in manufacturing and construction, that were not there a year ago. There are a lot of people moving to Prince Edward Island. Last year 4,800 people moved to P.E.I., the fastest ever in 50 years in terms of population growth on the Island, but the trouble is that population growth is exacerbating a housing shortage that is also being exacerbated by a labour shortage. There are 1,000 unfilled construction jobs in P.E.I. right now.

The P.E.I. tourism sector, which has worked so hard to build a shoulder season so that you’re not just making money as a tourist business in July and August but building your business from April right through to November — and that shoulder season has always been affected by a drop in the number of student workers as they head back to school — but now it’s being absolutely negatively impacted by a lack of workers to replace that labour in the shoulder season. This has been a hard-fought win on the part of the Island to expand the length of the tourist season.

Small businesses post-COVID are not able to hire the staff to meet market demands today on the Island. The labour shortages have never been bigger. We have moved in Atlantic Canada — and this is true for Nova Scotia and the tour that I did of different businesses across Nova Scotia, labour shortages were crucial, especially in rural communities. You couldn’t get people to move to those communities in many cases, and the businesses are really struggling. We’re no longer in a world of job shortages. We’re in a world of pervasive and growing labour shortages. But our federal-provincial labour market agreements are based on a world of job shortages; they are based on the assumption and the paradigm of job shortages. From my perspective, that revisiting that Senator Bellemare and many of us have spoken about is really important.

I want to give you a sense of the risks facing businesses nationally for sure and in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island absolutely. In my home province, one anchor employer in a rural area — a profitable, very well-respected business — 30% of their workforce is over 55 years of age. They do not have replacement workers coming along. We have to fix this issue of labour shortages in this country. To me, the challenge that I have is that the current situation on P.E.I. I think is indicative of some of the challenges that we have in this country, on the basis that we’re really supporting a job shortage market, not a labour shortage market. We’re incentivizing people in the second zone to stay home and work less. That’s the net result of that.

I really respect the concerns that have been raised by my honourable colleagues. I absolutely think we need to address them vigorously, but I like the fact that Senator Black has proposed a subamendment that allows us to look at the issue because in agricultural and rural communities it is especially challenging. The larger question of how we have to revisit our programs supporting those who are unemployed is crucial.

I will finish off by saying I hope we do vote in support of this subamendment and give the Agriculture and Forestry Committee the flexibility and time they need, and having the committee look at this issue makes an awful lot of sense in my mind. There is a profound challenge facing small businesses. They need the help to fill jobs and they don’t need people being incentivized to stay home.

The success of business is built — as we all know — on the quality and reliability of the workforce, but Bill S-236 is trying to get at this challenge of labour shortages on the Island. We heard it in committee when we did our study last May, and it is worse in rural communities and much harder for some of these businesses to get people to move into the communities and make sure they have the ability to create the value that they could deliver to their customers.

Colleagues, I hope you look at that part of the question seriously because it is a negative impact for those who have struggled to get through COVID and are trying to rebuild on the other side of it. Thank you very much, colleagues.