Bill C-2 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Radiocommunication Act

Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister

[James Moore, Conservative, Minister of Canadian Heritage and Official Languages]

Mr. Speaker, we are talking here about accountability and the responsibility of the CBC to be in tune with its needs and to be open to the public about the money it receives from taxpayers.

That is what the Parliamentary Secretary is doing and that is what our government promised to Canadians during the last election campaign. We are asking for the CBC's receipts because it must be accountable. It was the same with our Bill C-2, under the former government. The CBC must show taxpayers that it will act responsibly with the money it receives from them.

Supply

[Clifford Lincoln, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to this motion on employment insurance reform. This motion asks the government to implement all the recommendations in the report that go beyond Bill C-2, including those that will provide eligibility and increased benefits.

Since many of these would directly affect seasonal workers and the companies that employ seasonal workers, and the communities in which seasonal workers live, I would like to provide a little background on seasonal industries and the challenge they face so that we can better assess how this motion might impact them.

To begin with, this is a particularly important debate since it involves a key segment of the economy that does not always get the attention it should, namely seasonal employment. Seasonal work patterns can be found in most regions of the country, in most industries, and in most occupations.

The economic impact of seasonal work is even greater in some rural regions where seasonal industries often represent the main source of employment. In fact, as I was listening to my various colleagues, every one of them from different regions made sure they put the accent on seasonal work and the impact it has on their own communities.

Some industries rely much more heavily on seasonal work than other industries; for example, mining, forestry, agriculture, hunting and trapping, fisheries, oil and gas exploration, and certainly tourism. All these are vitally important sectors that provide employment for many Canadians. In fact, some would say, in naming these industries, a majority of Canadians.

Thus, seasonal industries have an economic impact far beyond their particular sector because of the additional economic activity performed by a myriad of companies serving them. All these companies, one way or another, contribute to our gross domestic product.

For example, in the forestry sector where the harvesting of trees, which is in itself a highly seasonal activity, provides raw materials for sawmills, pulp and paper, plywood, panel board plants, operations not all are seasonal. Really, the industry itself is far more permanent than some of the employment that constitutes its mainstay. For example, if forestry workers spend time in the forest on an off and on basis, given that logging only takes place at certain times of the year, that does not mean to say that the industry itself is not far more permanent in its scope and operates on a constant basis the whole year. However, for some segments of the workers in that particular industry, obviously they are greatly impacted because their work is purely done during certain periods of the year.

Workers in these companies are in turn served by community businesses which again are far more permanent businesses than the seasonal workers that are in the field at certain times of the year, but yet contribute to the general economy which itself is far more constant and permanent. For example, in a particular community grocery stores, dry cleaners, gas stations and restaurants, all these various industries depend on one community, a central industry, where a lot of workers in that main industry are seasonal workers themselves.

While many of these industries are part of what economists would call the service economy, this does not mean that they are neither technologically advanced nor innovative as shown by the ongoing process of change in which companies are using technology to radically transform their own operations. We can take the example of any major industry, and the same evolution and process of change is taking place at a tremendous rate, in some cases.

At the same time, seasonal industries, by their very nature, are often vulnerable to factors beyond their control: weather, crop conditions, diseases, and global market conditions. We have seen what has happened, for example, in the agricultural industry which employs a great number of seasonal workers. Certain conditions completely extraneous to the process itself have happened without the control of the industry itself and totally outside the control of governments or anybody else.

There is the whole question of the mad cow disease, droughts in the prairies, weather changes, and forest fires. Suddenly, there are all kinds of extraneous factors that could impact on the industry itself, especially seasonal workers who find themselves, from one season to the other or from one day or one month to the other, without any possibility of work because the type of work that they do requires certain conditions which are totally impacted by conditions outside of their control.

All of these various exterior conditions such as weather, crop diseases, and global market conditions can create considerable fluctuations in supply and demand for products and in their costs. To respond to these challenges many companies have modernized their operations and diversified product lines. While these will create new opportunities for these various industries, modernization also displaces workers by reducing the number of seasonal jobs. This is why I put the accent on seasonal jobs which I feel are one of the elements of impact which are the greatest regarding employment generally.

The shift in business activity has also created problems for employers themselves for whom new technology, improved management capabilities, and the development of new products are obviously vital to success. These employers very often find themselves in the paradoxical situation of not being able to get the workers they need even in very high unemployment areas because the workers are not suited to the new technologies that are needed today to modernize industry. This really leads us to the crux of today's debate.

I think we all agree that this motion is well-intentioned. I do not think anybody is questioning the validity of the intent of the motion. The problem is that the focus of the debate is primarily on making it easier to collect EI and increasing benefits.

Instead, we should focus first, on a multi-faceted approach aimed at helping seasonal industries to cope with these new economic realities, some of which I have described. Certainly, the new technological world is changing employment totally. Second, we must ensure that seasonal workers get the education and skills upgrading needed to take advantage of alternative employment opportunities that might come along in a completely different type of industrial economy; and third, we must ensure that communities diversify the economic base as far as is possible.

I realize that this is not always easy, especially in rural areas. Rural areas might be less vulnerable to changes in any one industry or company.

Last year, for instance, I took part--with one of my colleagues, the regional economic minister at the time--in a really almost very sad and terrible circumstance in the fishing industry on the north coast. I became involved in that because most of the employees were English speaking and they wanted some people they could relate to in their own language. Some of them only spoke English. They were affected by the fact that the fishery was stopped in that area.

Suddenly, overnight they found themselves without any economic means of livelihood. Some of them could not even afford food to send with their children to school. It was a drastic situation where the Quebec government and the federal government cooperated in trying to find, overnight, some instant programs to try to fill the gap on an emergency basis to keep them in the support system, at the same time try to provide more long term alternative ways of skill building so that employment could be shifted from the basic and only employment they had, which was fishing, into various other types of livelihood, such as ecotourism, artisan work, wood crafts and so forth.

It is only through this kind of process, where we try to provide alternative skills and employment, that we will be able to target areas where there is one central industry, especially in outlying areas. Any peril or hardship to that industry has a tremendous economic and social impact on the area and affects the livelihood of people.

To create this, it is essential to listen to all the partners involved, such as the seasonal workers and their families who are the first impacted, the private sector, provincial and territorial governments, unions and community groups, to find out how we can best address the needs of workers in seasonal industries in their communities.

This is what we did on the north shore. We worked with the community base. We worked with volunteer groups. We worked with local municipalities. We worked with the provincial government and federal government to see how we together could find ways to create support systems on an emergency basis and then skill training on a more permanent basis.

We should encourage community and economic development so that regions dependent on seasonal work can diversify their economies. I know it is easier to say than to do. However, unless we make an effort in that direction, I think we will always be faced with emergency programs, employment insurance, short term stop-gaps, but the problem will always endure. This means building on existing initiatives, supported by various agencies. We could cite many of these agencies in various parts of the country that are geared principally to help our communities and seasonal workers.

Many of my colleagues have indicated that this sometimes happens community by community and sometimes regionally in different ways. However, the aim must be to try to ensure that employees and citizens do not rely on seasonal work in one central industry that can be affected by change or situations outside of its control. We need to have alternatives and diversification.

As the Speech from the Throne has outlined, we are supporting the growth of the social economy, the social power of entrepreneurs which has done so much to help communities create jobs, improve skills development and make communities safer and more prosperous. We have to work with all our partners to find ways to help seasonal workers and industries to benefit from new opportunities created by changes in the economy.

I mentioned a number of elements in the employment insurance program that are important to workers in seasonal industries. There is the adoption of an hours-based system. This now means that all the hours of work are taken into account to determine eligibility. This change takes into account the different patterns of work and generally contributes to increase the number of weeks of benefits to which workers were eligible.

Several workers in seasonal industries, who often work many hours during a reduced number of weeks, have benefited from this. This measure has been beneficial to part-time workers, women, seasonal workers. Over 400,000 people, who were working part time or had short-term jobs, were able to receive benefits for the first time following this change.

As for seasonal workers, the length of their benefit period was extended, and their benefits are about 10% higher than those of other recipients.

I will conclude with this, and say thanks.

[Benoît Sauvageau, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, there is some bad-mouthing going on in the House about the hon. member for Portneuf. I will not tell you what I heard. All I will say is that after the next election, he will be on vacation for a long time. However, I will not say what he is doing today.

I will now remind the House of the motion before us today for this opposition day. It is important that we begin by setting out the main subject of our debate. It is as follows:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should propose, before the dissolution of the House, an employment insurance reform along the lines of the 17 recommendations contained in the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities entitled “Beyond Bill C-2: A Review of Other Proposals to Reform Employment Insurance”.

What the Bloc Quebecois is recommending today is what we have recommended many times since May 2001, and what has been recommended outright when the report was tabled in May 2001, that is an in-depth reform of the Employment Insurance Act and particularly of those parts of the act that penalize contributors to the plan.

For the benefit of the hon. member for Portneuf in particular, and also for all the people who are listening at home, I will explain how we come up with a committee report that contains 17 unanimous recommendations. First of all, the chair of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities is usually a Liberal. That committee is chaired by somebody appointed by the Prime Minister.

The vice-chair is also a Liberal, and more often than not—and it is okay, I am not being critical here—it is the minister's parliamentary secretary. This person then gives his or her colleagues the information on what will be going on. The majority of the members of the committee represent the governing party, the Liberals.

Therefore, the chair is a Liberal, one of the two vice-chairs is a Liberal and more often than not the parliamentary secretary representing the minister at the committee, and most of the members are from the Liberal Party.

The Bloc Quebecois was there, the Conservative Party was there, and also the NDP. After two or three months of discussions, evidence, research and expertise, the committee submitted a unanimous report.

For the benefit of the hon. member for Portneuf, a unanimous report means that everyone agreed on it. I should add, again for the benefit of the hon. member for Portneuf, that when a report is unanimous and when everyone agrees on it, this means that the Liberals also agreed. They signed the report, along with the other members of the committee. As regards recommendation No. 1, for example, which seeks to end discrimination toward young unemployed individuals, women and new entrants in the employment insurance program, I should point out, for the benefit of the hon. member for Portneuf, that the Liberals agreed with this recommendation. They signed the report after two or three months of work.

The minister was aware of this, because his or her parliamentary secretary was present. Therefore, cabinet was aware. Indeed, and I say this for the benefit of the hon. member for Portneuf, committees do not meet in secret. They send notices. Their meetings are even open to the public. There are committee proceedings and minutes. After hearing witnesses and after examining the issue, the committee produced a unanimous report which says in recommendation No. 1, for example, that we should end discrimination toward young people, women and new entrants in the employment insurance program.

Now, we are asking the members who signed this report if they want to vote accordingly. They are telling us no. They do not agree. They want to review the issue because it is important. They promised to do so in 2000, during the election campaign. They made recommendations in 2001 after reviewing the issue, but now they are not prepared to vote to support these recommendations.

This is what we object to. The Prime Minister talks about democratic deficit. The same Prime Minister told Canadians, in a news release dated March 18, 2004, and I quote:

This government places great importance on hearing from those lives that are directly impacted by our policies, including our seasonal workers. Our Caucus has been extremely active in making the sector's opinions known, and will continue to play an important role in further examining those views.

This was a news release signed by the Prime Minister on March 18.

Thirteen days later, this same Prime Minister voted against a motion and with him an overwhelming majority of Liberal members from Quebec, including the member for Portneuf. This motion asked that a specific status be established for seasonal workers, regardless of the EI economic area in which they live.

So we were saying that the Prime Minister had made a promise. The Liberals signed a report. Can they now officialize it? When you promise something, when you sign a report to confirm a promise or a commitment, when you go back to the people to say that you applaud such a measure but ask for a little bit more, we say you should make good on your word and put the issue to a vote in the House. Now, they tell us they are not ready to do that.

This is what we object to. Therefore I wish to tell the member for Portneuf about the existence of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development, about the existence of a unanimous report and about the fact that this report got the unanimous support of Liberal members. I believe it is important that the member for Portneuf be made aware of those facts before making any more speeches and answering our questions.

Another recommendation of this unanimous report—therefore a report which got the support of the Liberals—was to extend benefit periods in order to avoid the spring gap. This was recommendation No. 3. Since 2001, nothing has been done about the spring gap. The report also talked about implementing specific measures for older workers. Those measures were obviously less generous than the POWA program, but they were still better than the present situation. This was recommendation No. 4.

Recommendations Nos. 8 and 9 talked about the possibility of extending the program to self-employed workers. I am happy to hear that the member for Portneuf agreed with that earlier. I am also convinced that if the motion were introduced today and put to a vote, the hon. member might vote against it, even though he said he was in favour.

Recommendation 16 talks about increasing the amount of benefits by changing the calculation formula.

That is how we, including the Liberals, unanimously agreed to improve the EI benefits scheme.

Why should it be improved? That has been explained very well by my colleagues who spoke today, especially my colleagues from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques and Rimouski--Neigette-et-la-Mitis, who is our critic on this file.

Everybody recognizes that the situation is desperate, especially for seasonal workers and people living in the regions. Everybody recognizes that. However, it is not true only of people living in the regions.

We looked at the results of a study conducted by the CLC, the Canadian Labour Congress. For the benefit of my colleague for Portneuf, the first C stands for Canadian. This study was not done by the Parti Quebecois, the Société Saint-Jean-Baptiste or sovereignists. The first C stands for Canadian, I want to stress that point.

According to the CLC study, between 1993 and 2001, losses linked to the tightening up of EI eligibility standards were in the order of $3 billion a year in Quebec. If you divide that number by the 75 ridings in Quebec, the shortfall is around $40 million a year per riding.

This shortfall calculated by the CLC—and I repeat for my colleague from Portneuf that the first C stands for Canadian—represents a shortfall not only for the unemployed, but also for the regions. The unemployed do not invest their benefits in Barbados, they put that money directly back into the local economy. Surpluses generated by the EI plan on the back of the regions are put into the consolidated revenue fund, not into the regions.

My riding, Repentigny, is not in a remote area; it is in the suburbs of Montreal. People in Repentigny are not faced with the serious problem caused by the spring gap or the serious problem in the seasonal sectors, as a whole. Some of them, yes, but not across the board.

In spite of that, according to the CLC, since 1993, since the tightening up of the employment insurance scheme, the shortfall in the riding of Repentigny has been $47 million a year for eight years, or $376 million. In the riding of Repentigny, the unemployed, who unfortunately are in a special situation, have been deprived of that money over the past eight years. That has had an impact on the local economy. I remind my colleague the member for Portneuf that that is according to a study conducted by the Canadian Labour Congress.

I think I have been pretty clear about the importance of implementing decisions that have been accepted unanimously, including by the Liberals. Once again, with an election campaign looming, the Liberals are promising to look into it, to think about it, and to eventually move forward and create a committee.

I made a joking comment a while ago to my colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques. It is just a joke, I have no wish to offend any religious groups. What I said was that God created the world in six days. Before the seventh day, He created a committee, and it took another three billion years before Man and Woman appeared. When the Liberals promise us a committee, I really wonder when we will see a response to this question, particularly since that committee will be made up of nothing but Liberals. I hope they will be signing a unanimous report.

For the benefit of my colleague for Portneuf, if the committee is comprised solely of Liberals, and if they all sign the report, then it will be really unanimous. If that report is then voted on here in the House, and they vote against it, then there will really be some problems. I just wanted to point out to him that there will be no separatists on such a committee.

Today, with an election looming, why the concern about these promises?

There is concern because during the last election campaign, two minor players, among others, formally promised workers they would reform the Employment Insurance Act. I will name only two members, former minister Alfonso Gagliano, who was more concerned about the sponsorships and all that, but who nonetheless could occasionally talk about other things, and our colleague from Bourassa. Again, if my colleague from Bourassa says he did not say that then he needs to inform the House.

This promise had been made on the North Shore and in the Gaspé in the weeks leading up to the election. Now that we think the election might be called tomorrow, there is no talk of the promises that were made this week. Talk is about the promises made before the last election, in 2000, that still have not been kept.

The federal government has never come through on this promise except to pass a bill that was tabled before the dissolution of the House. In fact, it was this bill that made construction workers so angry in that it did not address the main flaws in the program.

Consequently, this is the aspect on which the Bloc Quebecois humbly proposes that the Liberals honour their signatures on a report in which there were 17 recommendations aimed at correcting a distressing situation for workers, for women and youth, and for older workers who lose their jobs.

Thus, we ask the Liberals who made a commitment to the POWA program, who made a commitment to independent workers, who signed, who promised and who said that they were going to reform employment insurance, to keep their word, quite simply. We offer them an opportunity to honour their signatures and, in turn, we will accept only the recommendations they made.

In conclusion, I have a little anecdote about the people who, at the time, were called Alliancers or Reformists, or something like that. Nevertheless, the former Alliance members, the new Conservatives, quoted verbatim the Liberal's 1993 red book about the ethics counsellor. They copied from the Liberal Party's 1993 red book, in quotation marks, a text that went something like this, “We promise to appoint an independent ethics counsellor in the House of Commons,” or something like that. I do not know the 1993 red book by heart—it was not my bedtime reading—but I remember that this promise was in the red book. Consequently, the people who are now the Conservatives took verbatim what was in the red book and submitted it to the House.

For the benefit of the hon. member for Portneuf, the red book was written by Liberals, nothing but Liberals. It was not even a unanimous committee that wrote it; it was only Liberals. Are you surprised, Mr. Speaker, to learn that the Liberals voted it down?

In terms of democratic deficit and lack of respect of the public for politicians, the very best example is to take a promise out of the red book, put it forward to Liberal members and watch them vote against their own commitments.

Today, however, after listening to my colleagues from the Bloc Quebecois, I can say that this is the same kind of situation where we tell the Liberals, “You made commitments. You took some concrete action. What we are asking now is that you deliver on your promises. Vote on this motion. Let us make it votable”.

That having been said, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to make this motion put forward by the Bloc Quebecois today votable.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to the previous speaker both with interest and in amazement. Let me start by the end.

How can someone say that we do not have time? We were elected three and a half years ago and the mandate of the government runs until the fall of 2005. If the government really wanted to change the EI plan, it could very well introduce a bill in the next few days and you could be sure that the Bloc would give its full cooperation to get the changes made. In fact, the report was tabled three years ago.

I would like to give some clarification to the hon. member because he does not seem to understand. There was a vote on Bill C-2. The report was tabled after Bill C-2 and included a recommendation approved by everybody, including the Liberal members, namely the member for Gaspé, a member from Laval, and the member for Madawaska—Restigouche, who said that Bill C-2 did not go far enough and that there were 17 other changes to make to the plan. Apparently, these were important changes. But the government did not follow through on the recommendations.

During those three years, the federal government accumulated a surplus of $11 billion in employment insurance premiums. It collected $11 billion more than it paid out in benefits. Could it not have taken half that money and given it to improve the situation of women, to eliminate discrimination between men and women and young people so that the same eligibility rules would apply to everyone? Could it not have set up a program to help older workers? Could it not have improved the situation of seasonal workers? No. It preferred to squirrel away the $11 billion taken out of the pockets of some of society's most disadvantaged.

Should, finally, our colleague not realize that what we have on the table are unanimous recommendations? These recommendations were made three years ago and the government has not followed up.

Why not wait until the Employment Insurance Act is voted on before holding an election? I think that would be the best move this House could make in order to restore some balance, distributing wealth, rather than sharing poverty as has been the case. In a period of very rapid economic growth, the gap between rich and poor has grown as well, which is absolutely unacceptable.

How can the member defend this position, which stands in opposition to that of his own Liberal colleagues who were members of the committee?

[Claude Duplain, Liberal, Portneuf, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be speaking this afternoon. Given that what we say is often misinterpreted here, let me say at the outset that I will be speaking about the report entitled “Beyond Bill C-2.”This is not to say that everything has been done and that there is no more to do. I would be the first to say that a lot remains to be done and it so happens that we are presently at work on a number of issues in this regard.

I am nevertheless pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the issue of employment insurance, specially with regard to the report entitled “Beyond Bill C-2.”

I will read some brief notes to make sure people are properly informed. It must be said in fact that information given or discussed here is sometimes so skewed, so misinterpreted, that people may be somewhat baffled as to what is going on here.

This government greatly appreciates the work of the Standing committee on Human resource developmentand has examined carefully the recommendations contained in the committee's report. We have always been willing to change to meet the need, as we have shown time and time again with regard to employment insurance.

However, at the outset, I think it is important to mention that the employment insurance program is working for a majority of Canadians. It is there for people who need it and it will remain in place, as it has for 60 years.

Employment insurance is a reliable program that is meeting the needs of Canadians. In times of economic uncertainty, workers can count on employment insurance to help them re-enter the labour force.

It is also a flexible program. Of course, certain regions and certain groups of workers—those we have been talking about these past few weeks—such as seasonal workers, can have to face special challenges on the labour market, which is not always easy. The establishment of employment insurance economic regions ensures that the employment insurance program takes into account the high unemployment levels in some parts of the country, so that all workers have equal access to the program.

The present government has pursued a flexible approach to adjust the employment insurance economic regions in such a way that the workers living in parts of the country where work is mainly seasonal can continue to collect employment insurance benefits.

Let me give a few examples. Workers in the Lower St. Lawrence and North Shore area of Quebec need 70 hours less than do workers in areas with low unemployment to qualify for EI benefits.

The plan has been designed to adjust quickly and automatically to changes in the labour market. The variable entrance requirement is reviewed every four weeks on the basis of the latest unemployment statistics. In other words, if unemployment goes up in any area, the requirements are automatically adjusted to permit easier access to the program. Therefore, people in areas with higher unemployment need fewer hours of work to be entitled to benefits over an extended period of time.

Access to EI is easy. The Monitoring and Assessment Report indicates that 88% of Canadians who are salaried employees could eventually be eligible if they lost their job.

Moreover, the switch in 1996 to an hour-based system and first dollar coverage means that each hour of work is included in the EI coverage. This change has meant easier access to the plan for seasonal workers, part-time workers and those with multiple jobs.

The employment insurance is a system that is in constant evolution. When we adopted the EI reform in 1996, we made a commitment to control and evaluate the system. We have kept our word. We were and still are committed to ensuring that EI continues to serve the needs of all Canadians. Whenever changes were justified, we have made them.

Since the EI reform, we have made various adjustments, including the improved parental benefits and the integration of the small weeks provision which is now permanently included in the employment insurance system and applied nationwide.

There is also the abolition of the intensity rule, the change to the payback provisions, changes to the rule on undeclared earnings, the introduction this year of a new six-week compassionate benefit for eligible workers who will be looking after a seriously ill parent, child or spouse.

Many of these adjustments were brought specifically in response to the needs of seasonal workers, part-time workers and multiple job holders.

The passage of Bill C-2 illustrates the adaptability of the EI program. This bill speaks to the day to day realities of Canadians.

For example, the intensity rule was designed to discourage the use of employment insurance from one year to the next. We realize that this rule was ineffective and, frankly, punitive; so we abolished it. Seasonal workers were often among these recipients that the intensity rule was affecting. Over 900,000 Canadians received retroactive payments following the abolition of this rule.

We also changed the rule relating to people returning to the workforce. Recipients who leave the workforce and re-enter it are often parents who must balance professional and family responsibilities. Before Bill C-2, these people were considered as new entrants in the workforce, which meant that they had to accumulate more insurable hours of work before being eligible for benefits. Now, parents are eligible for regular benefits, as other workers, when they re-enter the workforce after an extended absence during which they were raising their children.

On the most important measures that the government has taken since the EI reform to respond to the concerns of seasonal workers is the small weeks initiative.

Since it came into effect, this initiative has made the workforce more effective by encouraging Canadians to accept part-time and temporary work, which has helped to make up for short-term manpower shortages that employers had to deal with, particularly in the seasonal employment sector.

The short week provision also helps part-time and seasonal workers to retain their connections with the job market. Our evaluation shows that claimants worked an average of two extra weeks. Across Canada, more than 185,000 Canadians benefited from the short week provision.

We have improved the short week characteristics to better harmonize them with the realities of job market. A combination of regular weeks and short weeks might reduce the rate of benefits the next time a claim is made. By increasing the short week threshold from $150 to $225, we provide workers with greater flexibility to accept short weeks without a reduction in their future benefits rate.

These measures taken by the government clearly show that we intend to adjust employment insurance to the reality of the job market. We will continue to make the necessary changes.

That said, while it is important to understand the unique challenges faced by seasonal workers, it is equally critical to recognize that employment insurance is only a part of the solution. Canadians told us that they do not want to claim employment insurance benefits. They want to have jobs. The answer to that is to develop community capabilities and to strengthen local economies, in order to offer sustainable employment opportunities.

Our goal is to encourage Canadians to work and help them rejoin the workforce. True income security starts with a job. We established local committees in Quebec and in New Brunswick to consider ways to help workers affected in those regions. With our partners, we are pursuing several approaches to address the issues concerning seasonal workers, based on the recommendations made by local committees.

The employment insurance program is effective and is there to help workers in need. We continue to implement control and evaluation measures of the program to make sure that it continues to answer the needs of Canadians.

In conclusion, I will say that committees who travelled across Canada are still doing a lot of work to make a recommendation to bring new faces and to give an up-to-date picture of what is happening in the regions of Quebec and in all of Canada. We must bring about changes to make the situation even better.

Some opposition members say that we are delaying calling an election while others say that we want to call the elections too fast. I for one think that now is the time to help those in need in the regions of Quebec. They are expecting specific measures. I do want these measures to be taken.

We could do as the Bloc is asking and do an in-depth study of EI. We will not have time for that. The fact is that the changes must be made by regulation and we will not have time to make extensive changes. Things are being done however. We can act now while at the time taking a closer look at what could be done.

[Stan Keyes, Liberal, Minister of National Revenue and Minister of State (Sport)]

Mr. Speaker, I cannot help but want to comment just one more time on the hon. member's dissertation following my question and his resolve that it is just up to the House of Commons committee to make a decision to pursue what it is the government has concerns about.

That is the way democracy works. The hon. member for the Bloc knows full well that there is a process by which we do things around here. He asked to be at the committee. It was the human resources and skills development committee. A committee is the master of its own destiny. He brings that idea forward to committee. Then the committee makes a decision on its priorities on the issues that it wants to deal with as a committee. It has nothing to do with this House or votes or the government's moving in on a committee.

The first thing the member would do if the government or the House of Commons started intruding on the business of independent committees would be to get on his feet in a second and say, “How dare they intrude on the business of the committee. The committee is the master of its own destiny and we shall choose whether or not we discuss this issue or that issue at committee”. The hon. member has to be completely open and honest with the House and his constituents back home.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to join in on the debate on the member's motion to review further proposals to reform employment insurance.

I would like to begin by saying that the government is committed to ensuring that EI is there for Canadians. It is our commitment to make changes to the EI program when the need for change is clearly demonstrated.

Ever since the new employment insurance program was introduced back in 1996, the government has shown a willingness to listen to Canadians. We have made adjustments to the system based on sound evidence in order to ensure that EI is there for Canadians when they need it and that the program continues to be responsive to changing circumstances in the labour market.

Moreover, the record shows that we are working diligently to make sure the EI system is responsive to the needs of all Canadians, including those living in Quebec.

When the government brought in a new employment insurance system in 1996, we were determined to ensure the long term viability of Canada's employment insurance system. We also committed to monitoring and assessing the program to see how individuals and communities were adjusting. Where evidence has shown that adjustments are needed, changes have been made. These objectives have guided our approach to EI reform in the past and they will continue to guide us today.

By most accounts, this approach to EI is serving Canadians well. Today we have a program that is financially stable. Premiums have declined from their historic high levels of $3.07 in 1994 to a low of $1.98 this year. An estimated 88% of Canadian workers would be potentially eligible for EI if they lost their jobs today.

We also have a program that is evolving to respond to changing needs. The government recognizes that some regions and groups of workers, such as workers in certain seasonal industries, can face particular challenges as they seek to adapt to changing labour market realities and the new economy.

The EI system is responding to special circumstances like these in appropriate ways. Indeed, a look at the records shows how the government has already made program changes to reflect the changing needs of Canadians since 1996, including the needs of seasonal workers.

Bill C-2 that was passed by the House in 2001 is a good example. It included a number of significant changes that are relevant to today's debate. There is the elimination of the intensity rule so that frequent claimants would not be penalized; a better targeting of the clawback to ensure that first time claimants, claimants collecting special benefits, and claimants in lower and middle income families would no longer have to repay their benefits; an adjustment to ensure parents re-entering the labour market could qualify for benefits on the same basis as other workers.

Since Bill C-2 was passed, the government has also improved the EI system in other ways, such as through changes to the small weeks provisions. Originally introduced as a pilot program in 1998, the small weeks provisions are designed to help seasonal and part time workers maintain their attachment to the labour force and therefore their eligibility for EI by encouraging them to accept work with lower earnings without reducing potential EI benefits.

Now a permanent part of EI, the small weeks provisions have allowed over 185,000 individuals to earn both higher incomes while working and an average of $12 more in weekly EI benefits than would have been otherwise done.

Another good example relates to the economic regions set up under the EI program in the year 2000 to take into account the higher unemployment rates that exist in some parts of our great country. We know that some workers in some areas, particularly seasonal workers, need more time to adjust to the changes made in 2000 and we have shown flexibility in our response to regional concerns.

For example, in the Bas-St-Laurent-Côte Nord region in Quebec and the Madawaska-Charlotte region in western New Brunswick, a special transitional period has been put in place. This means claimants in these regions require fewer hours to qualify for EI benefits and can receive benefits for a longer period than they would have without the transitional period.

In addition, we have changed the way that undeclared earnings are calculated to make it easier for employers and fairer for claimants. Apprentices are now only required to serve one two-week waiting period during the duration of their training. Quality of service continues to be the focus of significant ongoing work and we have taken concrete steps to prevent and respond to fraud and abuse.

The government is continuing to work with local committees in the regions and others to monitor the situation. It is prepared to make other changes where evidence indicates that it is appropriate.

To sum up, a careful look at the government's record on EI illustrates that the government is listening and is willing to make changes that are in the best interests of Canadians and the long term sustainability of the EI program.

One of the strengths of our EI system is its adaptability. It means that we can adapt to the evolving needs of Canada's workers and changing labour market conditions, but it does not mean accepting every change that is proposed.

The government is clearly committed to ensuring EI remains financially viable for the long term. It is equally committed to ensuring that the system is responsive to legitimate needs that do arise.

The record shows we have done the right thing in the past with EI. I know that we will continue to do the right thing in the future.

[Mario Laframboise, Bloc, Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is obviously a pleasure for me to speak on this Bloc Quebecois motion which reads—and I shall take the time to read it so that everyone in Quebec and everyone in Canada listening to us, even the Liberal members and members of the other parties in this House, understands the meaning of the words:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should propose, before the dissolution of the House, an employment insurance reform along the lines of the 17 recommendations contained in the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities entitled “Beyond Bill C-2: A Review of Other Proposals to Reform Employment Insurance”.

I took the trouble to read the motion aloud because many of the Liberal members in this House, and others, have made speeches that tried to make us believe—especially those from the government side—that this good government is making or has made all necessary efforts to find a solution to the problems of people who have trouble collecting employment insurance benefits, particularly seasonal and other workers.

This is quite difficult. Once again, we are having this debate just before an election. It was right after the election in 2000 that a committee studied the whole issue, and it reported in May 2001. In 2000, all those elected and all the candidates of all parties—especially the Liberal Party—who travelled throughout Canada could obviously feel how disgruntled Canadians were with the employment insurance plan.

People were very unhappy because since 1996, when the then finance minister and present Prime Minister decided to change the plan, the federal government has not put any money into the EI fund. Only employers and workers are contributing. This should be an independent fund.

All those who contribute think that, if they are the ones who pay, they should manage the plan. But with the EI plan, it is just the opposite. Employee contributions are deducted from the paycheque, and employers also make their contribution at the same time. The federal government does not put in any money, but it is managing the fund and, to make things even worse, it takes the surplus, puts it in the consolidated revenue fund and uses that money.

During the 2000 electoral campaign, the Bloc Quebecois candidates across Quebec decided to fight a merciless war against the Liberal Party and said “Look at the astronomical surplus that you have built up with the EI fund. You have not given the money back to the workers who needed it, especially the seasonal workers, and to the self-employed workers”. There was an important debate on that issue.

The public then realized that the figures given have never been challenged. Since 1996, the government helped itself to $42.5 billion from the EI fund surplus. The government took $42.5 billion from the money that the employees and the employers had paid into that fund.

Many terms have been used to describe what the government did. Many come to mind, but there is only one reality. This is why the Liberals insisted, after the 2000 election, that the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities study this issue, and it produced a unanimous report.

I am amazed today—because I was only elected in 2000—to see members of the Liberal Party give speeches in this House and tell us, “You know that the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities was one report among many”.

Members of the Bloc Quebecois who are chosen to sit on a committee are experts; they are the best. Theoretically, if I use the same reasoning, the Liberal Party should have sent to this Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities its best people, the men and women who are the most able to find a solution.

All of us, in the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberal Party, the Conservative Party, the Alliance, the NDP, everyone made 17 unanimous recommendations. Once again, three years later, we are debating these recommendations, which should have been approved immediately after May 2001. We should not be discussing this today in the House. Why? Simply because the Liberal Party, which accumulates billions and billions of dollars, is not in a rush to deliver the goods or to increase its expenditures in the employment insurance program.

People are again upset across Canada and across Quebec. Everyone is upset. It is not the employee's fault if he works in a seasonal industry. There are many in my riding of Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel. Tourism, agriculture and forestry are all industries that, because of the weather, have many seasonal jobs.

If, tomorrow morning, it was decided that there would no longer be any seasonal work, imagine the impact on the economy of the regions of Canada and Quebec. This is more or less the message that the Liberals have been sending over the past three years. That message is “If some are not happy, then they should change jobs”. Quebeckers are proud people. They want to continue to work in their regions. We would like to be able to occupy the whole territory and to continue to have regions that develop and that are economically strong. This is why employers and employees have an employment insurance fund, pay premiums and expect to be able to negotiate the content.

The hon. members who sat on the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities made those 17 recommendations after hearing all the stakeholders, including employers and employees from all types of industries.

The reason the Bloc Quebecois is tabling this motion today is because these 17 recommendations were not accepted by the Liberal government.

What we find difficult and hard in the Liberal discourse is to be told “We will make proposals”. First, it will not be those 17 recommendations. Everyone realizes that. It is clear to those who have been listening to us today that the Liberal government will not propose these 17 recommendations. Otherwise, what would the Liberals have done? We asked that our motion be a votable item. Therefore, they would have voted and they would have supported our motion today. But this is not what they have decided to do.

There will be some changes before the election. We will be happy to see some things done. But we want the EI problem fixed. We in the Bloc Quebecois are here, in this House, to fix problems, not to fix them partially or put the whole thing off.

The government is getting richer and in the meantime it is dragging its feet and putting it off for another two or three years once again. The government keeps on getting richer on the backs of workers and the unemployed. Once again, it is going to try to drag things out because, in the meantime, it can use the money for something else. We have heard all kinds of comments in the House today. Some Liberal members told us “We put that money into health care”.

But that is not what workers wanted when they allowed part of their paycheque to go to the EI fund. It does not say “medicare premium”, or “pharmacare premium”. It says “EI premium”. That is the reality. That is why workers pay into the fund. Employers pay the premium to get a service they do not get.

The reality behind the Canadian Labour Congress figures is that, since the Liberals came to power, fewer people have been getting benefits and their overall income has been dropping. In 1993, 57% of people without a job received EI premiums. In 2001, it was only 39%.

So, since 1993, 22% fewer men and women have been eligible for EI. Moreover, for women the change is even more significant as the percentage has dropped to only 33%. The average is 39% and only 33% of women receive EI benefits.

The government tried to give us all kinds of explanations, telling us that when the Canadian Labour Congress carried out its study, it calculated that among the unemployed, there were some who did not contribute. One of the recommendations is to allow self-employed workers to pay into the EI fund and be able to receive benefits since they are contributing and paying taxes in Quebec and Canada. They would like to contribute to the EI fund also.

The Liberal government is opposed to that, once again, because those additional expenses would lower the $42.5 billion surplus it has been accumulating in the fund over the years. Sadly, the scheme we have currently has created gaps in various regions, especially in the spring.

That means that for seasonal workers, families go for 8 to 12 weeks without any revenue according to where they live.

Some will say that each province has its income security scheme. However, that is not real income security because when someone applies to the income security program, there are further delays. Households can be another month and a half without any money coming in.

That does not bother Liberal members in this House. That is the problem. We are creating poverty, when the Chrétien government had declared in 2000 that it would reduce child poverty. What is being created right now are families in need. The government is creating poverty by leaving families without any revenue for 8 to 12 weeks.

Creating poverty in Quebec will never be acceptable to a Bloc member, be it the member for Laurentides, the member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques or myself. All Bloc members will fight to the end to avoid the creation of pockets of poverty in Quebec and in Canada, and we are proud to do so.

Bloc members do not fight only for Quebeckers. We also fight for Canadians who pay their EI premiums and do not receive what they are entitled to in return but are caught in the gaps if they work in seasonal sectors like tourism, resorts, forestry or agriculture. It is the same thing for self-employed workers, whose number is always increasing.

That is what Canadians and Quebeckers expect from us when we come to this place to represent them. They want us to work on changing the legislation, and that is what the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development did in 2001. All political parties adopted a unanimous report. I repeat that I personally consider that the most competent of Bloc members on the issue sat at the committee and I assume that all parties sent their best people.

They came up with 17 unanimous and very important recommendations, the precise purpose of which was to use funding to establish a little more social justice in Quebec and in Canada. As I said, since 1996, since the Prime Minister, then Finance Minister, cut off the federal share, this program has been financed solely by employers and workers. Not one cent comes from the federal government any more.

The only problem for workers and for the unemployed is that the government is administering the fund as if it were the owner. It has helped itself to the contents and spent them on other things than solving the problems of the unemployed.

What the committee wanted to do with its 17 recommendations was to improve a harsh reality. That is also what the Bloc Quebecois wants to do, and the reason behind our motion today. We do not want piece-meal reform. That is true. What we want, before the election, is to solve, for once and for all, the problems raised by the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development.

We cannot be accused of partisan politics because, once the problem is solved, the Liberals will be able to go about claiming that they are the ones who did it. That is what they will do: claim they have partially solved the problem. The Liberal members have already started saying that not everyone will be satisfied, that this is not what people want, that the government cannot afford it, while it is squirrelling away billions of dollars in surplus funds.

Next year's surplus is estimated at $5 billion. We are already estimating for next year, because an $8 billion surplus was accumulated this past year. Once again, close to one-third of the federal government's surplus comes from the employment insurance fund. It is a kind of tax in disguise taken from the paycheques of workers, and from the revenues of their employers, in the form of EI contributions, but not returned to the men and women who need it so badly.

It is interesting to see what this EI fund surplus can represent on an annual basis per riding. In my riding of Argenteuil—Papineau—Mirabel, it represents $35.7 million annually.

It is a riding with about 100,000 inhabitants. For the riding as a whole, the unemployment rate is about 9.5%, but in certain areas, certain regional municipalities, it is over 10 or 12%. That means $35.7 million, after all.

For my colleague in Laurentides, it is $62.5 million that is not being returned to the working people each year. Imagine if each riding had an independent fund that managed this money for the well-being of the workers. Imagine what could be done, what kind of a system the workers could have, if they could manage that.

For the riding of Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, the amount is $48.2 million. That is the riding of my wise colleague taking the lead on this matter today, who has worked hard and prepared our arguments. In the Lower St. Lawrence region, there is not the kind of wealth found in downtown Toronto. The same is true of my riding. In the Laurentians, it is the same thing. We have a lot of seasonal workers in fisheries, agriculture, forestry and tourism.

Obviously, that is the picture for every area outside urban Quebec and urban Canada. That is what regional Quebec and Canada look like. That is most of the ridings in this House. The members here are affected by this reform.

Today, I was blown away to see the Liberals get up and ask us to agree that they are not insensitive. They are not insensitive; they are simply confident that they can take the money in the fund and do other things with it than what the people have paid for. It is as simple as that. They are not insensitive; they are profiteers. I would go that far. There are other words that cannot be used because they are unparliamentary. We will admit that you profit from the system; you profit from the workers and from the EI premiums deducted from their pay.

As I said earlier, I was blown away by remarks to the effect that the surplus was used to invest in health care. In theory, when this money is taken off the pay cheque, it is under employment insurance premiums. It should go to EI. Only the federal government can help itself like that. As individuals, we cannot collect money and not report it at the end of the year in our income tax return. We cannot establish funds in which to put this money and use it for purposes other than those for which it was collected. Only the federal government can do that.

I could take one riding after another. There are losses in every riding in Quebec. There is a deficit, a financial deficit, resulting in workers not getting full benefits when they are in need after losing their jobs. For seasonal workers, this gap usually occurs in the spring and lasts from 8 to 12 weeks, depending on the region. During this gap, their families have no income, and they are forced onto the provinces' income security systems. That is terrible, of course.

There are self-employed workers, women who have decided to work from home, who created their own business in order to be able to take care of their children, who are unable to contribute. Even if they were willing, the government does not want them to contribute to the employment insurance fund. In fact, they do not want any more claimants. Currently, the system is so profitable they do not want to expand it. They are afraid of losing their cash cow. The Liberal position is as simple as that.

They take money from the fuel tax, but do not reinvest it in the highways. They invest only 25% in the highways. They take this fuel money and put it back in health. In the meantime, they create other infrastructure programs, but they do not want to use the fuel tax revenues because they have already said this tax would not be used for the highways and was allocated for something else.

From one mistake to another, we ended up taking $40.5 billion out of the workers' pockets. As I said, the federal government, since 1996, since this Prime Minister, when he was finance minister, decided that the federal government was no longer contributing to the EI fund, all workers and employers have been paying higher premiums. In the last ten years or so, $42.5 billion have been paid in excess to the federal government. This is the harsh reality we, as members of the Bloc Quebecois, have to live with.

The members on the Standing Committee on Human Resource Development were not only from the Bloc Quebecois. Most of the committee members were Liberals. In fact, for those who would not know, all committees of the House of Commons are controlled by a majority of government members. That is the way things are and we do not have anything against it.

Except that, in this case, even the Liberals who were in a majority voted unanimously with the opposition parties in favour of adopting those 17 recommendations; and today they refuse to adopt them. They will not dare tell us it is because they lack the funds. Forget that. It is not that there is not enough money. That fund generates a $2 to $3 billion surplus each year. So the reason is not a lack of money.

The reason is they simply put that money to other uses. That is what they should tell us right now. They should tell workers: “Yes, we are punishing you, we are not giving you the benefits you deserve; yes there are families without income for eight to twelve weeks because we have decided to use the money for other purposes”. That is the harsh reality. They should also tell the independent workers: “You will pay income tax at the end of the year but you will not be eligible to employment insurance benefits. If you lose your job, you will not have access to that income because we refuse to give you the money. We have other things to do with it”.

That is what most of the Liberal members should have done today. They did not. They will deny that fact of course, because the election is fast approaching.

I will repeat why the committee met in May 2001 to prepare its report. After the 2000 election, cries were heard from people in the regions all over Quebec and the rest of Canada; they wanted the government to stop taking money from workers because it did not fix the problems experienced by families when the wage earners lost their jobs. So this committee was created. Great things were expected from this committee.

I remember the pressure that was put on the committee. We produced a unanimous report, and the pressure fell on the Liberals who formed the majority and who adopted the report unanimously. However, today, some Liberals are opposed to this motion. Furthermore, when the motion was presented in the House, some Liberal members of the committee voted against it even if they had adopted and signed the report. Of course, these members will have to live with their conscience. It is as simple as that.

It has been a pleasure for me to take part in this debate. I hope that we will have succeeded in moving things forward, and, above all, in convincing Quebeckers that one must never stop applying pressure. Of course, the best way to do it is to vote for the Bloc Quebecois in the next election.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

As my Bloc Quebecois colleague is pointing out, they also controlled the rate. But that happened later on. I do not think it was in that bill then. But they did take control of the rate and the amount a long time ago.

In 2001, we had Bill C-2. I kept telling the Liberals more amendments should be introduced so that Bill C-2 would go even further.

I remind the House that members--who should remain nameless--had made promises throughout Quebec during the election campaign They kept saying that more changes were coming. In the House of Commons, these same members said, “Do not move any more amendments. We need Bill C-2. People are struggling, and they need this piece of legislation. Bill C-2 should be passed right away.”

We went along and passed Bill C-2. I have always said in the House of Commons that I would support any bill that brings something positive for workers. I have kept my word until now, and I intend to do the same in the future.

Yet, at the same time, the Liberals promised to strike an all-party parliamentary committee to make recommendations to the government. Its unanimous report was entitled “Beyond Bill C-2”, and it contained 17 recommendations that had the support of all political parties.

Since no election was in the offing, the Liberal government forgot to make these changes. It just forgot. It ignored our recommendations.

Time goes on and people are still struggling. In southeastern New Brunswick, 1,500 people are under investigation and could be accused of “banking hours”, as it is called.

Well, it was a Liberal riding so a solution had to be found the solution. I would like to say to the people listening in from southeastern New Brunswick that the solution offered by the minister cannot be found in writing. With regard to the promise he made to you, I would be somewhat apprehensive if I were you, because you just might get a bill in the mail after the election.

I can say that we saw the same problem in my riding. There were 11 people in the same situation. Those eleven got caught with extra hours. However, it would seem that people have reached an agreement in Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, whereby they are released from their payback obligation, given that the employer will be made to pay. The government, on the other hand, is not sure that the employer will pay.

I am asking the government to state in writing whether employees will be made to pay or not. I can tell you that I asked twice in the House of Commons if people in the southeast of the province would be treated the same way as those in the northeast. The answer was yes.

Yet I can tell the House that this week Michel Guérette, a worker in my riding, got a bill from Human Resources Canada indicating that he owes $4,823 because he banked hours. This is the case that was taken to the Bathurst office, and do you know what the response was? In Beauséjour—Petitcodiac 1,500 people broke the law, and this affects the entire community. In Acadie—Bathurst, there are only 11, and they are spread around a number of different places, which is why they are being made to pay, and the others are not.

The message from the Government of Canada is this: “If you want to break the law, then do so along with 1,500 or 2,000 other people and you will get away with it”. Is that what the government is telling people? I find it deplorable that the minister has stood up in this place twice to state that any Canadian anywhere in this country would be treated the same way in a case like this, and yet today people are getting billed. They are panicking because they do not have the money to pay those bills.

The government recognizes the problem of banking hours. What we will see in the weeks to come is that the government will say that maybe it will take the 14 best weeks so as to try to get rid of the problem it has created in southeastern New Brunswick.

In the meantime, families are hurting. In 2001, even in the southeastern part of the province, in the area of Richibucto or Kent, hundreds and hundreds of people had to pay fines because of the same problem. The government refused to address the problem at the time and still refuses to retroactively reimburse these people for the fines they had to pay.

We now have before the House 17 recommendations. The federal government made two changes in 2000 dealing with EI and a couple of changes to do with parental benefits between 2000 and 2004. Because of the upcoming election, the federal government now wants to buy votes, so it has announced two additional changes. At that pace, it will take 32 years and 8 elections to reform the employment insurance plan.

A few weeks ago, I went to a place near Forestville, in Quebec, where people took to the streets to protest. For the benefit of the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, it was not the CLC, but rather workers, businesspeople and even the priest who were protesting, asking the federal government to stop stealing money from the workers. This is no longer a political issue, it is a human issue. People are hurting.

The rest of Canada needs to understand that the people who work in the forest or lumber industry are seasonal workers. Consumers are quite happy to buy fish and 2x4s. What we are saying is that we will stay in our region. We have no intention of moving to central Canada. We have no intention of moving to Calgary with the Conservatives who, every time they rise in this House, try to reduce EI premiums and put more money back into the pockets of the employers, but not the workers. They should be ashamed.

Hopefully the election will take place soon and Canadians will remember what the Liberals did. They drove families out of the regions. I get calls to my office from women who tell me they want to commit suicide. You should know that the suicide rate in the Acadian peninsula has gone up as a result of the changes to employment insurance. You should know also that when it was in the opposition, that party, through Doug Young and Jean Chrétien, said that we had to deal with the economy. In this respect, if you do not want people to be on EI, create an economy that works. Put people back to work instead of forcing them to leave the rural regions to go to major centres. That is what should be done.

I want to express my gratitude for the fact that this motion was moved here in the House of Commons, allowing us to stand up for workers. The CLC has done a good job. The FTQ has done a good job in this respect, and so has the CSN.The trade unions have represented workers while the federal government has stolen their money. That is regrettable.

[Yolande Thibeault, Liberal, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to take part in the debate on the member's motion and further examine proposals to reform the EI plan. I would like to start by saying that this government's commitment to making sure that EI helps Canadians cannot be doubted. Neither can our determination to change the EI plan when there is a clearly proven need to do so.

Since the new EI plan was put in place in 1996, the government has shown that it was willing to listen to Canadians. We made adjustments to the plan, in the light of established facts, to make sure it meets the needs of our fellow citizens and keeps on adjusting to the changing circumstances of the labour market.

A quick look at our record will clearly illustrate what I am saying. You will see that we are working hard to make sure the plan meets the needs of all Canadians, including those who live in Quebec. When the government introduced a new EI plan in 1996, it was with a view to ensuring the long-term sustainability of the EI plan in Canada.

Also, we committed to tracking and assessing the performance of the plan to see how people and communities would react to it. When the need for adjustments is obvious, the necessary changes are made. Those goals guided our approach to reforming the EI plan in the past, and they continue to guide us today.

Most people agree that this approach to EI meets the needs of Canadians. Today the plan is financially stable. Premiums went from an historical high of $3.07 in 1994 to a much lower rate of $.98 this year. Currently it is estimated that 88% of Canadian workers would be eligible to EI were they to lose their job. I will add that the plan evolves to meet changing needs.

The government recognizes that certain regions and certain groups of workers, including those in some seasonal industries, may have to meet specific challenges to try to adapt to the changing realities of the labour market and the new economy. The EI plan adequately accounts for these exceptional situations.

Our track record is clear: since 1996, the government has already made changes to accommodate the changing needs of Canadians, including seasonal workers. Bill C-2, enacted by the House of Commons in 2001, is a good example of that.

It included a number of significant changes with regard to today's debate. We eliminated the intensity rule to avoid penalizing frequent users. We targeted the clawback clause so that it would not apply to first time claimants, those who receive special benefits and low and middle-income claimants. We made adjustment to ensure that parents re-entering the labour market enjoy the same eligibility to benefits as other workers.

Since Bill C-2 was passed, the government has enhanced the EI plan by amending the small weeks regulations. First implemented as a pilot project in 1998, the small weeks regulations were aimed at helping seasonal and part-time workers retain their connections with the job market and hence their eligibility for EI benefits, by encouraging them to work for less and ensuring that those small weeks have no impact on their eventual EI benefits.

Thanks to the small weeks provision, which is now an integral part of the employment insurance plan, over 185,000 people were able to earn more money and enjoy a $12 increase in their weekly EI benefits.

Let me give you another striking example. In 2000, EI economic regions came into effect in order to take into account the high unemployment rates in some regions of the country. As we know, some workers in some regions, especially seasonal workers, need more time to adjust to the changes made in 2000, and we showed some flexibility in addressing their concerns.

For instance, the government has set up a special transition period for the Lower St. Lawrence/North Shore region as well as the Madawaska-Charlotte region in western New-Brunswick. The claimants in these regions need fewer work hours to become eligible for EI benefits and they receive benefits for a longer period of time than they would have without a transition period.

We have also changed the way undeclared earnings are calculated to make life easier for the employers and treat workers more fairly. The apprenticeship trainees are now subject to only one two-week waiting period during their training program. Quality service continues to be one of our main goals and we have taken steps to prevent and fight abuses.

In cooperation with local committees, the government will continue to monitor the situation in these economic regions and elsewhere, and is also willing to make additional changes if need be.

In a nutshell, if we take a close look at this government's record on employment insurance, we can see that it understands the need to listen and to make changes in the best interests of Canadians and of the long-term sustainability of the employment insurance system. Flexibility is one of the strengths of our system. This means that we can adapt to changes in the needs of Canadian workers and in the labour market situation. Still, not all changes are acceptable.

The government is clearly committed to ensure that the employment insurance system remains financially sustainable in the long term, and has also promised to make sure that it meets legitimate needs that might arise. All appropriate measures were taken in the past, and I know that we will do the same in the future.

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette-Et-La Mitis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to speak today in the debate on the motion by my colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, which reads as follows:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should propose, before the dissolution of the House, an employment insurance reform along the lines of the 17 recommendations contained in the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities entitled “Beyond Bill C-2: A Review of Other Proposals to Reform Employment Insurance”.

I would like to take a few seconds to sort out some figures. I hope that the parliamentary secretary is listening carefully. It is rather strange to see the government strutting out a meaningless figure.

When people lose their job, the first thing they do is to check whether they might qualify for EI benefits. They are told that they have accumulated enough hours and that they qualify. This is the famous 80% or so of workers that the government is talking about.

When we talk about the 40% or so of workers who lose their job and who receive EI benefits, we are telling the truth also. It is the same reality that they are talking about.

In fact, a young worker, for example, cannot qualify if he is let go after having worked 800 hours at a first job. He would have needed 910 hours. With their 80%, they forget these people. And what about the woman who comes back to the labour market and does not have the required number of hours and then loses her job? She is not included either in the 80% the government is constantly bragging about.

The much vaunted 80% has to do with people who qualify for EI. But what about young people, older people, women and others who do not qualify? When one stops to consider what they have really put in place, it is a plan where only 40% of unemployed people qualify for benefits. They should stop saying that it is 80%. That is not the right figure. It is not 80% of the unemployed who get EI benefits; it is 40%. Possibly 39% or 41%, but somewhere close to 40%. So let us stop trotting out that figure, because it is a false one.

For the last eight years, we have been hearing the same old song from the government that does not understand a thing. I remember when Lloyd Axworthy was minister. He is the one who launched the reform. For at least two years, he rose to answer questions put by my hon. colleague from Mercier, who thought the reform did not make any sense and went as far as predicting the problems the reform would bring on. During two years, the minister told my colleague that she did not understand anything, that she did not know how to read and that she had not bothered reading the documentation. He kept saying that for two whole years. That is the only thing he told my colleague.

According to the hon. member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord, they are aware of the problems, they realize that changes are needed; some have already been made here and there and they will make some more. But that is not what he used to say when he sat on this side of the House as a Conservative. He thought the reform brought forward by the Liberals did not make any sense.

We can only hold people hostage and play them for fools for so long. This is probably the last time I have the chance to speak in this House. So, please allow me to thank each and every one who helped me do the work I really enjoyed doing for the last 11 years.

However, the Parliament of Canada needs to come up with answers for the people. Whether the government is red, blue or any other colour, it needs to respect the people and stop lying. There is just so much we can take. Things are getting out of control. The employment insurance reform is a complete disaster.

During the 2000 election, I remember quite well the member for Bourassa, president of the Privy Council and the member for Outremont, who was then a minister, traveling across Quebec and saying: “Please, stop your demonstrations, do not demonstrate. We will take care of you after the election”. We had to wait to be on the eve of an election again for this government to decide to take care of those workers who have lost their jobs. This is nonsense. We are fed up with this system. People are fed up.

During the next election, people will send a clear message to the Prime Minister. In Quebec, at least, they have understood. I hope that in the rest of Canada people will also understand that it makes no sense to be governed by arrogant and incompetent people who line their pockets and empty those of the public. They are the ones who force people into unemployment, into a gap situation and who say that they will make small reforms and that they have already made some, as the member for Chicoutimi—Le Fjord was saying. This is truly an aberration...

[Eleni Bakopanos, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development (Social Economy)]

Mr. Speaker, before I begin, may I say how interesting it is that members never stay on topic on the other side of the House, especially the official opposition.

I am pleased to speak in this House today to the Bloc motion on the need to reform employment insurance in a way that will serve the interests of Canadian workers.

Our goal since we came to power has been to help Canadians adapt to the labour market and the economy, which have evolved over the years. Our intentions have remained the same. Canadians can be proud of this country's strong economy, which has produced more than three million jobs since 1993.

The reforms introduced by the government to modernize the Employment Insurance Act have resulted in improved eligibility criteria and better benefits for Canadian workers. They help Canadians who are too sick to work, those who are not working because they have just had a child, or have to assume family responsibilities or provide care to a dying family member, and they help people who need temporary income support during periods of unemployment.

There is no doubt that many changes made to the act have benefited Canadians, including residents of Quebec. The changes have resulted in everything from improved parental leave to community solutions for the challenges faced by seasonal workers.

We realize that we constantly need to look at ways to improve the system so that it can continue to meet the needs of today's workers and adapt to changing economic conditions.

As we have seen over the past few years, economic conditions can quickly take an unexpected downturn.

That is why the program is constantly evolving based on solid evidence for change. The act has a monitoring and assessment process built in. However, there can be no debate that EI is achieving its primary objective of providing temporary income support to people who lose their jobs and helping them return to work.

In fulfillment of our commitment to address issues raised in the report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, “Beyond Bill C-2”, we have instituted several of the recommendations put forth by the committee. There are hon. members of the opposition who say nothing was done in terms of the committee's report and I would like to outline a few of them.

Among them, we modified the EI program so apprentices need only serve one two week waiting period over the duration of their apprenticeship program. We also made--and this is a very important change for seasonal workers--a small weeks provision a national and permanent feature of the EI program on November 18, 2001. The EI regulation relating to the way undeclared earnings are calculated was repealed in 2001.

Since 1996, the government has brought in some changes in the legislation to meet the changing needs of Canadians.

Yet, we should not forget the many problems we had to address in the previous unemployment insurance plan.

I would like to remind the House that, when we modernized the plan and replaced the previous legislation with a more progressive Employment Insurance Act, many part-time workers were not covered by the EI plan. Many of them were prisoners of the 15 hours a week rule, because employers were giving them the minimum number of hours of work in order to avoid paying EI premiums. When we switched to first dollar coverage, some 400,000 Canadians previously denied the EI benefits became covered.

This important change and other reforms we effected make for a plan that can change at the same pace as our economy and our society.

The variable entrance requirements, for example, make it possible to adjust requirements every four weeks, in each and every region of Canada, according to recent unemployment figures. It means that when workers are laid off overnight, eligibility requirements vary with the regional unemployment level.

Another example of our progress is the way we have responded to the needs of working parents. We extended EI maternity and parental benefits from six months to a full year and reduced the number of hours needed to qualify for the benefits from 700 to 600 hours. In fact, the Province of Quebec has one of the highest take-up rates for parental benefits in the entire country. As well, the entrance requirements for special benefits, whether maternity, parental, sickness or compassionate care, is also now 600 hours of work.

Our primary focus in reforming EI has been on enabling Canadians to acquire the new skills needed for jobs in the knowledge economy. The Government of Canada provides over $2 billion a year to the provinces and territories under EI part II to deliver employment measures to help Canadians find and keep work.

We have worked closely with the private sector and communities, funding a range of learning and skills development opportunities in communities all across the country, something recommended in “Beyond Bill C-2”. For instance, we have worked with regional partners developing innovative strategies that build on the work of local seasonal worker committees established in Quebec and New Brunswick in 2000.

Let me mention one of the projects funded by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, that is the Labour Market Innovations Program in Charlevoix. The community develops strategies to increase tourism and consequently the employment period for seasonal workers.

Those types of initiatives help upgrade the skills of the work force to ensure that seasonal workers have access to a large range of job opportunities. Up to now, we have invested more than $4 million in projects of this kind.

I would like to point out that since 1996, the Government of Canada has continually improved the EI program to meet the priorities of seasonal workers with an annual investment of more than $500 million. The changes that have been made helped those workers to have access to the EI program and prevented a reduction in the amount of benefits by frequent use. In 2001-02, seasonal workers received about $2.5 billion in regular and fishing benefits, or about one-third of the total benefits being paid for that type of benefits.

At the same time, however, among the many important changes we have made to the programs, there is an increased emphasis on the necessity of a strong workforce attachment. That is why we call it employment insurance instead of unemployment insurance. This serves as a reminder that EI provides temporary financial help to unemployed Canadians while they look for work or upgrade their skills. One of the ways we have reinforced this point is through the small weeks provision that encourages people to take all available work.

Our government will make adjustments to EI if they respond to the real needs of workers in a changing labour market.

Just in case my honourable colleagues have forgotten these additional facts, we have also, and there is proof, eased up the qualification requirements and increased the benefits paid out, as per the recommendations of the “Beyond Bill C-2” report. For example, we have reviewed the clawback provision.

This provision does not apply to those Canadians seeking temporary income support for the first time or getting special benefits anymore. Moreover, the intensity rule has been abolished because it did not increase the employment participation rate. We have also changed the rule for parents who re-enter the workplace after staying home for a while to take care of young children.

I would like to add that we have responded to the needs of workers, and to those of their employers. The employment insurance premiums have been reduced for ten years in a row, from $3.07 in 1994 to $1.98 in 2004. Canadian workers and Canadian businesses will save $10 billion compared to what they were paying ten years ago.

Budget 2003 launched consultations and a new permanent rate setting mechanism for 2005 and beyond. Today, in the human resources committee we listened to the employers who are in fact asking for a 10 year fixed rate.

The results of those consultations are currently under review. As we reinforced in budget 2004, it is our intention to introduce legislation to implement a new EI premium rate setting mechanism that better reflects the 21st century economy.

The bottom line is that these reforms are working and producing results for Canadians. EI is there for Canadians when they need it as a temporary measure.

In 2002-03, close to 1.87 million Canadians received approximately $12.3 billion in benefits. Moreover, according to data, 88% of workers in paid employment would be eligible to benefits if they lost their job. Even more relevant, since 1993, over three million new positions were created in the country, including 640,000 in Quebec, which represents an employment growth rate of 21%. Also, to date this year, in a few months alone, 61,000 full-time jobs were created across the country.

According to Statistics Canada data, general participation in the workforce is now 67.4% and a little better in Quebec, with a 67.8% rate, while it is 61% for women. These are almost record levels.

As the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development indicated, Canada is next to last of all OECD countries for long-term unemployment rate. In 2002, less than 10% of all unemployed in Canada remained without work for 12 months or more.

There is always room for improvement. That is why we have reports from committees and that is why we take the reports that come from committees very seriously. I can assure hon. members of the opposition that we will make ongoing changes as we continue to monitor and assess the EI program.

The Auditor-General has said that the mechanism that is used by the government is actually one of the most competitive in terms of assuring that the system responds to the need. We are determined to ensure that this vitally important social program remains responsive to the individuals and communities its serves, as well as the economy.

However, all members in this place need to remember that EI is only part of the solution. The Government of Canada's priority is to ensure a strong economy that stimulates job creation, and invests in the skills and knowledge of Canadians so our country can be on the leading edge of innovation. We want to ensure Canadians are equipped with the tools they need to capitalize on opportunities in the knowledge economy and to prevent them from having to depend on EI.

I think everyone wants to work rather than collect EI.

Mr. Speaker, this issue demands the commitment and support of all Canadians. We must all work together, with the Government of Canada and our partners, employers and employees, to create an even stronger economy and a better future for all of us.

[Greg Thompson, Progressive Conservative, New Brunswick Southwest, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to put a few comments on the record. I most likely will not take up the full 20 minute allotment.

I will begin by talking about the Conservative Party position on the employment insurance program. Obviously, we support it. We want to make sure, as I think most of us in the House do, that the program provides adequate income protection for Canadians in the event they lose their jobs. Simply put, the program is supposed to be about protection for Canadians when they lose their jobs.

It often is unfairly identified as a social program. It is not a social program. We pay premiums. It is an insurance program, which is what it is supposed to be.

The old expression that has been heard around this place for many years is that the best social program is a job. I guess most of us hope that we never have to use the protection provided under the EI system. We all want to be productive and working but, unfortunately, sometimes the best laid plans of mice and men go astray and we find ourselves unemployed. In fact, after the election probably a few of us will find ourselves unemployed. Hopefully, Mr. Speaker, it is not me or you or any of our colleagues but I guess that is the reality of this job of politics. We take our chances in the marketplace every three or four years or so.

I want to make a few points on this issue and on just how disingenuous the Prime Minister has been in terms of reforming the EI system. The track record of the government is not very good on this. In fact, as we stand here today the surplus that has been built up in the fund is in excess of $48 billion. I will to explain the term “fund” more clearly later on.

What that money means is that the Government of Canada has paid out less than what it has taken in to the fund. That is the simple arithmetic. In other words, the government has paid out benefits but the income that it has received from that fund, the premiums, have exceeded those benefits by $48 billion. In other words, there is a $48 billion surplus generated by the EI account, those premiums that you, Mr. Speaker, and I and every other working Canadian are paying, as well as employers.

What we have suggested, and I think most Canadians agree with us, is that we are paying too much in premiums. The numbers speak for themselves. That is how the $48 billion surplus was generated. The Auditor General has reported on this as well.

Where the Prime Minister is disingenuous is in the fact that he is using the EI surplus, because there is no such thing as a fund. I wanted to explain that for the listening public. There is no such thing as a fund. Basically those surpluses go into general revenues.

What did the Government of Canada do with those surplus funds? Simply put, it spent them. Many of the Prime Minister's projections and the boasting that he often does in the House about his management of the economy when he was finance minister, he would not have anything to brag about if he did not have that surplus.

I will point out some of what the Prime Minister said in the past on this when he was the finance minister. When the former finance minister, now Prime Minister, spoke in the House on March 10, 1994, he stated:

--the Minister of Human Resources Development was able to announce through the budget that we were reducing unemployment insurance premiums which are in fact a tax on jobs.

The Prime Minister admitted in the House on March 10, 1994, that it was a tax. He went on to say:

We have begun to attack this cancer on job creation in this country.

Over the years we have had to force the Prime Minister to reduce those premiums that we all pay but they have not been reduced enough. The chief actuary of the fund has told us time and again that the rates could be reduced even further. If we point to that very high surplus in the fund, the $48 billion, it tells us that the government has been using the EI fund, not as an insurance program but as a tax to get more money out of the hind pockets of average Canadians. That is wrong. The Prime Minister could have done something about that over the years but did absolutely nothing.

The interesting thing is that to keep the EI surplus growing, because the government did not want the surplus to shrink as it would impact on its financial statements, it used the surplus to enhance its numbers. However, to keep the EI surplus growing, Chrétien and the former finance minister introduced Bill C-2 after the 2000 election to suspend the rate setting requirements of the Employment Insurance Act for 2002-03.

The act, by the way, requires that the premium revenue cover the cost of the benefits over the business cycle and that the rate levels be relatively stable. The Auditor General concluded that premium rates exceeded the maximum range suggested by the chief actuary for 1998 through 2001 and that the rates for 2001 and 2002 were inconsistent with the intent of the EI Act.

The Auditor General is the person who the Liberals like to attack. We all know about the work she did on the ad scam and how some Liberals attacked her at committee suggesting that her numbers were wrong and that their numbers were right. The Auditor General reported that $100 million had basically gone missing or, as some people have said, stolen, or was given away to some of the Liberal-friendly ad firms. The Auditor General, of course, has stood by her assessment of what went wrong, much to the displeasure of Liberal members, I might add.

The Auditor General has identified some of the weaknesses in the EI system. I will quote some of what she had to say in her 2003 report on the EI system, which, as we all know, is run by HRDC. At that time she talked about documents that should have been on the floor of the House of Commons. In other words, she said that Parliament should have been aware of what was going on in that fund. She stated:

Parliament is not given the full picture of the service's performance.

She went on to say:

HRDC uses three documents to report to Parliament.

The Report on Plans and Priorities presents HRDC's planned results, while the Departmental Performance Report presents and explains actual results. The Monitoring and Assessment Report (MAR) is required by the EI Act and presents various information on the EI programs.

In our view, these reports have not given Parliament the full picture of the service performance of the EI Income Benefits Program. They have not described important performance issues, such as the uneven speed and quality of processing claims across the country.

She states:

Currently, HRDC reports only national averages for key measures, giving parliamentarians only a very broad view of performance. For call centres, it reports the percentage of calls answered by a service representative within three minutes. But it does not report the larger percentage of calls that cannot get into the queue. It also does not report how it plans to meet its service targets in all areas of the country.

In other words, there is some failure within the department, but also a failure by the department to bring this to the floor of the House of Commons for closer scrutiny.

She recommends that:

Human Resources Development Canada should report measures that better capture service performance in sufficient detail to meet the information needs of parliamentarians. The Department should describe plans to meet performance targets when required.

Again, it is a veil of secrecy by the government over programs that we have some legitimate questions about. So when the government is suggesting changes to the program, I think we require full and open accounting so that we can discuss what those changes might be. If we do not have the proper information before us, it is pretty hard to make intelligent choices.

The Auditor General goes on in her report to refer to the surplus, which I have already mentioned. Again she follows up with a recommendation for a more complete picture for Parliament so that some of these decisions can be made in the proper context. This is really what it is all about: some accountability by the Government of Canada on a program that from time to time is legitimately questioned by Canadians, not only the recipients of the program but those who are still working and paying into the program.

I think the government has to listen to some of the recommendations that are being brought forward on the floor of the House of Commons and has to consider some of them before it starts tinkering with the act. I think it is incumbent upon the Government of Canada to listen to the opposition and to provide us with the information, so that, again, when those choices are made and those policies are brought forward, we can discuss them with some level of knowledge.

I will leave it at that. Again, one of my party's biggest concerns is the fact that the government has used the fund for the wrong purpose. It has used it to enhance its financial position. The government would in fact be $48 billion poorer. It has used this fund to enhance its financial position.

Therefore, on the debt repayment that the Government of Canada often brags about, we could question whether it would have been in a position to pay down any debt without the surplus that was generated in the EI fund. The numbers again speak for themselves. In fact, the Government of Canada's balanced position would have taken about six years longer to achieve if it had not had the excessive premiums being generated by the EI fund going into the piggy bank.

Now I will read to the House from some of the information I put together earlier this morning. By applying the EI surplus in this manner, the Prime Minister hid the true deficit-surplus situation of the government from Canadians.

Thus he was able to tell Canadians that the books were balanced as early as 1997-98. In actual fact, without the application of the EI surpluses to official figures, the government would not have been in the black until fiscal year 1999-2000.

In other words, as I mentioned earlier, it means that the finance minister, today's Prime Minister, would have taken a full six years more to balance the budget, not four as he claims.

We are estimating that the EI surplus this year will again add about $2.4 billion to the total. We could easily be looking at a surplus in that fund, generated over the years, in and around $50 billion this year.

I will leave that for my colleagues to consider. I look forward to any questions and responses they might have.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we really have in front of us a member and a government struck by amnesia. We are told that this government has been in place for five months, but actually it has been there for ten years. Amnesia seems to be the rule because in the ad scam some ministers and the Prime Minister himself have also been struck by amnesia. They are also suffering from amnesia when it comes to their promises.

We must remember that during the last election the president of the Privy Council travelled to Chicoutimi where he promised construction workers that changes would be made to employment insurance. They never were. Workers confirmed this last week; they remember and they will keep an eye on the Liberals during the election campaign.

The Prime Minister himself travelled to Charlevoix a few months ago and promised changes to employment insurance, especially about the gap. Nothing happened.

I will ask a simple question of the hon. member. Why did he oppose unanimous consent in the House to have this motion made votable tonight?

In conclusion, I will read the opposition motion:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should propose, before the dissolution of the House, an employment insurance reform along the lines of the 17 recommendations contained in the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities entitled “Beyond Bill C-2: A review of other proposals to reform employment insurance”.

Why did the member oppose the motion's being made votable?

[Brent St. Denis, Liberal, Algoma—Manitoulin, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to participate in this opposition day debate.

It is very important that issues surrounding employment insurance, issues surrounding workers, their needs, the needs of their communities and the industries be given the highest priority by this government, or any government for that matter, in order that our economy remains strong. We want to ensure that those are able to work can find the work for which they are suited. We also want to ensure that those who are unable to work, whether they are disabled or whether they are laid off for whatever reason, are provided with the supports required to make them feel that they are a part of this great country of ours.

The motion calls on the government to implement all of the “Beyond Bill C-2” report recommendations, including those that would ease employment insurance eligibility requirements and improve benefits. The motion provides us with a great opportunity to debate some of the important points relating to employment insurance.

Many of those recommendations would significantly impact seasonal workers. Therefore we need to provide some context for this issue by taking a closer look at the characteristics of workers in seasonal industries, how their work differs from that of other workers and the unique contribution they make to our economy.

As I mentioned a few moments ago, I have the honour to chair the Prime Minister's task force on seasonal work. In the visits to communities we have made thus far, and from my own experience as the member of Parliament for Algoma—Manitoulin and soon to be Algoma--Manitoulin--Kapuskasing, I want to underline that the government recognizes and values the importance of seasonal industries, of seasonal work.

A great number of our citizens depend on the fishery and fish processing, on forestry, on agriculture and horticulture. Trappers are seasonal workers, as are construction workers. There are many more whose livelihoods depend on the seasonal, cyclical nature of their work. These are important industries and these workers are important to our economy. We must value them. Their communities depend on them. The fact that their work is seasonal does not in any measure take away from their importance. Without these seasonal industries, the country would suffer greatly.

Because the government takes all work and the employment insurance system seriously, there is a system in place for monitoring the impact of changes on the system. It is through monitoring, consultation, and talking to citizens that we find better ways to ensure that the EI system responds to worker needs, industry needs and Canada's needs.

I will be one of the first ones to admit that the changes that were made a few years ago in some respects may have gone a bit too far. That is why the government in the meantime has made a number of ameliorating measures. A number of steps have been taken to reverse some of the measures that turned out not to achieve the purposes for which they were put in place. That does not mean they were put in place because anybody was meanspirited. They were put in place to try to make the system better for everyone, but things do not always work the way we plan.

It is quite surprising when we look at the list of measures the government has put in place since the adoption of the 1996 reform package, which has done a lot to improve or to bring the pendulum partway back to a point of balance. That is not to suggest that we do not have some way to go. I propose strongly that we do have some way to go.

Let me outline some of the changes that have been made since 1996 to bring the pendulum back. There was the introduction of the small weeks adjustment pilot project in 1997. There has been the enhancement of maternity and parental benefits. These benefits have been extended from six months to a full year for parents of children born or placed for adoption on or after December 31, 2000.

The passage of Bill C-2 occurred in May 2001. Its highlights include: the elimination of the intensity rule; better targeting of the benefit repayment provision, known as the clawback; adjustment of the re-entrant rule for re-entrant parents; and extension of the monitoring and assessment process until 2006. Further, there is the creation of the new compassionate care benefit introduced in January of this year. This allows workers and their families to share six weeks of leave when a spouse, child or parent is dying or seriously ill.

These measures underline the fact that the government believes that the EI system is not simply an economic system. Rather, it is a system which includes social and economic development, and local regional development. We must keep this in mind. Finding a balance between the needs of the broader society and the needs of workers is very important. After all, it is about people and their families, and their communities at the end of the day.

In March the Prime Minister appointed the task force which I chair. A number of excellent colleagues from the House of Commons and from the other place have undertaken, with me, the serious task of pursuing a very strong and purposeful mandate given to us by the Prime Minister.

I will outline the mandate. The mandate will prove to all members that the government is very serious when it comes to the needs of seasonal workers. When we look at the whole picture, it is not just about EI, as important as that is, but it is about a broad variety of measures that we need to undertake to make sure that seasonal workers are well served as full citizens of our country.

That mandate, given to us by the Prime Minister in March, includes the following points. These are in no particular order of precedence. They are all important.

First, what are the specific needs of seasonal industries and their workers in the area of skills development, lifelong learning and literacy?

Second, what are the ways to promote greater economic diversity and stronger local economies, particularly in rural and remote communities across Canada? These communities are typically those most dependent on seasonal industries.

Third, what is the support required to help seasonal work dependent communities to adapt to seize opportunities provided by the new knowledge based global economy?

Fourth, what are the ways of lowering barriers to regional and interprovincial labour mobility?

Fifth is how to align income support programs, such as employment insurance and provincial social assistance programs, to improve income support while promoting full year-round participation in the labour force.

Sixth is how to address the challenges and opportunities offered by temporary foreign workers. Typically, we see the agricultural sector in most need of temporary foreign workers.

Seventh is the potential role for government in encouraging new approaches to community development, i.e., the social economy.

Eighth is an assessment of the opportunities and challenges specific to seasonal economies in promoting the safeguard of our natural environment.

It is clear that the government recognizes that the ledger has a very important social side. It is not all about dollars and cents. As important as we have made balancing the budgets of this country, we also recognize that people, their families and our communities are an essential and fundamental part of society. We must not get lost simply in balancing the books. The government recognizes that.

I would like to outline some of the messages we heard in our recent travels as a group through eastern Quebec and Atlantic Canada.

A few weeks ago our task force had a chance to visit about 10 communities in the five provinces of the eastern half of this country. The messages we heard from citizens, from union leaders, businesses, big and small, mayors and reeves are messages I am sure colleagues in the House have heard from their own constituents. These messages remind us that we need, at all times, to examine and re-examine government policy to ensure that we are doing the best with the tools that governments have.

Again, in no particular order of precedence, this is a sampling of some of the things we heard, which I mentioned in my question earlier to the proponent of the motion today.

The current EI system fosters the underground economy. We know that workers, laid off and otherwise, want to work. They do not want to go around the system to avoid taxes, to report income, to bank hours or to the take steps they feel are needed simply to feed their families, because the rules in many cases create disincentives to honest behaviour. This is not their fault. This is a situation where some of the rules, with no intent to harm when they were originally put in place, have inadvertently created disincentives and provided pressure to drive some funds underground. We need to address those measures so workers can behave the way they want to, which is honestly, and take the work that is available to them.

We also heard from many people that the work is seasonal, not the workers. Workers who live in areas where seasonal work is predominant are not to blame for the seasons. They are not to blame for the fact that ice is over the water and they cannot fish. I know in my own riding there is an inland fishery in Lake Huron and Lake Superior. We know that right off our shores in my home town of Spanish they cannot get out to fish much of the year. The same applies to our coastal fishing areas. These are factors out of their control and we have to recognize that.

We also heard that the EI system was too complicated for the average citizen. Being a parliamentarian, I found it complicated enough to understand the system. Imagine the average citizen on the street, whether they need EI or not, trying to understand the complexity. We need to find a way to make it simpler and more user friendly. The government is committed to doing just that. That is part of dealing with the democratic deficit. The democratic deficit is not just about how we run our affairs around here. It is about engaging all citizens in a government that is more accessible, more open and more reachable.

We have discovered that EI benefits paid to seasonal workers, especially those in the east, have fallen drastically over the last number of years. There are many factors for this, but we have to examine carefully if there are things in the system which have caused this to the detriment of workers.

The changing demographics of seasonal industries are a primary concern for employers and communities in general. The seasonal workforce is aging, while the younger population is leaving. Part of this are the barriers to the EI system caused by the higher bar for the entry of new workers. We have to recognize, because seasonal industries are important, that we have to ensure that workers are there to support those industries. We cannot afford to lose forestry, fishers or agricultural workers. Farmers, fishers and forest companies need these workers.

Seasonal employers spend a lot of money retraining staff at the beginning of every season, partly because of the disincentives they cannot always get the people they need to work. Those who go to work and take limited numbers of weeks will pay in reduced benefits the following year.

We also heard from many that the skills of seasonal workers need to be enhanced in part to increase their productivity in season and also to provide more ability to move between and among different types of seasonal work, if and when that is available. We also heard that the economic EI boundaries do not reflect labour markets in a number of given localities. We feel we need to look at this very seriously.

In many communities we heard that employers were finding it more and more difficult year in and year out to find workers, especially when processing fish. Unlike a log that can lay in the yard for a period of time and not rot, when fish arrive, they need to be processed right away. It is important to have workers available at all times. Unlike other areas of work, seasonal work is on-demand work. There needs to be workers available when the work comes up.

I also want to give credit to a number of communities, including Woodstock, New Brunswick. Because of the nature of the local economy, they have dealt with the shortage of workers in a rather unique way. They have a pilot project to create an information bank of employers and employees. Combined with some good changes to the employment insurance system, they feel that over the long run they can grow their local seasonal economy by providing greater opportunities for diverse application of seasonal workers. In so doing, they can provide opportunities for employers to grow their businesses, which could otherwise not grow for lack of seasonal workers. Therefore, I give credit to folks in the Carleton country and Woodstock area for their efforts to deal with this creatively, as we have seen in other parts of the country.

It is important to note that the characteristics of seasonal workers vary considerably as to the jobs they hold and the challenges they face. For example, the recent Statistics Canada study on seasonal work and employment insurance use found that many seasonal workers did not fit the stereotypical image: that is, people with limited education who live in have not regions and rely heavily on seasonal industries and government assistance. This is not the real picture. In fact the real picture is that seasonal employment is found across Canada in virtually every industry and occupation, with the largest number of workers being found in Ontario, Quebec and then the Atlantic region.

Seasonal work is characterized by individuals with a variety of educational backgrounds. While some workers have limited skills, others are highly educated. Some depend on seasonal work. Others choose to work in a seasonal industry or in non-standard employment because of the flexibility it offers.

All of this suggests that government initiatives need to be flexible so they can allow for these differences. I fear, even with the changes we made in 1996, some of which have been modified in response to real reaction, that the system is still a little too inflexible and that measures need to be taken to reduce that.

The prevalence of seasonal work is even greater in some regions and industries where it can represent the main source of employment.

It is clear that seasonal work will continue to be an important feature of our economy in the future, given its role in such key industries as forestry, agriculture, particularly horticulture, some mining, the fishery, whether it is inland or coastal, tourism, construction, trapping and others. I am sure I have missed some. This is with no disrespect for those industries that I may have missed in my short speech today. They are all important.

Companies will continue a sometimes frantic search for enough workers during busy periods, and layoffs will continue to be a defining feature of slow seasons. All this makes it imperative that we have programs in place that are capable of helping workers acquire the skills needed for good, stable jobs, whether they are permanent jobs or whether they are jobs in other seasonal industries. It is imperative that programs ensure the industries in need of seasonal workers have those workers. It is imperative that programs encourage community and economic development, so regions dependent on seasonal work can diversify their economies to create jobs to employ these up-skilled workforces. Providing seasonal workers with temporary income is also an imperative when other employment opportunities are not available.

I want to compliment my colleague for bringing this motion forward, but it oversimplifies the situation. I personally would support a major review of the EI system, not only to eliminate or reduce disincentives, but also to find ways to better allocate those dollars so the social and human side and community development side of the equation is properly covered.

There are good examples of some pilot projects in Lac-Saint-Jean--Saguenay and the Bas-Saint-Laurent regions where workers and communities have tried some new ideas to ensure that we get some good advice from our local communities.

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

moved:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should propose, before the dissolution of the House, an employment insurance reform along the lines of the 17 recommendations contained in the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities entitled “Beyond Bill C-2: A Review of Other Proposals to Reform Employment Insurance”.

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak to this motion today. I think that it is important to provide a brief historical overview and to say that we want to provide the government with a new opportunity—almost the final opportunity—to propose, in this House, an in-depth reform of insurance employment.

Historically, Mr. Jean Chrétien had made commitments before his election as the Prime Minister in 1993. Indeed, in a letter to a lady in my riding, he said that Liberals would put back in place a real employment insurance program that would ensure adequate income, protect seasonal workers and do other things.

Unfortunately, following the election, his government did the opposite. It took the employment insurance program and turned it into an arrangement to collect as much money as possible to fight the deficit. Thus, it tightened the screws.

For example, in two successive reforms, in 1994 and 1996, the rules for eligibility were limited and the length of the benefit period was cut back. They also arranged things so that everyone had to contribute, particularly young workers and part-time workers, who generally cannot receive benefits. They used not to contribute, and when they did start being required to pay into the program they did not get benefits in return. There are many contributors who cannot get benefits. So that is what led up to the elections in 1997 and 2000.

The Liberals reformed the EI program but, instead of making it more human, they made it more strict, more restrictive, more limited. The negative effects of this reform hit people hard, particularly those in the regions of Quebec and of Canada, until the election in 2000.

During the 2000 election campaign, the Liberal Party made a commitment that there would be a parliamentary commission after the election with a mandate to review the entire act and improve it. But following the election, the government produced precious little.

Despite what had been requested, Bill C-2 withdrew from the Employment and Immigration Commission the right to determine the contribution rate for employment insurance and handed it over to the federal government. At that time, the rate was set, not according to the program's needs, but rather according to the needs of the government in general. As a result, since that time, that is since the Liberal Party of Canada started these negative reforms, a $45 billion surplus has built up in the employment insurance fund.

After the 2000 elections, Bill C-2 did away with determining the contribution rate according to the needs of the plan. This did not go over well with the members, with the House as a whole, moreover. The Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities decided to look into the matter, stating that it wanted a true employment insurance program, a true reform, which the one in place was not. It therefore wondered what could be done to remedy that situation.

The committee heard witnesses from all groups in society. It ended up with 17 recommendations, all to be found in the report tabled three years ago in May. It was hoped that the government would use it as the basis for changes in the employment insurance system, which has not happened. The proposed changes were of many kinds. I would like to direct the House's attention to a number of them that clearly demonstrate our point of view and what we wanted to achieve.

The first of the recommendations was to eliminate discrimination against young people. We know that, at present, a young person entering the labour force for the first time must work 910 hours in order to qualify for EI benefits. Therefore, we had a proposal to eliminate this discrimination. It was the same thing for discrimination against women returning to the labour force.

We also wanted benefits to return to an adequate level. Another recommendation proposed that ways be found to increase the amount of benefits to an adequate level. A specific proposal on this was made in the unanimous report of the Standing Committee onHuman Resources Development and theStatus of Persons with Disabilities. Another recommendation said it was time to reinstate the program for older worker adjustment.

That was a program to assist people laid off when they are about 55 or 58 years old. In the riding I hope to represent after the next election, Rivière-du-Loup—Montmagny, on May 12, in less than two weeks from now, 600 workers will be laid off, including a hundred or so over the age of 55.

In many cases, these people have contributed to the employment insurance system for 15, 20 or 25 years, and they are full-time workers. When they are laid off they are not entitled to any additional benefits. After receiving EI benefits for 40 or 45 weeks at the most, they will themselves with no income and often unable to bridge the gap until they retire at 60 or 65.

We want this program restored. Improving eligibility, enabling people to receive better benefits, providing older workers with a system that would permit them, when laid off, to survive until they get their pension—these are all measures aimed at attaining an equitable system, in the end.

Some say those are costly items. However, let us keep in mind that, over the years, the federal government has accumulated a $45 billion surplus in the EI fund. There was a $45 billion difference between the premiums paid by workers and employers and the benefits paid out. For a long time, people thought that this money was sitting in a reserve and that the government was keeping it for the appropriate time to put it back in the system. That was not the case. It took the $45 billion first to eliminate the deficit and then to pay down the debt.

Lower income people, those who need EI benefits from time to time, those who make less than $39,000 a year, contributed 100% to the fight against the deficit. However, people who earn more than $39,000 no longer pay into the plan, some do not contribute at all. For instance, members of Parliament do not contribute to the EI plan.

A lot of people therefore did not contribute to the fight against the deficit, whereas people who already had a lot of trouble making ends meet every month were asked to do more. Here too, the problem is blatant. The situation must be remedied.

Just as an example, between the time this unanimous report was adopted by all the committee members, from all parties--that does not happen everyday--and today, three years later, the government has accumulated a further $11 billion surplus.

It could easily have implemented the recommendations in the report while making sure that the plan was properly funded. Wealth would have been distributed more evenly to the satisfaction of society in Quebec and Canada.

Moreover, some of the 17 unanimous recommendations were aimed at adjusting the EI plan to the new reality of today's labour market. For instance, self-employed workers in Quebec and Canada do not contribute to the EI plan and are not covered by it. However, we know that they account for 16% of the workforce, 16% of all workers in Canada.

Some of them would benefit from a plan tailored to their needs. We are not talking about a universal EI plan necessarily, but something more along the lines of what was done for fishermen, a special plan that would provide them with an income when they are left without contracts for extended periods of time.

This has all kinds of impacts. It is not just about making sure people get a cheque. Self-employed workers are often young women who have freelanced for several years and who decide with their partner that they will not have children because it would not necessarily be financially responsible to do so.

These are the kind of recommendations made in the unanimous report which should have been implemented by the government. The government has taken no action in the last three years to implement these recommendations.

This is why it is rather astonishing to hear the Prime Minister say that he will do something about seasonal workers just before the election. What is more, the Minister of Heritage was heard saying that there will not be enough time to implement a comprehensive reform before the election and that it will be done after.

Elections are not held on a set date. Whenever the government is ready to introduce a real employment insurance reform, we are ready to sit, cooperate and pass the legislation. During the next days and weeks, the government could count on the cooperation of all parties in this House in order to do that.

This would send a clear message that we want a fair distribution of wealth in Quebec and in Canada. It might also remedy a number of injustices committed by this government against the unemployed in the last 10 years. However, we still have no indication that this will happen.

Six months ago, the Prime Minister said, “We will do things differently. I am ready. I will introduce measures”. In this case, as in others, he is very hesitant. Today, he is being given another chance to propose a reform of the employment insurance system.

I introduced this motion in the House last Friday. I hoped it would be passed, but the Government House Leader refused to give his consent. The refusal did not come from a Liberal member or from an opposition party, but from the Government House Leader himself.

There is a flagrant contradiction between what Liberal members and ministers say in public and what is really happening. The government has not prepared a real reform of the employment insurance system. We need one and we are giving them an opportunity to propose a plan as soon as possible because right now people are very wary of Liberal election promises.

In 2000, the government made promises. We were told “A parliamentary commission will be set up; you will see, we will examine this whole issue”. That parliamentary commission wrote the report that was released three years ago. However, the government made no move at all follow up on this document, with the result that the hon. member for Madawaska—Restigouche, who is a responsible Liberal member, attended a meeting with labour unions on Tuesday and asked them “After three years, what have you done in this regard?” The unions told him that an in-depth reform was necessary.

This hon. member, who will not run again in the upcoming election, was very disappointed by his government's behaviour. He was very unsatisfied, because he worked with us on this report. He thought there were some interesting things. He expected the government to make a similar proposal. We are not asking the government to implement the report down to the last letter. We are asking it to take this unanimous report into consideration and recommend a new reform of the employment insurance program that will go in the direction opposite to that of the last reform, which was used by the government to fill up its coffers, fight the deficit and reduce the debt, but at the expense of people living in regions, young people and women.

In the report—and perhaps this is why the government is reluctant to follow up on it—there was also a recommendation on the setting of the premium rate. There are people, including Bloc Quebecois members and all opposition members who support our position, who want the employment insurance fund to be an independent fund.

Conversely, there are also people who want this fund to remain under the authority of the government. Perhaps we should at least consider the possibility of going back to the system under which the premium rate was set by the Canada Employment Insurance Commission, and was based on the needs of the employment insurance program. Since Bill C-2 was passed, the rate is set based on the needs of the government, and it was announced in the last budget that this would continue for another two years.

This means that the government is trying to justify the fact that, currently, we could have a premium rate whose purpose is not to fund the employment insurance fund, but is simply a payroll tax. This is what the EI program has become.

That is why we insist on reform of the employment insurance program. The solution is to have the employers and employees, those who contribute to the program, run it themselves one day. Nonetheless, we must ensure that, if there is a surplus at the end of the year, either the premiums are lowered or the benefits improved for a certain group of workers, but the money must never be accumulated and used for something else, which is what happened over the past 10 years with $45 billion. It is totally unacceptable.

The recommendations in the unanimous report went quite far. It was a serious piece of work and all the political parties contributed. There were recommendations on the employment insurance regions. We wanted to ensure that the regions reflected the reality of the labour market because there were many inconsistencies in the current definitions of the regions. We wanted the map to be redone in a well thought out way.

We also wanted to look at the possibility of raising the ceiling for yearly insurable earnings to $41,500. People currently contribute up to $39,000, meaning that someone earning $25,000 is contributing 100% of their share to the employment insurance program. However, someone earning $75,000 does not contribute to the program for the $36,000 difference between the $75,000 they make and the $39,000 ceiling. This creates unfairness and inequity and should be examined closely.

To show how serious hon. members were in their recommendations, they also addressed the issue of fraud. Hon. members know that we had to deal with Mr. Chrétien's approach when he was prime minister. Unfortunately, he said that the unemployed were a bunch of beer drinkers, that that was why there was a problem, and that we had to crack down on them in order to get anywhere.

The government and the finance minister, who has now become the Prime Minister and who jumped on the opportunity to rake in all the money he could, rode on this statement for several years. They eventually realized that there is not more abuse of EI than there is of income tax or any other program. Only 3% of the people abuse the system.

The committee did make recommendations to ensure that those who truly abused the system were penalized, which is the normal thing to do. At the same time, it was acknowledged that the majority of the unemployed really wanted to find a job. It would be nice for them to have enough income.

Members pointed out that the legislation is based on the presumption of guilt, which is quite horrifying. For instance, when employment is found to be uninsurable because the worker is related to the employer, it is up to the applicant to show his job should have been insurable. However, the legislation clearly stipulates that, in such a case, the employment is not insurable. That is something else we wanted to change.

As you see, the proposed reform is quite reasonable. It is not over the top. We are not trying to revert back to the days where people were getting incredible benefits for minimal contributions. What was requested was quite reasonable.

Also, for quite some time, we had in Canada a social pact whereby the industrial sector, which was concentrated mainly in Ontario but also in Quebec and generating full-time jobs, and public servants at the various levels of government had agreed to contribute to EI so that workers with seasonal jobs in resource areas were able to stay in their regions and get enough benefits to make it through some rough times in winter and the spring gap. There was a kind of balance, a proper redistribution of wealth.

In 1994, the Liberals put an end to this social pact. Consequently, several regions in Canada saw a significant decrease in their revenues. And I am not talking only about the individual income of the unemployed, but also about millions of dollars in lost revenues for the affected regions. At the same time, industrial regions continued to buy wood, fish and agricultural products. They continued to benefit from the system, but the resource regions suffered a considerable loss of revenue.

All this is caused by the attitude of the federal government, which decided that, instead of having our national debt in the hands of foreigners, it should be shouldered within the country by the workers. That is unacceptable. And it was not done in a way where everyone shared equally in it. Instead of that, the government decided to take money from the poorest, the most disadvantaged and the least organized in our society.

These people have so little savings that when the crisis arrives, they have no money left to get through the spring gap. In the fall, seasonal workers are often told to prepare themselves and to organize demonstrations to force the government to take action. But the government does not take action until it is faced with reality. Now the crisis has become so serious that we saw people on the North Shore, as in many other regions, rise up because they find that reality very difficult to bear.

Following up on the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development would be an extraordinary gesture on the part of the government.

I will conclude by saying a few words about those aspects that seem important to me. This debate is not about defending the position of the Bloc Quebecois. It is about defending the position of a committee of this Parliament, made up of members from all parties. Everyone had to compromise for the committee to agree on that position.

There are things that the Bloc Quebecois would have liked to see included in the report that were not included at that time. For example, the Bloc said that the reduction from 910 to 700 hours was a step in the right direction, but that any kind of discrimination should be eliminated.

All parties made compromises. We have a unanimous report before that committee. The new Prime Minister has said that he wants to address the democratic deficit. He has an extraordinary and unique opportunity to do so. Today, he should make the decision to table this reform of the employment insurance program.

In conclusion, I ask for the unanimous consent of the House to make the motion votable tonight, and ultimately to urge the government to put in place a real employment insurance program.

Business of the House

[The Acting Speaker (Mrs. Hinton)]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 81(14), to inform the House that the motion to be considered tomorrow during consideration of the business of supply is as follows:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should propose, before the dissolution of the House, an employment insurance reform along the lines of the 17 recommendations contained in the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, entitled “Beyond Bill C-2: A Review of Other Proposals to Reform Employment Insurance”.

This motion, standing in the name of the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, is not votable. Copies of the motion are available at the table.

I have received notice from the hon. member for Saskatoon—Wanuskewin that he is unable to move his motion during private members' hour on Thursday, May 6, 2004. It has not been possible to arrange an exchange of positions in the order of precedence. Accordingly, I am directing the table officers to drop that item of business to the bottom of the order of precedence. Private members' hour will thus be cancelled and the House will continue with the business before it prior to private members' hour.

Softwood Lumber

[Paul Crête, Bloc, Kamouraska—Rivière-Du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I seek unanimous consent to have the following motion passed:

That, in the opinion of this House, the government should bring forward, before the dissolution of the House, a reform of the employment insurance plan to implement the 17 recommendations contained in the unanimous report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, entitled “Beyond Bill C-2: a Review of Other Proposals to Reform Employment Insurance”.

Do I have unanimous consent?

Employment Insurance

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, in 2001 all political parties unanimously adopted the report entitled “Beyond Bill C-2”, which proposed 17 recommendations to reform employment insurance. For three years the government has been ignoring this report and has done nothing to help the unemployed. Now, on the eve of an election, the government claims it is worried about this problem and suggests that it will be making changes to employment insurance.

After three years of arrogantly ignoring the people in need, what changes does the government intend to make to the employment insurance system and when will it make them?

Radiocommunication Act

[The Speaker]

Pursuant to order made on Friday, February 13, the House will now proceed to the taking of the deferred recorded division on the referral to committee before second reading of Bill C-2.

Act to amend the Radiocommunication Act

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for that. I was reading off my notes and made an honest mistake. I took offence because I was being shouted down by another member of the House. I apologize for naming an individual. I should have said the former minister of finance, the member for LaSalle--Émard. I apologize for that.

To wrap up, I do want to impress upon members that before Bill C-2 moves forward we need to clear up the issue of access to grey market products. That is very important. That should be the very first step because it is important to build Canada through our cultural diversity. That is what connects many people to information abroad, whether it is English language programming, whether it is Christian programming, or whether it is Middle Eastern programming like Al Jazeera. All these things have been asked for at the CRTC but there has been no response.

The government needs to solve that first as opposed to further criminalizing people for making sure that they have those elements that are so important to their lifestyles. Quite frankly, it could be accessed through other mediums we already have, such as the Internet or as in other communities by putting up regular airwaves. This needs to be resolved right away before the government moves forward. Nothing else will do.

[Brian Masse, NDP, Windsor West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to rise today to address Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act.

I had an opportunity to review some of the debate in which I took part earlier in the week and I want to make a few points.

First, I want to focus on and at least highlight the bill in terms of what it does for consumers and the telecommunications industry. The government rationale behind the bill is to protect investments made by the broadcasting industry and the integrity of the broadcasting system as a whole by fighting satellite piracy. To do so, the bill will target unauthorized dealers and the pirating of signals.

In particular, the government wants current changes it deems necessary to stop the sale and distribution of devices used to decode encrypted direct to home satellite signals without authorization. It is an excellent example of the government not taking the proper steps on an issue that is going to lead to confrontation in Canadian society and is the reason I do not support the bill being moved to committee at this time.

To be specific, the problem is that the bill is coming forward without dealing with the issue of satellite access to many cultural and other programs that are currently available abroad to different communities out there, providing those opportunities for people to purchase into the systems. They will now be further criminalized by the bill if they are accessing products and services that are not available legally in this country. I think the government should have been honest and should have actually worked on producing those access points for Canadians, be it for cultural or other types of programming for which people have been clamouring and which keeps them in connection with the community.

A report that came out of the Canadian heritage committee identified this issue. It was a report about the black and grey satellite market: “Maintaining a Single System”. In chapter 16 the committee recommended:

--that the CRTC permit Canadian broadcasting distribution undertakings to offer a wider range of international programming, while being respectful of Canadian content regulations.

Now the government has come forward with this bill, which will further criminalize people for keeping in touch with their cultural communities.

I noticed in Hansard that previous supporters of the bill seem to be falling back on the whole issue of protecting artists and broadcasting integrity in Canada to ensure that those individuals receive funds and the proper recognition they deserve for their products, and to encourage our Canadian culture to flourish. That is very suspect, with the government's past.

I want to be very clear about this. If a person is in the black market system and is stealing a signal that is legally available in Canada, we should stop that. We should have punishment for those individuals. Whether it is Bell ExpressVu, Shaw or whatever is currently available in Canada, it should not be an option for people to steal the signal and they should be punished accordingly for that. The problem is in that grey market where the services are not available. This also provides a good connection for individuals and communities to reach back to their former homelands, to have education and entertainment and that connection. Those individuals will now be further criminalized into that black market. I cannot support the bill for that reason.

The government is falling back on the whole notion that the bill will improve the access for artists to be able to receive funds and to make sure Canadian content prospers, but it is not really an improvement on its past practices. We recently had a motion put forward by the member for Dartmouth from our party which called for a tax deduction for artists. That would have been far better for those artists. The government voted against that and stopped the motion from going forward.

One of the main issues that we have to identify is how to provide people with the actual access to those cultural programs. In my community of Windsor, we have many people accessing programs which they would access in a legal way if they were provided the opportunity to do so. They could do so and pay into a system that supports Canadian culture. They would all be happy to do that and would support it.

We have to wonder where this issue is going. We look at the fact that Bell ExpressVu Canada and Shaw Communications have contributed over $320,000 to the Liberal Party and Paul Martin's leadership campaign--

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Deputy Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to thank all my colleagues for their cooperation today. As expected, the House leaders of all parties came to an agreement on Tuesday.

Discussions have taken place between the parties concerning the taking of the division on the motion to refer Bill C-2 to committee before second reading, which is scheduled for right now. I believe that if you were to seek it you would find unanimous consent for the following:

That at the conclusion of today's debate on Bill C-2, if a recorded division is requested on the motion of referral to committee before second reading, the said vote shall be deferred until 5:30 p.m on Tuesday, February 17, 2004.

Reinstatement of Government Bills

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-2 is part of the government's overall agenda. Perhaps the hon. member would understand the linkage I am making, if he would came out from hiding behind the gargantuan podium that he seems to be squirrelling behind back there.

Bill C-2 and my conversation of what I am saying about the bill is entirely appropriate. The motion we are talking about is the reinstatement of government bills. Bill C-2 was a government bill that was reinstated in a different format this morning, I will grant the member that. However, I am having a conversation here and putting on the record my thoughts about Bill C-2 and the overall government agenda, which is entirely appropriate.

If the member wishes me to address it more broadly, I would be more than prepared to do that. The Prime Minister was the choice of the member for Etobicoke North who stood up on a point of order. As was saying the beginning, this Prime Minister ran for Prime Minister of Canada stabbing the former prime minister in the back, saying that there were three reasons why he--

[The Acting Speaker (Mr. Bélair)]

As a matter of fact, the member spoke on Bill C-2 this morning. I still have to warn the member that we are still awaiting anxiously for him to tie up the previous remarks to government business Motion No. 2, and that is under the principle of reinstating bills.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I thought we were debating the reinstatement of bills, not Bill C-2. I thought we debated Bill C-2 earlier on in the day, and now we are on to the motion on the reinstatement of bills. I thought the member might be off topic. Perhaps he was not here this morning and he realized he should be debating this main motion.

[James Moore, Canadian Alliance, Port Moody—Coquitlam—Port Coquitlam, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will not be splitting my time, as I think might have been indicated to you earlier.

It is a pleasure to stand and speak on this, but unfortunately we are not dealing with new substantive policy questions or even, frankly, some substantive policy questions that are of real and predominant concern to my constituents or to the entire province of British Columbia.

In fact, the whole idea of bringing back old government legislation and not bringing forward anything new is probably awkward for a lot of Canadians who are watching this debate here today and who will be paying attention in the coming months as we head into an election campaign. They look to this House to get a sense of what the parties are about, of what makes us different and of how the current and new Prime Minister, the member for LaSalle—Émard and the former finance minister, is really any different from the former prime minister, whom he pushed out of office in what a political science professor described to me two days ago as a civilized coup d'état.

If we ask the average everyday Canadian for the three reasons why the current Prime Minister replaced the old prime minister at the Liberal convention in Toronto just a few months ago, I think most people would say the current Prime Minister pushed out the old prime minister for three broad reasons, number one being that the old prime minister had been around too long, that he was too old and it was time for him to go. In point of fact, the current Prime Minister is about the same age as the former.

The second reason given for why we had to get rid of the old prime minister is that there is a democratic deficit in the country and it has to be addressed. That was reason number two why we had to get the current Prime Minister into that chair as soon as we possibly could. The reality is that the current Prime Minister is engaged in his own dramatic democratic deficit by not allowing for the free sale of memberships in the Liberal Party of Canada, by not respecting the votes that we have had in the House in the past, by invoking closure in his first couple weeks in the House as the current prime minister, by not allowing provinces to elect their own senators, by not allowing free votes on gun legislation and a whole host of things.

Therefore, these were three arguments about why he should have been prime minister. First, the old prime minister was too old; he is the same age. The second reason is that the democratic deficit needs to be addressed; he has failed on that count already. The third reason he said that he had to be prime minister was that we had to have this new deal for cities, a new agenda, a new grand, big vision idea for cities. The reality is what we saw in the throne speech: he does not have a new deal for cities. There is no new grand vision for cities and municipalities in the country. What he proposed and in fact delivered in the throne speech, eventually through order in council, is that municipalities in the country will be allowed to get their GST rebated back to them effective February 1, 2004.

This is what that means, for example, for a city like the city of Port Coquitlam, which will be the largest city in the new riding of Port Moody--North Coquitlam. If it bought some new sand and salting trucks and spent $50,000 on those trucks, it would pay about 4% GST, normally, because municipalities do not pay the full freight. The government is now going to rebate the city the full GST. And that is it for the average mayor who was promised a big new deal.

Again, when we hear the words “new deal” a lot of people hearken back to FDR. We think of a grand vision, a new deal, a Marshall plan type of macro economic approach or a really dramatic central piece of legislation that dramatically changes the way the government functions or the economy is shifting or the government's relation to its citizens. But in fact, the new deal for cities that this Prime Minister put forward is really nothing. All it is, is a further GST rebate that further complicates the tax code, makes the GST less efficient than it was before and does not give to municipalities the steady stream of financing that they were expecting when the Prime Minister promised them a new deal for cities.

Also, the fake new deal for cities, and in fact, the new deal for suckers, as I have been calling it, is merely a GST rebate that allows the current Prime Minister to cut cheques to mayors across the country just in time for a general election, certainly with political IOUs inferred. That very deal of the GST rebate scheme that he has set up violates the very democratic deficit that he said he was coming into power to get rid of.

When he came into power, he said, “Got to get rid of the democratic deficit”. On October 7, 2003, the House voted--and the Standing Committee on Transport concurred--202 in favour of and 31 against, I believe it was, the federal government starting immediate negotiations with provinces to transfer gas tax points immediately to provinces and municipalities so they could get immediate cash going in. There is something about the vocabulary of this Prime Minister such that he apparently does not understand what the word “immediately” means, because he has completely failed to keep the promise of the House. He has betrayed the confidence of the House.

His own vote in the House, the vote of the current finance minister and all members of the House except the Bloc Québécois showed they believed that the real new deal should happen and gas tax dollars should be flowing to municipalities. This Prime Minister has again failed municipalities and instead is giving them a GST rebate. In fact, all it will do is allow him to cut a whole bunch of cheques--$48 million a month to the treasury--to cities and mayors so that he will look good just in time for a general election campaign.

It is cynical. It is bad tax policy and it makes the GST less efficient and opens it up for complications. It will require negotiations with provinces anyway because of the harmonized sales tax in Atlantic Canada. Also in some ways it may even be perceived by the people of Quebec, who are certainly rightly sensitive about these things, as yet again the federal government coming into an area of provincial jurisdiction, which is entirely inappropriate and has been done far too often by Liberal governments in the country.

I have some prepared remarks that I do want to read into the record about a bill that has been reinstated by the government, Bill C-2, which was put forward this morning in the House.

Bill C-2 is very troubling legislation. Again, as someone who is a passionate believer in personal liberty, free speech, openness and free markets, I think Bill C-2 betrays the very essence of what small “l” John Stewart Liberals of the federal Liberal Party were about at one time.

Bill C-2 would make it illegal for new immigrants to watch programming from the Middle East, Latin America or southeast Asia, simply because the station would not be distributed by a Canadian company. We have to wonder if the government even understands what the word “free” means.

For my generation, one of the basic rights is the right to channel surf, to watch what we want to watch, to have choice and to do it all as long as we are willing to pay and do it according to the law.

When this Prime Minister was my age, shortwave radio was the window to different cultures in far off lands. Freedom was the ability to tune into Radio Moscow or the BBC World Service and to get news that was unavailable elsewhere. It was also the grim feeling one got realizing that people in places such as Cuba, North Korea and the former Soviet Union were risking their lives by listening to the Voice of America or Radio Free Berlin.

In the 1960s freedom was based on radio signals. Over the past 40 years we have added pictures and gone digital. Today satellite television in places such as Afghanistan and Iraq is the primary symbol of liberty and openness and the images that they represent allow viewers to feel as though they are as free as a bird in the sky.

That the Prime Minister's very first bill in the House would target this technology with Bill C-2 tells me he fundamentally does not understand what freedom is about. Perhaps the Prime Minister thinks that freedom is really only distributed by the government, rather than sanctioned and prevented by the government. It is sad that the Prime Minister commonly mentions in his speeches people who he believes in profoundly in terms of ideological reasoning, people such as Pierre Trudeau, and people intellectually he believes are believers in freedom. He mentions Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King, who is a hero of mine, as passionate believers in free speech.

Yet his very first bill in the House of Commons, Bill C-2, would prevent freedom of speech and prevent ethnic and minority communities from having free access to people to speak their own language because cable companies do not happen to provide that kind of programming.

In fact, so out of step is the Prime Minister's first new bill with the priorities of ordinary Canadians that, when this issue was raised in the 2002 Windsor West byelection, the NDP won the seat that had been held by the Liberals for 39 years. It was a profoundly important issue in that election campaign.

It gets worse. Not only is the Prime Minister's first new bill out of step with the priorities of Canadians and potentially oppressive to minorities, it is actually useless in achieving the goals he has in mind. Anyone who has been paying attention to this issue knows that there is a high likelihood that Bill C-2 will become the object of a lengthy court battle.

By the time the courts settle the question, technology will have advanced to the point that Canadians will be watching TV via the Internet and laws such as Bill C-2 will simply be unenforceable.

One has to wonder why Bill C-2 would be the government's first priority. After all, on November 14, 2003, in accepting the Liberal leadership, he told Canadians, “We need a new approach to politics, to what we do and how we do it”.

[Jim Abbott, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is indeed a very interesting debate. It is particularly interesting because of the apparent hypocrisy of the position that the current Prime Minister is taking.

I used the word hypocrisy once in deference to the Chair. I used that word because on one side of the coin our current Prime Minister would like us to believe that this is a brand new government. He is a brand new Prime Minister with a brand new cabinet and a brand new approach to politics in Canada. Everything is completely brand new.

We are supposed to forget that under Jean Chrétien we had 10 years of an oppressive government that rammed things through the House and consistently whipped votes. For people who are not familiar with parliamentary language, that simply means that backbenchers were treated like trained seals. They were told how to vote. We are told to forget that.

We are told that the 10 years that we had under Jean Chrétien, which had very questionable parts to them, belong to the old Liberals. The new Prime Minister is brand new; everything is new. Everything is fresh such as new Tide or new Ultra or whatever the soap of the day is. Yet the Prime Minister turns around and says that he wants to recycle all of the bills or have the opportunity to recycle all of the bills that were passed in the previous two sessions.

In the previous two sessions these bills that went through the House of Commons were whipped bills. Backbenchers were told how to vote and they voted obligingly and obediently, notwithstanding the views, wishes, desires or direction of their constituents. Their constituents did not matter. It was because the Prime Minister at the time, the former House leader, who spoke a few minutes ago, the finance minister and now the Prime Minister, as one of the senior members of the government, told them how to vote and to heck with the constituents. The bills were just forced through.

The government wants to turn around and use this reinstatement legislation to pick and choose which of the bills from the old regime it wants to bring into this new regime. The government cannot have it both ways. Either he is a new Prime Minister, and he has a new cabinet and a new agenda, or he is a retread. He is simply digging back into the past into what he himself has said is a discredited past. The government cannot have it both ways. I find this absolutely astounding.

We have learned, and certainly I have learned in the 10 years that I have had the privilege of representing the people of Kootenay—Columbia, that the Liberals are masters at managing the news.

The government has a fairly heavy day coming at it tomorrow. The Auditor General will be reporting how much taxpayers' money was actually slid through to the supporters of the Liberal Party. We know that the national news media is in something of a frenzy at this point. I can pretty well guarantee, whether it is Global, CTV, CBC or the A-Channel or any other network, that the lead item on the 6 o'clock, the 10 and 11 o'clock news will be the Auditor General's report.

Why then would the government not take advantage of the fact that it will be the big issue tomorrow, as indeed it should be--certainly with the kind of abject waste and mismanagement, and in some cases criminal activity that occurred under the previous administration--and not just slide this closure through at that point? It is a very neat trick. The Prime Minister knows that the Liberals will be paying a dear price tomorrow, as they darn well should, and so he says “Why do we not just get this through?”

Is it not hypocritical on one side of the coin to say that he is new, that his cabinet is new--almost as though we had gone through an election for people who consider themselves to be the naturally governing party in a general election--and then turn around and say that he is going to take some of these old bills that have been passed?

We noted that the government under Jean Chrétien made use of time allocation 75 times and closure 10 times. That is a parliamentary record, as my colleague from Surrey pointed out. The Liberals used it 85 times to stifle debate in the House of debate, where I and the rest of the members have an opportunity to represent the views, wishes, desires and direction that we get from our constituents when we are home.

However, in spite of that, I point out that the former Prime Minister at least had the decency, such as it was, to wait a year and a half before he moved his first closure motion. I should point out, Mr. Speaker, and you may possibly have noted, that when Prime Minister Mulroney moved closure and time allocation, there were many opposition Liberal members who raised an awful howl and it was the worst thing in the world. Well, the former Prime Minister and the former House leader who just finished speaking eclipsed anything that Mr. Mulroney did.

The current Prime Minister has waited one week. We recall that in this chamber, exactly seven days ago following the Speech from the Throne, following this all new detergent that had occurred in this chamber, this all new Prime Minister and this all new party was starting afresh. And one week later, not a year and a half, he is bringing in closure.

The Prime Minister, in bringing this motion--and it does come fully with the approval of the current Prime Minister, let us be clear--has basically done more to drive the democratic deficit problem, to which he keeps on referring, deeper down and embed it further in this place than anyone in the history of the House of Commons.

The fact is that, as I believe my colleague was just pointing out with respect to the gun registry, on one side of the coin the Prime Minister says that he will empower all the backbenchers. What a revolutionary idea. My goodness, he must have come across the same thing that I did, and that was an advertisement showing Preston Manning, the then leader of the Reform Party, saying “Who does this seat in the House of Commons belong to?”

Our whole campaign, as the Reform Party in 1997, was around the issue that I, my party, all of my colleagues, and the leader of the day--and subsequently our party policy--would represent the views, wishes, desires and directions of the people of Canada from our seats. He must have seen the same advertisement and thought to himself, “My, what a great, revolutionary idea”. It took him seven years to find it, but he trots it out and says that he will allow free votes in the House of Commons.

The next day he was asked by my very competent colleague from Yorkton what he would do about the gun registry, the gun registry that has blown away $1 billion when it was only to cost $2 million, the gun registry which the government actually has ended up penalizing and registering law-abiding citizens, but on the other hand it will not register sex offenders. He was asked what he would do about that. Clearly we know there are people who are representing the views, the wishes, the desires and the direction of their constituents; there are people on the backbenches who want to do the right thing and abolish this crazy boondoggle gun registry, so the member asked the question.

It did not take the government a week to flip flop on that one as it has on closure. No, it took the government a bit less than 24 hours to flip flop on that one. Now when people come around and say that the member for Kootenay—Columbia and the member for Brandon—Souris have been around for 10 years, and would it not be nice if there were a government member on their side, then at least they would be getting proper representation, they should not believe it, because the Liberal backbenchers will continue to be whipped into shape.

I believe it was the House leader I just saw in news reports saying, “Actually, probably what the Prime Minister was referring to was that we could have free votes on private members' business”. How shallow is that? Unless the government decides that it will cherry-pick from private members' business, as my friend from Surrey has pointed out, and actually extract pieces of private members' business and put them into its own legislation and claim them for its own--and gee, that is something I have never heard of the Liberals doing before--unless we are talking about that, private members' business basically is nothing more than the ability for private members to give the government a bit of a push.

This is revolutionary. We will now have free votes in the House of Commons on private members' business. Guess what. We have had that for the last two sessions. What is new? Nothing is new, except in the Prime Minister's mind. He is talking about being new.

Let us take a look at some of the pieces of legislation that we have passed and which he does want to bring in. The one I am thinking of in particular, because I have some familiarity with it, is what is now called Bill C-2. It is a bill that will penalize people who are involved in bringing electronic equipment into Canada for the purpose of getting under the CRTC rules and by getting under the CRTC rules they can then make a profit by literally stealing signal from the providers of the satellite signal that is beaming down on earth.

As we debated earlier in the day, the Liberal approach is to say “Let us penalize. Let us go after them. Let us control it”. What a tremendous idea: let us control electronic innovation; let us control technology. I do not know what planet the Liberals come from. Certainly it does not have anything to do with this century or with the revolutions that are occurring electronically with computers, with satellites, with our ability to communicate. It borders on being impossible even to keep up with what is going on.

The Liberals are bringing in rules to try to control something that is uncontrollable, but it makes them feel better. We need a fresh approach on that bill. The legislation as it is presently written, technologically is simply not feasible.

Let us take a look at another one, the legislation on human reproduction. There was a bill that if there was ever any whipping going on, it would have gone on with that bill.

I recognize that the member is the former House leader and does not speak for the current government. He has raised that bill as an example of bills where the votes of the House of Commons have been done and therefore we should not be turning our backs on those votes. Clearly he has chosen to forget how he, as the government House leader giving direction to the whip of the day, had people quaking in their boots.

I do not know what kind of pressure the Liberals can put on their backbenchers to make some of them certainly appear to me to be voting against their most closely held personal values. I do not know what kind of pressure that is, but it is that pressure that has given us the raft of legislation that we presently have at various stages in the House or at stages in the other place. That legislation was all brought about as a result of a regime that the current Prime Minister claims to reject. He claims to reject it. How shallow is that? It is amazingly shallow.

In taking a look at the procedures that the House has at its disposal, I recognize that the former House leader, the member for Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, is probably a master of those procedures. Certainly he used all of his background and knowledge, his trips around the world and his time at Westminster to put pressure on his backbenchers and to use that kind of pressure within the House to push those bills through.

I therefore wonder how genuine it is for him to say that these bills have been passed and therefore we should be making sure they have the opportunity to be handled. He did not answer the question of my friend from Surrey. When my friend put it to him that this is the first time in British parliamentary history that a new prime minister has simply reached back into an old prime minister's grab bag of bills, he did not answer that question. I am sure my friend noticed that.

With the amount of background, understanding and knowledge that the former House leader has of the historic British parliamentary system around the world, it becomes very clear to me that we have probably hit on something. The new Prime Minister is actually creating history not only in Canada but in the British parliamentary system.

It is absolutely unconscionable that the Prime Minister and the government would bring this notice of closure to the House. It is unconscionable in itself. I am going through the dictionary in my brain and I am not capable of coming up with a word that would be creative enough perhaps to get past the Speaker's excellent chairing of this session. Let me just say I find it unbelievably amazing that the Prime Minister has the chutzpah to turn around and say that he is dealing with the democratic deficit in this way. He is saying that he is new. How can he say that with a straight face? The democratic deficit is real and its dain belongs to the Prime Minister.

Radiocommunication Act

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am extremely pleased to speak to Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act.

I would like to begin by saying that the Bloc Quebecois agrees with the principle behind this legislation. I think everyone would agree that we must find more ways to fight satellite piracy. Satellite signal piracy takes millions of dollars away from companies and is a threat to jobs that are extremely important both to the economy and to technology.

For many weeks, if not months, particularly through our member for Québec, the Bloc Quebecois has been working to have the Canadian Television Fund increased to $100 million, the amount it initially was intended to be, to ensure quality programming production in Canada and Quebec.

The Bloc Quebecois certainly does not condone piracy, a practice that is often misinterpreted by some people and that takes money away from extremely important broadcasting production.

As I said, we agree in principle. However, it is clear that we find some of the provisions in this bill, in particular the housekeeping measures, somewhat dangerous. We believe the amendments put forward in Bill C-2 go way too far, would invade privacy and could lead to abuses that go against the charter.

We agree in principle but we realize that a lot of work needs to be done on some of the provisions in Bill C-2. That work will have to be done in committee. Only then will we take a final stand on this issue. Obviously, if the amendments we expect to see are not made in committee, the Bloc Quebecois will not be supporting the bill at third reading.

However, as I said earlier, at this point, we wholeheartedly agree with the principle of the bill. We support the idea of implementing import control measures and providing for an import certificate to ban the importation of devices used for decoding satellite programming signals, unless the importer has previously acquired an import certificate issued by the industry minister.

As set out in the bill, we will have to ensure that, in accordance with the import certificate, the imported devices will not be used for purposes that would violate the Radiocommunication Act. This is extremely important.

Once again, although we support the bill in principle, the Bloc Quebecois will wait to see what amendments are made in committee. At that point--

[Jason Kenney, Canadian Alliance, Calgary Southeast, AB]

Mr. Speaker, first, I agree with the concerns expressed by my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois with respect to Bill C-2.

Bill C-2 would amend the Radiocommunication Act and substantially increase penalties for those who import, attempt to import, or operate equipment that receives unauthorized, non-licensed satellite signals.

I and my colleagues in the official opposition agree that it ought to be a criminal offence to illicitly intercept private satellite signals. These are copyrighted signals. For us to allow people to pirate them, disturbs the proper economic exchange between producers and owners of these signals. I agree that we ought to deal with the black market in satellite signal reception very seriously, and I support the elements of the bill which seek to do so.

I am concerned about the provisions which would permit police to enter the homes of Canadians and search through their possessions and the contents of their computer hard drives, et cetera, to discover evidence of satellite piracy. This is a draconian measure which is not a balanced approach to maintaining historic civil rights while at the same time prosecuting the law against piracy.

I am most concerned with the provisions in the bill as they relate to the so-called grey market satellite reception technology. Several hundred thousand Canadians purchased, in good faith, technology from dealers operating in Canada over the course of several years so they could receive satellite signals broadcast out of the United States. They did so in large part because those signals were offering a product which was unavailable in Canada thanks to the over-regulation of the Canadian Radio and Telecommunications Commission.

The CRTC over the course of several years has effectively banned the broadcast of hundreds of channels and video services. One area that I am particularly aware of is with respect to religious broadcasting.

Until quite recently, the CRTC had an outrageous policy which completely violated our tradition of freedoms of expression and religion, which prohibited so-called single faith broadcasters from being licensed in Canada. There are several single faith satellite broadcast services which are broadcast out of the United States. I know of a constituent who acquired a so-called grey market satellite service from the United States, with the bill being sent to her son's address in Montana, in order to receive a 24 hour Roman Catholic network out of the United States called EWTN. Essentially this is a harmless broadcast that offers programming related to the Catholic faith for Roman Catholics. It does not attempt to diminish other religions. It is simply an expression of religion.

The CRTC ruled repeatedly, after various applications through the 1990s, that EWTN could not receive a licence in Canada to broadcast either on cable or through satellite. Ironically, many of those who were advocates of freedom of expression and religion pointed out that on the same day the CRTC granted a licence to the 24 hour Playboy channel, it denied one to the Catholic EWTN network. Many people found it difficult to understand that the CRTC was maintaining Canadian values by licensing pornography but prohibiting religious broadcasting. If we believe in freedom of expression, then both applicants should have been given the same consideration.

For several years there is one example of an American satellite service which thousands of Canadians would have liked to subscribe to, but have effectively been prohibited in law from doing so by the mandarins at the CRTC. That is why these honest, law-abiding taxpaying Canadians in good faith contracted with Canadian dealers to receive an American signal. By so doing, they in no way jeopardized the economic position of licensed Canadian satellite broadcasters who were unable to provide the same service. Therefore, they were not put at any kind of competitive disadvantage.

We need to recognize the reality of modern communications technology. The advances in the Internet will mean that it is inevitable within a few years that people will be able to receive anything broadcast in real time over Internet signals. This raises several problems pertaining to copyright law which producers and broadcasters are experiencing in the music field right now. They will have to find solutions to deal, perhaps with civil remedies as the music industry has attempted to employ, with piracy of copyrighted materials on the Internet.

However, for us to believe that the CRTC can somehow seal off Canada from the reception of satellite signals broadcast from abroad is, I think, grossly naive.

Another aspect of the bill which I find troublesome is that it would actually assign the enforcement of the bill to police agencies. We know that many police agencies are understaffed and underfunded, that the RCMP has suffered cuts and that we simply do not even have enough mounted police officers to properly staff the intelligence and counterterrorism divisions. They are not even able to operate their coastal patrol vessels or aircraft. The budget for training at the Regina training depot has been diminished significantly. Yet the government wants to assign the task of inspecting black and grey market satellite technology in people's private homes to the RCMP and other police services.

I do not understand the government's skewed priorities. Why do we not give the resources to our police services to fight real crime, to make our streets and communities safer, rather than chase after honest law-abiding taxpaying Canadians who are simply contracting a service to receive a legal satellite signal broadcast, say from the United States. It makes no sense. It is reminiscent of the government's policy of employing hundreds of police officers and thousands of bureaucrats to maintain the long arm firearm registry which will not reduce crime, which will not prosecute a single criminal, but which merely criminalizes otherwise law-abiding Canadian duck hunters.

I believe the bill places the wrong emphasis with respect to law enforcement.

In closing, we would support certain provisions of the bill as they relate to cracking down on the black market, as long as there is adequate protection for civil rights, which is not clear in the bill, and as long as important police resources are not diverted from fighting real crime.

I believe that the CRTC itself should be restructured to reduce the outrageous power this agency has, and which it has so often abused, to violate the fundamental rights of Canadians to receive information which the CRTC designates arbitrarily to be somehow un-Canadian. The bill ought to give us an opportunity to consider that.

[Roy Cullen, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to speak on Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act to better combat illegal decoding of direct-to-home satellite television signals. The bill deals with the growing problem of piracy of signals for direct-to-home satellite television, or DTH. It aims to strengthen our ability to protect one of our important cultural industries.

I am reminded of a television ad that is quite poignant on this topic. It depicts a young boy who I think shoplifts something. At home his father lectures him about the fact that he has been caught stealing and that this clearly is something which cannot be tolerated. The young boy turns to his father and says “Well, Dad, you steal”. The father says “What do you mean? Of course I do not steal”. The young chap says “Well you do, with the satellite signal that you are picking up illegally”.

The word piracy itself of course means stealing. Pirates used to sail the seas and when they would come across a ship that was carrying goods, they would board the ship, perhaps kill everybody on board, and steal all the goods. Even today we have piracy. We have piracy off the coast of Asia. We have piracy off the coast of Africa. We may have piracy off the coast of North America, I do not know. However, this is a different type of piracy where people take telecommunication signals that do not belong to them and make a profit from it.

Our government does not want to target individual Canadian viewers, but rather the men and women who make piracy a lucrative business.

The bill is not targeted at individual Canadian viewers, but rather on those individuals who make piracy a business. The theft of satellite signals denies legitimate Canadian broadcasters, content producers and programmers millions of dollars a year. It robs money from an industry that supports thousands of jobs.

Like a lot of our legislation, the current legislation has not kept pace with our rapidly changing world, a world of telecommunications that has changed geometrically in the last few decades. We continually have to update our legislation to ensure that it reflects these new realities. What we have on the books today is simply inadequate to deal with the growing problems we are currently seeing. Law enforcement officials and industry lack the tools they need to deter the criminals who are importing, manufacturing and selling illegal signals.

How much of this is going on? The industry estimates that there could be up to 500,000 to 700,000 users of unauthorized DTH, or direct-to-home, services in Canada. These activities result in a loss of subscription revenues of about $400 million annually for the Canadian industry. The bill is about creating a fair marketplace for these companies to recoup the considerable investments they make.

I should note also that there is a public safety component to the bill before us. The use of pirated-receiver cards has been found to create signal interference with communications systems used by search and rescue services and by the police. The bill would reinforce existing laws in Canada. It has received widespread support from all actors and the Canadian Broadcasting System as well as law enforcement and customs officials.

Bill C-2 will also create a level playing field for Canada's cultural industries and ensure sustainable competition in broadcasting, for the benefit of Canadian consumers.

The bill, basically, is about creating a level playing field for Canada's cultural industries and ensuring sustainable competition in broadcast programming to the benefit of Canadian consumers.

Let me describe the ways in which the bill deals with satellite piracy. First, the government wants to make it more difficult to obtain the hardware required to steal a satellite signal. I know many of us go around to friends' homes where they sometimes have satellite dishes. Frankly, I never know what is legal and what is illegal. They are everywhere. Some of the satellite signals are legal and some are not. I think we need to make sure we know what is and what is not legal.

The bill would provide for better control at the border by requiring an import certificate issued by the Minister of Industry for anyone wishing to bring satellite signal decoding equipment into Canada.

Second, the bill would increase the penalties prescribed in the act to a level that would provide a meaningful deterrent to direct to home piracy.

Third, the bill would strengthen the existing right of civil action. It is difficult to prove a direct causal link between illegal conduct and the extent of the losses that they actually suffer. The bill would provide an option to seek statutory damages rather than being forced to prove actual damages.

The issue here is to prevent the erosion of the Canadian broadcasting system by preventing blatantly illegal activities.

The bill is much needed. It is about protecting those companies that have invested large amounts of money in legal programming. It protects actors, producers and those involved in this very important industry in Canada. It says that it is not acceptable to steal these goods, and these signals are goods. Even though they happen to be going through the sky, they are goods and they cannot be stolen. We need to be clear that whether someone robs something in a store or one robs a signal, these acts are equally not acceptable. We need to protect those who are making a living from the legal activities of this type of work.

I encourage all members to support this important bill, Bill C-2. It is a bill to amend the Radiocommunication Act to better combat illegal decoding of direct to home satellite television signals. It is much needed because our legislation is out of date and has not kept pace with the changes in this sector.

I urge all members of the House to support the bill when it comes to a vote.

[Réal Ménard, Bloc, Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise for the first time since we came back to the House. The debate today is on Bill C-2, which, obviously, is the second bill introduced after the throne speech.

Of course this is an important bill, but we would have preferred that the second bill before the House deal with the issue of health and the need to restore funding to 1994-95 levels, as requested by the premiers.

That said, it is still the case that the bill on broadcasting, or cable television, is important. The Bloc Quebecois, whose sense of responsibility is known to this House, has made it known through its heritage critic, the hon. member for Québec, that our members will support this bill.

Earlier, I was listening to my friend, the hon. member for Lotbinière—L'Érable, who made some very pertinent remarks. He comes from the cultural sector himself, having been a radio host for nearly a decade, I believe, at a station in his riding.

It came to me that this bill is to culture what tax invasion is to the government. Like anyone who has watched television from time to time, I have seen the advertising campaigns done by the artists. We may tend to forget the fact, but this bill concerns more than the industry; it also affects the creators—the broadcasters and the artists—because, when there is piracy, when consumers receive music or programs they have not paid for, then royalty payments are smaller and it is the creators who are penalized.

We know that the creative genius of artists is very significant, vibrant and dynamic in Quebec and—I will not argue—in the rest of Canada, even though these two cultural agendas may conflict once in a while. As you know, Quebec has chosen the path of a common public culture, while the rest of Canada has chosen the path of multiculturalism. But this is not the time to discuss that.

So, Bill C-2 deals in a rather appropriate way—and this is why the Bloc Quebecois will support the principle of this legislation—with the issue of piracy, specifically as regards satellite signals.

This is not a minor issue considering that a coalition set up to deal with the theft of satellite signals or, in other words, to fight the pirating of these signals, estimates that, and this is unfortunate, between 500,000 and 700,000 homes in Canada are receiving satellite signals without proper authorization.

The bill proposes increased monitoring mechanisms that will, I believe, be twofold.

The overall responsibility will be given to the new Minister of Industry, the hon. member for Westmount—Ville-Marie, who, as we know, has fulfilled major duties in this House. When she was first elected, in 1997 if I am not mistaken, she was appointed minister of Labour. Then, the Prime Minister gave her the Immigration portfolio. At the time, I was our party critic on immigration issues and I hope the minister has fond memories of those days. Later on, she became the President of the Treasury Board, where she played a more discreet role. Now, she is the Minister of Industry.

Under clause 5, the Minister of Industry will have very important powers, because she will be the one who will issue the certificates authorizing the import of satellite signals. She will have to take into consideration a number of factors before issuing such certificates.

Up to this point, we support the bill. We fully realize that this is the role of the legislator and we do not question the fact that radio broadcasting and telecommunications are a federal jurisdiction.

The problem is that the line between the right of the legislator to enforce a law concerning satellite broadcasting and programming and the right to privacy is not all that clearly defined.

The Bloc Quebecois, through our industry critic, the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, who also happens to be an experienced parliamentarian, will be asking for the privacy commissioner to appear before the committee.

Why is it so important to hear what the privacy commissioner has to say? First, as we know, for the last five, six or seven years, personal and identifiable information has become a matter of great concern for legislators.

I would like to digress for a moment. As we all remember, the government erred when it proposed setting up a megafile. In cooperation with the Canada Customs and Revenue Agency, the former minister of Human Resources Development wanted to establish a megafile that would have greatly invaded people's privacy. At the time, the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, leader of the Bloc Quebecois, called for the megafile to be dismantled. The privacy commissioner supported the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie, who warned the public about this. Therefore, confidential, personal and identifiable information is a matter of great concern.

The problem with this bill is that it will create an inspection program. Under the authority of the industry minister, inspectors would be able to enter dwellings. If there is a presumption or evidence of piracy, searches as defined under criminal law will be carried out.

That can be risky. As the member for Lotbinière—L'Érable has said, the systems for signal theft may be part of a computer program. As my friend, the hon. member for Portneuf is aware, when a computer search is carried out, other more general information may be found as well. There may be personal information about dating, family photos and the like, but there may also be financial or medical information, or accounting details.

When a computer search is carried out, how can we be sure people's rights will not be encroached upon, and the information gathering will not infringe on people's right to privacy? This is why the Bloc Quebecois will introduce amendments in committee that will enable us to place wiser and more appropriate limits on inspection powers.

Unfortunately, I am obliged to say that this is not the first time in this House that powers have been assigned to inspectors which would allow them to go beyond reasonable limits. I must add that the Minister of Industry—and everyone knows, moreover, what friends we are—did nothing to reassure us when she rose to speak. She did not tell us what sort of intervention is planned, and how the power of the inspectors will be kept within wise limits.

There is one other thing, and this will conclude my remarks. We are also concerned by the fact that the costs of the seizure could be borne by consumers. This is another thing that must be verified. This could violate individual rights to privacy.

In short, this is not a bad bill. We recognize that the lawmaker must intervene in all matters relating to the illegal decoding of satellite signals. There is recognition here for our creators, artists and everyone else making their living from the cultural industry. However, we believe that this goal, as noble as it is, must not lead to actions that would violate the right to privacy. The powers relating to search and seizure as set out in the bill do cause some concern.

As a result, the Bloc Quebecois will ask the Privacy Commissioner to appear before the committee.

As members know, committees are no place for partisanship. Parliamentarians do not always give the best of themselves in this House. All parties give the best of themselves in committee, when public hearings are held, when people are heard and when we manage to improve a bill.

Naturally, the government must be prepared to listen. We have great hopes that this will be the case.

[Gurmant Grewal, Canadian Alliance, Surrey Central, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise on behalf of the constituents of Surrey Central to debate Bill C-2, the Radiocommunication Act, regarding satellite TV piracy.

The bill was introduced in the House in the second session and it was called Bill C-52 at that time. It did not proceed beyond first reading. Now we are getting less than a day to rush it through. I do not approve of the manner in which the government House leader is rushing the bill through by giving us less than one day to debate it at second reading.

The main purpose of the bill is to stop piracy and the illegal utilization of satellite signals.

Bill C-2 would increase the penalties and would provide for civil remedies against those individuals or corporations who sell and use illegal radiocommunication equipment, specifically satellite dishes that receive signals from satellite television stations who do not get licences from the CRTC.

In addition, Bill C-2 would strengthen inspection powers and would make the importation of unlicensed equipment without an import certificate an offence. That is what Bill C-2 is supposed to do, stop piracy and the illegal utilization of satellite signals. It is important because there are two types of illegal activities that are going on.

The first one is called the grey market. This is where Canadians subscribe to U.S. satellite services with the bill sent to a U.S. address. They give an address in the U.S. by credit card or by other means. They pay their bills but outside Canada.

In April 2002 the Supreme Court confirmed that federal broadcasting law prohibits Canadians from receiving direct to home satellite TV programs from providers other than Bell ExpressVu and Star Choice Communications Inc. That decision followed several court battles in which grey market dealers argued that the broadcasting laws were unconstitutional under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as the government was directing Canadians on what they could watch on their TVs. There were some court battles and the determination by the court was that grey market was illegal in Canada.

The other type of illegal activity is the black market. In the black market, Canadians who are subscribing to those services are not paying anything. They are using equipment by illegal means to decode signals and use or receive the satellite signals without using the usual subscriber's way of paying. It is actually a theft of the signals.

The industry argues that the illegal receipt of satellite signals reduces the revenue of so-called legitimate providers by $400 million. It is also estimated that about 750,000 Canadian households currently receive unauthorized signals.

In my opinion, both of these activities, whether it is the grey market or the black market, break the law; however, the degree of breaking the law is different. Theft is one thing, but paying it outside the system, in the U.S., is another thing.

I would like to argue why this activity is illegal in the first place.

Canadians should have the ability to watch any television signal they want. They should not be restricted in their choices. I believe that limiting Canadians to watching certain signals would not be appropriate. I have objections to some of the Canadian signals we get on television. However, people have a choice. If they want to have those signals available, they have a choice. I may or may not like certain subjects shown on television. It may be restrictive as far as my ideology is concerned, but other people need some choice. Canadians deserve to have choice.

Some people think that American signals should not be allowed in the Canadian market, probably to restrict or to ensure that Canadian culture is not affected. I believe that our Canadian culture is not that fragile. We should not only look with tunnel vision; we should have a broader perspective of other cultures and other contents. Canadians should have the choice to subscribe to the signals they want to have.

Canadians can do better when they are given fair competition in the market. For example, in the wine industry, Canadians have done very well when the market was fair and open. Canadians love competition and they can survive competition.

We are very proud of the high level of technology that we have. On the other hand, there are certain satellite providers for some specific programs and they are not available to Canadians in the Canadian market, other than through foreign programs, for example, ethnic programs.

Ethnic producers are scattered all around. They may not have enough resources to put their own television programs together. So if one channel is broadcasting those ethnic programs, people should have the ability to subscribe to those specialized ethnic television programs. They could be scientific or educational programs.

In ethnic communities, for example, there are Spanish television programs. I am not aware of any Spanish television programs in Canadian content nor of Indo-Canadian, Chinese or Korean programs. If they can broadcast and the signals can be received in Canada, I think people should have the choice to subscribe to those signals.

We know that technology is evolving very fast. Canadians have access to the Internet. We know that broad spectrum Internet services could be available. We can access the broadcasting system by Internet, listen to the radio frequency and receive newspapers and magazines. We can buy CDs, DVDs and those kinds of things. Why is there a restriction on television signals?

That is a serious concern. Canadians should be given more choice in order that we can provide better services to Canadians.

If this illegal activity has to be stopped, the border is a good place to address the problem of distribution of satellite dishes that are currently considered illegal in Canada. At the same time, we want assurances from the Minister of Industry that snowbirds will not be harassed or charged. Snowbirds are those people who winter some place in the U.S. and come back in the summer along with their satellite dishes. They should not be penalized.

We also support the clause that allows Bell and Shaw to take action against some of the black market providers through civil court rather than through the criminal court. However, we are unclear as to whether any police resources will be used in this type of action.

We should not tie up our RCMP resources. For example, in Hamilton, 69 RCMP officers and 12 individuals from Industry Canada were tied up by one satellite dish case. That should not be the case. Broad inspection provisions as outlined in the bill should be in place. We also recognize that other electronic devises such as computers and other things are linked to satellite piracy.

Finally, the issue is not just about breaking the law. It is about allowing Canadians the freedom to watch what they want to watch.

I would like to conclude that it will not be possible for me to support the bill as it is. We need these assurances. Of course theft should be prevented, but the liberty to have choices in what we watch should also be there.

[Odina Desrochers, Bloc, Lotbinière—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, it is with pleasure that I rise today to speak to Bill C-2. Once again, this is a bill about problems which force us to deal with a situation in the quickly changing world of communications and computer technology.

Before getting into Bill C-2, let me say that signal theft is nothing new. In the early eighties, when pay television was introduced in Quebec and Canada, some people immediately started making and selling decoders so that viewers could receive pay television channels. Who out there has not tried to rig the cable wire to hook up one and then two televisions, or the radio set?

Such behaviour has taken root over the last twenty years. However, the lawmaker never introduced legislation to make people understand that, whenever they steal signals, be it cable or satellite signals which we are discussing today, many companies are losing substantial revenues. As I said, satellite piracy takes millions away from Canadian broadcasters and various funds like the Canadian Television Fund.

This bill was first introduced in the House in October 2003. Members know that our agenda was seriously disrupted by the changes on the other side. Parliament was prorogued and a new Prime Minister came into office. As a result, they are once again playing catch up on the legislative agenda, that is, they are trying to show that at least some of the bills are being reinstated. This one was called C-52 before prorogation and was considered to be as priority. It is being reintroduced today as Bill C-2, but no bona fide solution to the satellite piracy issue has yet been found.

Recently, print and television ads have been broadcast widely to raise public awareness of people who buy decoders. However, things go so fast that, as soon as companies like Star Choice or Bell ExpressVu put new products on the market, decoders are immediately put on the market to allow their customers to steal the signals.

In Canada, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 700,000 households engage in this kind of theft. According to the coalition formed to fight piracy, this is causing the Canadian broadcasting system to lose an estimated $400 million per year.

Often, our colleagues rise in the House to ask that Star Choice or Bell ExpressVu provide better services to the regions. Every time broadcasters have to make cuts, the regions are always the hardest hit. We are receiving signals from the United States, but have difficulty finding out what is going on in certain regions of Quebec. We have the same satellite and are charged the same price, but the regions are always the ones penalized.

Not only must the bill deter dealers from importing and selling unauthorized equipment in Canada, but a change in attitudes must also be brought about. In the last 20 years, this has become normal practice, not only with respect to cable and television. We know of the many artists from Quebec and Canada whose CDs are being copied, which is very costly to them in lost earnings. We are also aware that the artist's share of the profits on the sale of CDs and DVDs is extremely small. With the little money they get out of this big production machine, artists find themselves in financial difficulty.

Also, performance fees are based on official ratings and do not take into account stolen signals. In fact, sweeps are carried out using the devices installed, to monitor media penetration. But when signals are stolen, sweeps become unreliable. If a many decoder users tune in to Canada-wide television programs showcasing artists from Quebec or Canada, they alter or distort the results.

I do hope we will be able to tackle this issue head on. We have, however, to rely on accepted standards. We should not go overboard and have inspectors or investigators enter houses to see if there are decoders or not.

The right to enter dwellings is important, but I think investigators and inspectors should rather target those who sell the products. We could work in cooperation with the sales representatives of Star Choice and Bell ExpressVu, who certainly know where the decoders end up. I think the legislation should focus more on those who manufacture and sell the products than on officials entering dwellings to determine whether homeowners are in possession of decoders.

More specifically, clause 5 of the bill would allow inspectors to enter a home and examine any computer they might find. As we know, with today's technology and computer science, decoders are often found within computer software. Also, in our households, the computer is where much of our private and confidential information is stored. People often use computers to file their income tax returns. They use them to do the record keeping for their farms or small and medium businesses, as the people in Lotbinière—L'Érable do.

This bill would give inspectors the authority to seize computers. Not only could they search for software, but they would have access to any private or confidential information stored in the computers. We cannot, on the one hand, make it possible to eliminate the scourge of piracy and, on the other, give investigators the authority to invade people's privacy.

The privacy commissioner should come to testify and guarantee that Bill C-2 is consistent with existing legislation. For some time now in this Parliament, especially since the events of September 11, 2001, we have been quick to allow investigations and detailed inspections. We are losing sight of what is important: protecting the public.

I hope the government will take the time to focus on the possible danger with respect to clause 5 in Bill C-2. In our efforts to eliminate piracy, it is important that we have tools that are consistent with existing legislation and that will, together with what already exists for protecting privacy under the Civil Code or the Criminal Code, provide a real solution to this problem.

Above all, people need to change their behaviour. The trend toward stealing cable signals, and now satellite signals, started some 20 years ago. Where will it all end? I do not know, but I hope everyone is well aware of what this bill involves.

[Charlie Penson, Canadian Alliance, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has said not according to the Supreme Court. I and many of my constituents see it differently.

The reason I see it differently is this product is not available in Canada. People bought their dishes a long time ago to receive a product and they continue to be serviced.

There are two companies that have licences and property rights in Canada to service the Canadian market through a product they have developed and paid good money for with regard to programming. Those two companies are Bell ExpressVu and Shaw Star Choice. I have one of them in my home.

I have quite a few neighbours who have other satellite dishes that do not receive and do not pirate product from Shaw Star Choice or Bell ExpressVu. They only receive the product that comes to them from the United States and which they currently cannot get in Canada. They made huge investments some 20 years ago. I see that as being different. I see it somewhat like a radio signal.

Bill C-2 would amend the Radiocommunication Act. We have always had radio waves coming through the air and often we listen to international programming from different parts of the world. In fact, Canada does that itself; Radio Canada International broadcasts to other countries in eastern Europe and to the United States. I often hear listeners from the United States phoning in during CBC radio programs.

That is the way we should develop this industry. Instead of trying to build borders around Canada as the Liberal government has done in several areas, we should be looking for openings and opportunities to service the whole big world out there. We do it with radio. Where do the people who develop radio programs get their money? They get it from advertisers who are looking for a market. They are not concerned if somebody in the United States listens to a Canadian radio station and vice versa. We should treat television in the same way.

I would look for some kind of international agreement between us and the United States that would open up that market to us. There are almost 300 million people living in the United States. We have a product to sell and we need to sell it on the basis of quality. We should not build protective walls and borders around our country, which is difficult to do anyway.

The member who spoke before me talked about people trying to develop ways to hack into the system and technology companies having to figure out ways to block them. It would be far better for us to receive those signals and let the United States receive signals from Canada based on a reciprocity agreement.

As the critic for international trade, I see this as a growth area, not something we should be trying to build barriers against and looking for restrictive markets as the government has done in areas like supply management for example. There is a whole broad world out there that we need to service. Canada has good programming and it will get even better with better actors and better people to service that industry as a result of that big market.

That is where I see the difference between our party and the Liberal Party. We look at this as an opportunity and not as a big problem as the Liberals would have us believe.

If people are stealing the encryption, that is a problem, but a lot of people are not doing that. What they are doing instead is they are listening to and watching a product that they currently cannot get in Canada.

What does the bill essentially do about it? The penalties have been raised pretty high, doubling the amount of jail time up to a year. I heard the minister say earlier in debate that the government is not going after the little guy, just the companies. How soon will it be until the next move will be to go after the little guy?

Our police forces will not be out there just trying to enforce gun regulation which is completely out of sync with what people are talking about. They will be out there going door to door, checking to see if people have large satellite dishes and trying to shut them down. That is the next step. I think this is a total overreaction.

The solution is not police enforcement, not a lot of people dedicated to driving around spying to see if people have satellite dishes. The solution is to open up the market and have a larger vision of where Canada needs to go in the future. Yes, 30 million people is a nice market, but think of the 300 million people next door that we could service with a quality product, if we had that opportunity.

How would we do that, because the United States has restrictions as well. We have to take advantage of opportunities with the United States to talk about issues that are important to us. We have an industry on the telecommunications side that is saying we should open it up so that we can get investment from the United States and other places. I was the industry critic for some time. The government says that no, we have to restrict investment in those industries. The industries themselves are asking for it to be opened up because they see a wider market available to them. They see the opportunity.

Where the government sees a problem, the Conservative Party sees an opportunity. Let us exploit that opportunity to our benefit. Let us not go around trying to plug the dam with a finger every time there is a leak. Let us tap into the energy that is the technology that is going to enable us to enhance our market share and provide opportunities for our people to develop quality product and programming that people will buy no matter where they live. That opportunity is there if we would just let Canadians respond to the innovation. I know they are capable of it.

[Charlie Penson, Canadian Alliance, Peace River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am happy to participate in the debate on Bill C-2, formerly Bill C-52 which was introduced in the House a while ago.

I believe that Bill C-2 is an overreaction to a problem that is quite a bit smaller than the government would have us believe.

Many of my constituents have large satellite dishes. They receive programming from the United States that they currently cannot get in Canada without their satellite dishes. I see a huge difference between the grey market and the black market.

[Sarmite Bulte, Liberal, Parkdale—High Park, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today in the House to support Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act.

Bill C-2 would amend the Radiocommunication Act to add import control measures in respect of radio apparatus or devices used for decoding encrypted subscription programming signals. It would make importation of them without an import certificate an offence and would provide for the issuance of the certificates, as well as for ministerial exemptions from the requirement.

Finally, it would provide measures to facilitate compliance with and enforcement of the act, including adding certain inspection powers, increasing penalties, and providing the option for a person who pursues a civil remedy to elect statutory damages.

Let me begin by commending the Minister of Industry for immediately proceeding with this legislation. In June 2003, the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage tabled its report after a two year study of the Canadian broadcasting system. I had the opportunity to participate in that study, first as a parliamentary secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage and then as a member of the committee.

The issue of the black and grey satellite markets was extensively reviewed and the issues in fact discussed in chapter 16 of that report, which is entitled “Our Cultural Sovereignty: The Second Century of Canadian Broadcasting”. I am pleased to say that in fact this study is now being used throughout Canada at Canadian universities as the textbook, the must read text, for the study of broadcasting in Canada.

As noted in the heritage committee's report, satellite distributors in Canada account for 1.7 million of the total 2.8 million--or over 60%--of all digital television subscribers. The CRTC currently licenses two suppliers to provide direct to home, or DTH, satellite television services to Canadians. One is Bell ExpressVu and the other is Star Choice, which is owned by Shaw Communications. What is important for all members of the House to know, and for Canadians to know, is that no other North American company is licensed to provide satellite signals to Canadians.

It is also important to understand how this technology works. Satellite and broadcasting technology allows a television broadcaster to send a signal to a satellite which is located in orbit above the earth. That satellite will send back the same signal, covering a portion of the earth's surface, which is known as a signal's footprint. The technology thus allows a signal to be sent directly to any place that has a device for receiving the signal, hence the term direct to home, or DTH, television.

In order to protect the commercial value of satellite television services, the signals are encrypted or scrambled by the broadcaster. To be received in intelligible form, the signal must be decoded or descrambled. If viewers wish to receive these signals, they must subscribe to the channel or channels providing the signals. Upon purchasing the necessary hardware and paying a fee, the broadcaster will supply viewers with some form of authorization unique to the subscriber's decoder, allowing them to receive the signals.

However, as we have heard today and as we all know, our satellite programming services and signals are being stolen--and I cannot help but emphasize the word stolen--by various means designed to circumvent the proper operation of the authorization system.

Again, let me remind the House of what is actually taking place here. Satellite programming signals are encrypted. Authorized subscribers are provided with a control access module or a smart card and decoder by the DTH distributor, but it is possible for hackers to develop technology to decode the encryption. Periodically, therefore, the distributors change the encryption of their signals as a means of eliminating users who have gained unauthorized access to their programming and thus are stealing it. The hackers respond again by building technology to break this new code.

So what we have here is a cat and mouse game, where the companies are always trying to stay one step ahead of the signal pirates and the pirates are equally resourceful in finding ways of breaking the signal.

Signal theft is illegal and the RCMP has stepped up its enforcement of the law. The bill before us supports its efforts by providing penalties that will act as a deterrent once a violator has been prosecuted. This is the remedy for criminal action.

There is another way to deter signal piracy and that is through civil action on the part of the DTH distributors. The bill before us will help encourage legitimate satellite companies to pursue civil action thereby helping reduce the cost of police enforcement of the law.

Let me first explain that under the current civil law regime, victims of satellite piracy, that is, the legitimate satellite companies, are required to show what their losses are. However, pirating is an underground activity. It is very difficult to provide accurate evidence of the real damage.

Under this bill the victims of piracy will be able to opt for statutory damages that will help compensate them for the theft of their intellectual property. Again I have to remind everyone we are talking about theft. We are talking about stealing.

Where pirates are engaged in signal theft for commercial gain, the courts will be able to impose a statutory fine of a maximum of $100,000. Yes, this is a substantial fine but it is designed to be more than simply a cost of doing business for the signal pirates.

For individuals convicted of signal theft, the amount of damages remains the same, capped at $1,000. This is still a significant amount for an individual. It should remain as a deterrent when the satellite companies pursue civil action against individuals.

I do want to emphasize that the focus of the bill before us is not on the individuals who violate the act so much as those who in fact establish businesses that violate the act for commercial gain. We want to deter their trafficking in illegal satellite equipment.

Nor is the focus of Bill C-2 on the hackers who develop the pirate technology. Hackers are individuals who normally are not business people. They are usually motivated by the challenge of hacking encrypted systems, not by profits. They are not likely to be deterred by the threat of financial loss. Once again we can make sure that the businesses that buy their products and use their products for commercial gain are penalized. That is in fact what the bill does, both through the criminal fines and through the statutory fines in the event of a successful civil action.

Businesses that provide television programs need to recover the investment they make in their businesses. When they suffer losses due to piracy, their business viability is threatened. The result is lost jobs and investment in the broadcasting industry and most important, investment in Canadian programming. The satellite and cable companies want fair competition. They cannot compete with free TV and neither should they.

Bill C-2 will not only act as a deterrent to those who would compete unfairly through illegal means, it also gives the victims of piracy a chance to recover some of the revenues they have lost through illegal activities. It will help create an open and fair marketplace for television broadcasting in Canada. That is good for the industry and in the long run for Canadian viewers.

In conclusion, I hope hon. members will join me in supporting this bill.

[Gary Schellenberger, Progressive Conservative, Perth—Middlesex, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act. Before I begin to discuss the content of the bill, I would like to give the House an overview of this industry and its customers. It is impossible to discuss Bill C-2 without understanding two very different concepts and making a clear distinction between them.

The two concepts are the grey market and the black market.

The technology that allows consumers to view satellite signals is the key to the black and grey markets. To watch satellite television, we must buy a satellite receiver and an access card from the satellite company. We subscribe to channels we want by calling the satellite company--in Canada, that is either Bell or Shaw--choosing channels and giving them our credit card. Then the access card, which has a small chip on the back, is inserted into the receiver so that the channels that have been paid for can be watched. The access card will work only in the machine that it came with and the receiver will not work without the access card.

Once it is understood that one must subscribe to satellite channels and that an access card is required to confirm that subscription, it allows us to discuss the difference between the black market and the grey market.

The first is the black market. Thieves steal the satellite signal. Instead of paying a subscription and using an access card, the thieves replace the access card with an AVR board, or an HU or P4 card, to fool the receiver into thinking that a subscription has been paid. Every Canadian who uses this technology steals roughly $100 a month of TV programming from a satellite company.

What is worse, the cards that fool satellite receivers also emit radio signals that may interfere with military emergency radio equipment. Not only is it theft, it is dangerous. According to Industry Canada, the interference caused by these hacked signals has caused search and rescue officials to think aircraft have crashed when they have not. Hacked signals have also interfered with military operations in Cold Lake, Alberta.

While no one can provide us with the exact numbers as to the size of the black market, a recent Léger Marketing survey showed that fully 20% of the people receiving Bell ExpressVu signals were not paying for the service.

I want to be clear that the Conservative Party and the vast majority of Canadians are firmly opposed to the black market.

Now let us look at the grey market, in which a Canadian subscribes to a satellite service provider that is not licensed by the CRTC, such as Dish Network or DirecTV, for access to TV channels. In every case in the grey market the viewer is lawfully paying for the signal and he is paying the company that owns the satellite from which the signal is being distributed. He is respecting copyright by paying the owner of the satellite, who in turn pays the TV networks that produce the programs.

In the grey market, the client pays the full price for what he or she watches. Clients pay a service charge to the dealer. The satellite company bills the client's credit card every month. The client sees the satellite company's bill on his credit card statement and watches only those channels to which he or she has subscribed.

So why do we go to the United States and beyond for television? To access cultural and religious broadcasting that is not available in Canada.

For example, I understand that Latino Canadians subscribe to Dish Latino, which offers 20 Spanish language channels from Mexico, Chile, Spain and the U.S., as well as a news channel that features local news from virtually every Spanish speaking country in the Americas. The price is roughly $30 Canadian per month. Currently some Canadian satellite channels carry blocks of weekly Spanish programming, seven hours here and three hours there.

Arab Canadians typically subscribe to Dish Network's Arabic elite pack, offering 10 channels from Dubai, Egypt, Lebanon and Qatar for roughly $40 Canadian.

Many Canadian Christians who are looking for faith based family broadcasting subscribe to Sky Angel, a satellite service company offering roughly 36 channels.

One of the problems with Bill C-2 is that it ignores the bigger issue. Access to programming has been restricted by the CRTC and Canadian content rules. This bill is not just about breaking the law but about allowing Canadians the freedom to watch what they want regardless of Canadian content restrictions.

The Conservative Party agrees with the June 2003 recommendation of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage:

...that the CRTC permit Canadian broadcasting distribution undertakings to offer a wider range of international programming, while being respectful of Canadian content regulations.

There are other issues raised by the bill that have caused the Conservative Party concern. First, we need clarification as to how and if precious RCMP and local police resources will be used. While the bill does allow for civil procedures, we are still not clear as to whether or not RCMP resources will be used. As my colleagues have mentioned, a recent satellite investigation in Hamilton engaged 69 RCMP officers and 12 Industry Canada employees. Clearly this is an inappropriate use of taxpayer resources.

Second, we are concerned that the inspection provisions have been broadened. While we recognize that other electronic devices such as computers are linked with satellite piracy, the power to open any package or container that may be related to satellite piracy is an issue we would like to explore in committee.

I would like to close on a positive note. There are aspects of this bill we support. We support the importation initiatives, with provisions. We agree that the border is a good place to address the problem of distribution of satellite dishes that are currently considered illegal in Canada. However, we hope this initiative does not stop the grey market viewer who legitimately pays for a service and programming currently unavailable in Canada.

We would also like better assurances from the Minister of Industry that snowbirds will not be harassed or charged when they bring their dishes across the border for summer storage.

We support the idea that Bell and Shaw can take action against some of these providers through civil court rather than criminal court.

I would like to close by saying that the Conservative Party has concerns about Bill C-2, but we are looking forward to reviewing this legislation in committee to see if we can tighten it up and address the cultural issue the bill raises.

[Peter Adams, Liberal, Peterborough, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in support of Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act to better combat illegal decoding of direct-to-home satellite television signals.

The bill deals with the growing problem of piracy of signals for direct-to-home satellite television. It aims to strengthen our ability to protect one of our most important cultural industries. I am particularly glad to speak on this because I, like many Canadians, love television and good movies. We are speaking particularly with respect to the cultural industry in Canada. Piracy of any sort of artists' work, of illegitimately taking the benefits of creative work, is something we should be trying to stop all around the world.

Having said that, I will not speak greatly about the penalties. One of my colleagues has said that in this case the penalties for this should fit the crime. As the crime is piracy, I want to be on the record as saying that although I agree the penalty should be commensurate with the crime, the normal penalties I have heard for piracy are keelhauling and hanging people from the yardarm. I do not support penalties of that type, but I do support severe penalties for those who pirate these signals.

The theft of such satellite signals denies legitimate Canadian broadcasters, content producers and programmers millions of dollars a year. It robs money from an industry that supports thousands of jobs. That, by the way, is the financial measure of what is going on. What is much more significant is that this piracy, by denying some income to artists, stultifies creativity. It is creativity of human beings, whether it be in the arts, business or wherever, that we as a government should be trying to nurture and encourage.

The existing legislation is simply inadequate to deal with the growing problems which we are seeing. Law enforcement officials in the industry lack the tools they need to deter the criminals who are importing, manufacturing and selling illegal technologies. We do not want to target individual Canadian viewers, but rather those men and women who are making piracy of signals a business.

The industry estimates that there could be from 500,000 to 700,000 users of unauthorized direct-to-home services in Canada. That is a shocking figure. I believe that many people who do this do not think of the true consequences to creativity in Canada.

Research in the industry concludes that these activities imply a loss of subscription revenues of about $400 million each year to the Canadian industry. These companies need a fair marketplace to recoup the considerable investments they are making.

There is also a public safety component to the bill. The use of pirated receiver cards has been found to create signal interference with communications systems used by search and rescue services and the police. By committing this illegal act of downloading the signals, these people are also putting at risk police, fire people and others. It is like someone who rings a fire alarm illegally. The fire engine and the fire crews go out to the non-existent fire while there is a fire occurring somewhere else.

The bill reinforces existing laws in Canada. It has received widespread support from all the actors in the Canadian broadcasting system as well as law enforcement and customs officials. The bill will help to provide a level playing field for Canada's cultural industries and ensure sustainable competition in broadcast programming to benefit all Canadian consumers.

The bill proposes to discourage satellite piracy in three ways.

First, it will make it more difficult to obtain the hardware required to steal a satellite signal. This will be done by providing for better control at the border by requiring an import certificate issued by the Minister of Industry for anyone who wishes to bring satellite signal decoding equipment into the country. That is a very appropriate action.

Second, the bill would increase the penalties prescribed in the act to a level that provides a meaningful deterrent to this type of piracy. I made the joke about it before. In our law I do not believe in keelhauling for this type of piracy, but I do believe in very strong penalties for it. It is a serious matter, not just a financial matter but something that goes to the heart of Canadian culture.

Third, the bill would strengthen the existing right of civil action. It is difficult to prove a direct causal link between illegal conduct and the extent of the losses they actually suffer. Under the bill, it would be provided that there is an option to seek statutory damages rather than being forced to prove actual damages.

We are talking about preventing the erosion of Canada's broadcasting system by stopping activities that are clearly illegal. We all agree Canada's broadcasting system is one of the bases of our nation. It is one of the important vehicles of culture in Canada.

I urge all members of the House to support Bill C-2.

[Suzanne Tremblay, Bloc, Rimouski-Neigette-Et-La Mitis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I was told that, after the Liberal member, someone from the Conservative Party of Canada would speak, and only then would it be my turn.

Now that we have figured out how things will work, I want to thank the Chair for giving me this opportunity to speak on Bill C-2.

It is just amazing to see that this bill has now become an emergency. Usually, Bill C-2 is a piece of legislation designed to deal with a very well-defined emergency. However, all of a sudden, at 9:30 this morning, it was decided to put Bill C-2 up for debate today.

This bill is long overdue. When I was first elected to this House, in 1993, I was designated Canadian heritage critic for my party. One of the main problems we identified at the time was the whole black market issue surrounding broadcast signals. With DIRECTV in the picture, we asked that this be stopped, because it was costing us a lot of money and jobs throughout Canada and in Quebec.

However, as DIRECTV was owned by friends of the government, there was not a lot of interest in asking them to put a stop to their activities. The government was aware of the situation, but tolerated it.

Now that the former owners of DIRECTV have become the new owners—at least in part—of ExpressVu, not to name names, they are upset to lose all that business. So, these same friends are telling the government, “You should introduce a bill to make this a terrible thing, to make it illegal to import, steal or pirate the airwaves”.

This does not bode well at all for a new government that was supposed to be different. The report that the Auditor General will table tomorrow is going to give us an idea of what the former government was up to. It might a good thing for the new Prime Minister to read that report very carefully, to avoid being tempted to head in the same direction and protect his friends.

Bill C-2 poses some problems. There is no doubt that it will improve certain things. However, clause 5 creates huge problems. This provision gives great powers to an inspector and clause 5(1)( a ) reads as follows:

enter and inspect any place in which the inspector believes on reasonable grounds that there is any radio apparatus, interference-causing equipment or radio-sensitive equipment, any other thing related to such apparatus or equipment, or any record, book of account or other document or data relevant to the enforcement of this Act.

If we look at section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects us as regards private property, private rights and privacy, we wonder where the department is headed with clause 5. This clause will give sweeping powers to the inspector and, in many cases, these powers may well exceed the limit set by section 8.

Clause 5(1)( b ) reads as follows:

examine any radio apparatus, interference-causing equipment or radio-sensitive equipment found there, as well as any other thing related to such apparatus or equipment;

The government goes even further. Indeed, clause 5(1)( c ) reads:

examine any record, book of account or other document or data that the inspector believes on reasonable grounds contains information that is relevant to the enforcement of this Act and makes copies of any of them.

And then we have clause 5(1)( d ):

open or cause to be opened any package or container that the inspector believes on reasonable grounds contains anything referred to in paragraph (b) or (c).

We are interfering quite a bit with the privacy of citizens, and this seems to be an extremely dangerous element in this bill.

Another danger is all the authority being granted to the minister. The existing legislation already provides numerous powers to the minister, but this bill adds more. It is always very dangerous to give the minister an even greater discretionary authority when we know all the risks that are involved.

The minister will have the authority to decide who should get an import certificate. But we think the criteria the minister will have to use to make those decisions are not well enough defined.

We are willing to increase ministerial authority, but the government should be reassuring parliamentarians by setting out the criteria the minister will have to abide by. Criteria would be reassuring. We would be more aware of the situation, and we could debate those criteria and see whether they are reasonable. We could count on the minister to be able to apply those criteria. When you are kept in the dark, it is easy to have suspicions. Can the minister really be counted on to always be reasonable?

Earlier in her speech I heard the minister talk about the fines provided for under the legislation. She said that they would not be the major emphasis, but I am not sure what else can be done.

Then she goes on to say that the fines would be $200,000 for a company and $25,000 for an individual. There are limits. If these types of provisions are included in the legislation then there has to be the means to enforce them. There is no point in giving the impression that there will be penalties, if it is unclear how they will be enforced.

There is something quite extraordinary in one of the clauses of the bill. If, for instance, a $2,000 computer is seized and the fine happens to be $2,500 then the guilty party has only to pay back the difference between $2,500 and $2,000. There is no mention of what would happen if the fine were $2,500 and the value of the confiscated goods $10,000. Will the difference be paid out to the guilty party? That is out of the question.

Imposing heavier fines to make them more of a deterrent only works if we have the means to enforce these provisions. Otherwise, there is no point in leading people to believe that we are going to be able to put an end to this type of situation.

There is another element of the legislation that reinforces the broadcasting industry's current right to a civil remedy. There is the option under the legislation to receive statutory damages not to exceed a set amount. Clause 10 will replace subsection 18 of the Broadcasting Act. It is important to refer to subsection 18(1) of this act. This subsection states that anyone incurring a loss, or statutory damages, as the result of an offence, can pursue a civil remedy against the violator.

This bill has many problems. It is good in principle, but many questions need to be answered and this government also needs to agree to make changes if it wants the Bloc Quebecois to support it at third reading.

[Bryon Wilfert, Liberal, Oak Ridges, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the comments of my colleague across the way with regard to Bill C-2. I believe the issue here is one of preventing the erosion of the Canadian broadcasting system.

In 1936 the Conservatives, under former Prime Minister R. B. Bennett, established the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Why? Because of the impact of American feed coming into Canada: American radio, American magazines, et cetera. American thinking was obviously different than Canadian but it had a tremendous cultural effect on Canadians.

In order to have a Canadian voice and a Canadian view of our society, R. B. Bennett established the CBC. Obviously the establishment of the CBC has been extremely important as a cultural medium for Canadian actors, entertainers, writers, producers, directors, et cetera.

Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act, is very timely and important given the situation we have. Section 9(1)(c) of the current act sets out a prohibition on the unauthorized decoding of encrypted subscription programming signals. Section 9(1)(d) prohibits unauthorized reception of unlawfully decoded subscription programming signals using radio equipment.

When we look at Bill C-2 we see that the transmission to the public of unlawfully decoded subscription programming signals has become a very important issue in the last few years. Section 10(1)(b) of the act makes it an offence to contravene section 9(1)(c) through activities such as importing, selling, distributing or possessing equipment in circumstances where it is reasonable to infer that the equipment is or was intended to be used for the purposes of contravention of that section.

The member across the way talked about what he did not like about the bill but I did not really hear his solution other than to work with the United States. I believe we must have a made in Canada solution, one which we have been working with the stakeholders on. Until last year there was really little effort to crack down on these direct to home satellite TVs or, as they are known, DTH piracy. There was no unanimity among the courts in this country whether unauthorized decoding of signals did indeed contravene the Radiocommunication Act.

As a result, there was a lack of court penalties against signal piracy. The RCMP's enforcement activities virtually came to a halt. As a result, black market dealers began to open and advertise their products.

In April 2002 the Supreme Court clarified the legal uncertainty. It determined that the unauthorized decoding of any encrypted subscription programming was illegal, period. Furthermore, it determined that reception of encrypted broadcasting programming must be authorized by a lawful distributor in this country, usually the Canadian DTH broadcaster.

Finally, the Supreme Court of Canada determined that subject to a very narrow exception, there was absolute prohibition on the decoding of encrypted broadcast programming from foreign distributors.

Once the law was clarified, the RCMP and customs significantly stepped up their enforcement activities. The member across the way talked about enforcement and compared it to guns and all sorts of other things. The fact is that the RCMP has developed an outreach strategy to provide provincial detachments with information on this issue. It is training its personnel to deal with enforcement.

In fact, a series of RCMP raids on black market dealers has resulted in several high profile seizures of illegal DTH equipment. However the fines imposed in recent judgments do not really impose much of a deterrent. This is very important. The current fines can be regarded by an illegal DTH dealer simply as the cost of doing business. I do not think anyone in the chamber wants to see that continue.

The House is well aware that the RCMP has many security and law enforcement priorities. We must ask ourselves whether it is a worthwhile use of time and resources to step up activities against illegal satellite pirates when there is little indication that prosecution will deter the piracy.

For that reason we must make sure that the punishment fits the crime, and this means increasing the penalties. That is the thrust of the bill. Although a higher level of fines in the act will not necessarily guarantee that the courts will impose stiffer penalties on dealers, it will send a strong message to the courts that Parliament sees this as an important issue.

The penalties contained in the bill are intended to send those messages. The maximum penalties for specified offences under section 10 have been increased from $5,000 to $25,000 or one year imprisonment or both for individuals; from $25,000 to $200,000 for corporations in the case of subsections 10(1) and 10(2.1).

Under subsection 10(2) the penalty has been increased from $5,000 to $10,000 for persons. Under subsection 10 (2.2) the penalty has increased for individuals from $20,000 to $50,000 or two years imprisonment or both; and for corporations from $200,000 to $500,000. Those are strong messages both to the illegal operators who are selling this equipment, the general public and the courts.

The bill also gives the Canada Border Services Agency an important tool. Although the Radiocommunication Act prohibits the importation of illegal receivers, equipment continues to flow across the border, as the hon. member across the way mentioned. Therefore it is difficult for customs to determine which imported equipment may be used for illegal purposes and which will not.

The bill would provide for better control at the border. I agree with the member that we need to deal with that issue at the border. The bill would do that by requiring an important certificate issued by the Minister of Industry for anyone wishing to bring satellite decoding equipment into Canada.

Finally, the bill would give the broadcast industry the tools it requires to protect its interests through civil action. Over the past five years Bell ExpressVu has launched nine civil actions against key dealers in the country. One of these actions resulted in the Supreme Court of Canada's decision of April 2002, as I mentioned, that clarified the legal uncertainties.

However the broadcast industry finds the pursuit of civil remedies under the current provisions to be costly and ineffective. It is difficult to prove a direct causal link between the illegal conduct of DTH pirate satellite dealers and the actual losses the broadcasters suffer. To reinforce their efforts to pursue civil action, the bill provides an option to seek statutorily prescribed damages rather than being forced to prove actual damages.

The bill includes three important provisions that would deter signal piracy in Canada. It provides tools for each of the three partners to enforce the existing law: the RCMP, whose efforts will be backed by stronger penalties; the customs officials, who will be able to stop illegal equipment at the border; and the broadcast industry, who will be supported by the option of statutory damages should it pursue civil action.

This is a good bill that would result in stronger cultural industries in Canada and use of the radio telecommunications spectrum that promotes safety and security.

I believe the bill reinforces and builds on the existing law in Canada. It is important for Canadians. I would urge members of the House to support the legislation.

[Jim Abbott, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Columbia, BC]

As we know, Mr. Speaker, this bill, numbered Bill C-52, was in the House when the House prorogued. We are now into the third session. The bill fundamentally remains the same. As the former vice-chair of the heritage committee of the Parliament of Canada, I stand opposed to Bill C-2 because it is exactly the same as Bill C-52.

I must say that I have a tremendous amount of sympathy, as my colleague from the Liberals has just pointed out, for the fact that the broadcasters who play by the rules are being put at a fundamental disadvantage. I understand and am very clear on that issue, so what we need to do, then, is take a look at the rules.

I am going to discuss the specific concerns I have about the bill in just a second, but I want to point out that there is a fundamental problem here. Canadians want choices. Canadians want to be able to make the choices of the entertainment that they are going to be viewing on the television sets in their homes.

One of the classic examples that comes up annually is with respect to the advertisements, which companies pay a tremendous amount of money for, exhibited during the Super Bowl. Many people in the U.S. actually watch the Super Bowl not for the football but for the advertisements, and certainly some of them are highly creative.

The fact that there is a restriction under the CRTC rules in this instance, where CanWest Global has bought the feed of the Super Bowl for distribution in Canada, basically means that CanWest Global can then realize the advertising revenue for the size of market that it has in Canada. I would have to guess that for every 100 million people who might be viewing the Super Bowl in the United States, one would think, theoretically at least, that there would be 10 million in Canada. Those numbers obviously do not apply although we are one-tenth of the market size. The fact of the matter is that people in the United States are overall more enamoured of the Super Bowl than people in Canada.

Nonetheless, CanWest Global will pay the producers, that is, the NFL and other owners of the rights that have been negotiated, with respect to that programming. They will pay for the privilege of being able to broadcast in Canada so that the advertisers who choose to advertise in Canada to the Canadian audience will then know that they have that captive audience.

Therein lies the problem. The problem is that the Canadian audience understandably wants to have the choice of whether it is going to see those commercials or not. As a matter of fact, I suppose it could be argued that in many instances Canadians will actually get some kind of zapper that will enable them to do away with commercials entirely with the exception of the Super Bowl. It comes down to a question of the rules and regulations made at the direction of this Liberal government; the CRTC then formulates the specific rules and makes sure that those rules are enforced.

Our position is that to put up some kind of an electronic wall or to attempt to put up some kind of an electronic wall is a facile and useless waste of time. It does not make any sense with the numbers of programs that are becoming more and more available as a result of technology. I am not just talking about television programs; I am also talking about things that are available on broadband Internet. It is only a matter of time until people in Canada are going to be able to get past the current restriction of satellite in any event.

This bill, which goes after the companies that are trying to bring in satellite equipment, would work if we were at a standstill in technology, but the fact of the matter is that we are not at a standstill in technology. As a matter of fact, technology is in an explosive state at this particular point.

According to the Liberals, Bill C-2 would prevent equipment from entering Canada. If the bill is to prevent the importation of satellite decoding equipment, satellite communication equipment and satellite receiving equipment, if it is to prevent those pieces of equipment coming into Canada, I wonder how the government is doing on the illegal importation of assault weapons, handguns and items of that type. How is it doing with the cigarettes that are coming across the border? How is it doing with the transportation of marijuana from British Columbia and the transportation of cocaine back into British Columbia?

The government is not doing very well, in spite of the fact that many resources are in place to try to interdict the importation of commodities like that which are seriously detrimental to our society and are not only costing our society money, but also costing our society in terms of lives and values of our country. We are not doing very well, because we do not have sufficient resources or sufficient technology to stop the importation of guns, drugs and other things of that nature. How in the world does the government believe it is going to be able to interdict the importation of the equipment that we are talking about in Bill C-2?

What it comes down to is this. We can have a theoretical big brother approach to this particular question, or we can be practical and pragmatic and realistic. Recognizing that Canadians want choices, we could work in concert with the United States regulator. The Canadian government could work with the U.S. government so that it could give direction to the CRTC and the U.S. government could give direction to the FCC. They could work out the technology of how this is going to end up working.

The beauty of that approach is that with United States viewers being ten times the number of Canadian viewers, we can imagine that if the CBC were to be broadcast not just in Canada but in wide distribution in the United States, we would be able to determine very quickly how many viewers would want to see the CBC. We would be able to determine how many viewers would want to see Canadian programming by Canadian writers.

I will ask the House to please bear with me as I go back to an example that does have some parallels. We had a totally protected wine industry in Canada. Quite frankly, the majority of the product was inferior. It was not a good product, period, full stop. And oh my, when the free trade agreement was negotiated and our wine producers were going to be subjected to the world market, they no longer had protection for their inferior product and people said the sky would fall.

But you know what, Mr. Speaker? Canadians are great at competition. If we give Canadians a level playing field, if we give them rational, reasonable rules to make sure it is a level playing field, whether it is France, the U.S., Australia or any other wine producing area, we will be superior because we are Canadians and we know how to do the job.

Basically that is what I am asking for instead of getting into more and more protection, just as we had the protection for wine producers who now without protection have a far superior product. As the heritage critic for the Conservative Party, I say that without protection we will end up with a far superior product in terms of the entertainment value that we can bring to the audience, not just the audience in Canada but ten times that audience, which we can have access to in the United States. We must have a broader vision, because I believe in Canada and I believe in Canadians' creativity.

[Paul MacKlin, Liberal, Northumberland, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to support Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act. The problem of signal piracy is serious, and it is getting worse. It undermines the viability of the Canadian broadcasting system.

Many Canadian consumers who have bought unauthorized DTH, direct-to-home, equipment do not consider the consequences of their actions. They think they are getting television for free and perhaps they think that the broadcast industry can afford to lose a few dollars a month that these consumers might otherwise pay for their TV signal. However, the satellite television industry estimates that there could be from 500,00 up to 700,000 users of unauthorized DTH services in Canada. This means lost subscription revenues of about $400 million annually for the Canadian industry. This means of course lost jobs, lost ability to invest in innovation and a weaker Canadian broadcasting system in the face of very tough competition.

Simply put, we need to put an end to piracy, but the way to go about it is not to persecute and prosecute these individuals who are trying to cut corners by buying this pirated equipment. To be sure, their actions are illegal and unethical, but it would not be an efficient use of the police resources to go after “the little guy”. Instead, it makes more sense to go after the companies that are making the big profits by selling this illegal equipment. The bill does that by increasing the penalties for conviction and by enabling the victims of satellite piracy to obtain statutory fines from violators.

However, there is another way to deter signal piracy, and that is by making it much more difficult to obtain the hardware that is required to steal that satellite signal. The bill before us improves the import control to prevent illegal radio communication equipment from entering Canada. Both Star Choice and Bell ExpressVu, which are Canada's legitimate companies for satellite transmission, import DTH equipment from the United States for their legitimate customers, but the illegal DTH distributors import their equipment as well.

Under the current act, law enforcement can only seize illegal equipment after it has come across the border into Canada and has been distributed to the various unauthorized DTH dealers. That is something like trying to gather all the feathers together after a feather pillow has been ripped apart.

It is virtually impossible to find and seize all the illegal satellites and decoders once they have crossed the Canada-U.S. border. However, if we had a more effective import control, then we would be in a situation where the feather pillow does not get shredded and scattered to the wind. We know that much of this illegal equipment must cross the border and we have already in place an efficient and effective border control system under the Canada Border Services Agency. What we are really wishing to do through this bill is to give our border agents the power they need in order to stop this illegal activity.

Canada Customs and Revenue Agency has told us that it has difficulty implementing section 10(1)(b) of the current act. There is indeed a prohibition on the import of illegal satellite receivers, but it is difficult, as I am sure everyone will understand, for customs officials to establish if satellite receivers are being used for legal or illegal purposes. The section requires that customs must establish “a reasonable inference” that the decoding equipment, which is being imported, will be used for an illegal purpose.

The bill before us would prevent unauthorized radiocommunications equipment, including illegal satellite equipment, from entering Canada in the first place. The new provision prohibits the importation of satellite decoding equipment unless the importer has first obtained an import certificate issued by the Minister of Industry. Those who will be eligible for such an import certificate will include licensed Canadian satellite providers, such as Bell ExpressVu, Star Choice and their agents.

Import certificates will also be granted to foreign satellite service providers and manufacturers of decoding equipment who want to bring their equipment into Canada to have Canadian companies add value to the equipment before it is exported. Canadian companies will continue to excel in a recognized niche where our expertise and radiocommunications technology is recognized around the world.

Finally, import certificates will be available to Canadians who bring their satellite equipment with them when they return from vacations abroad. This is the case with many Canadians, of course, who spend their winter months south of the border and subscribe to an American satellite service while they are away. They often show up at the border with their dishes and satellite receivers in tow. These people will be able to bring their American television satellite receivers with them provided that they do not intend to use this equipment in Canada.

Individuals returning from abroad will be permitted to bring no more than one television satellite decoding system and they will not be permitted to use this equipment while they are in Canada.

By tightening up the border controls, by increasing the penalties for DTH piracy and by making available statutory damages in civil cases, the bill before us will help shut down the illegal practice that is undermining the broadcast industry in our country.

Our broadcasting system is built upon fair competition. The Radiocommunication Act serves as an integral part of the regulatory framework that governs broadcasting. When someone uses pirate technology to decode domestic and foreign satellite programming, the investments made by these broadcasters who play by the rules are devalued. They face unfair competition from companies that are not required to meet the commitments made to secure a licence from the CRTC. Unauthorized reception of satellite programming denies Canadian broadcasters, distributors, producers and artists millions of dollars each year.

The bill before us will help provide a framework whereby the satellite broadcasting companies can compete fairly with the other broadcasting distribution undertakings. They will be able to earn revenues they deserve from Canadians who use satellite as their preferred medium, and it will help put an end to the illegal and unethical activities on the part of consumers who cut corners by taking advantage of these pirated signals. Hopefully it will make it much more difficult for the unscrupulous businesses to profit from this illegal activity.

Accordingly, I urge all hon. members to join me in supporting the bill.

[Christiane Gagnon, Bloc, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today we are examining Bill C-2. This enactment amends the Radiocommunication Act to add importcontrol measures in respect of radio apparatus or devices used fordecoding encrypted subscription programming signals. It makesimportation of them without an import certificate an offence andprovides for the issuance of the certificates and for ministerialexemptions from the requirement.

Finally, it provides measures tofacilitate compliance with and enforcement of the act, including addingcertain inspection powers, commonly called housekeeping measures, increasing penalties and providing theoption for a person who pursues a civil remedy to elect statutorydamages.

Theft of satellite signals originating in the United States is very common in Canada. A study has been prepared by a coalition of various broadcasting groups, the Coalition Against Satellite Signal Theft, which was created to fight piracy.

The coalition's president, Luc Perreault, has put a great deal of effort into the creation of this large coalition, and I wish to acknowledge that effort. He believes that somewhere between 500,000 and 700,000 households are receiving satellite services, mainly originating in the United States, through illegal means. The coalition estimates the cost to the Canadian broadcasting system at over $400 million per year, and $100 million for Quebec.

In April 2002, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that unauthorized decoding of signals from Canada or elsewhere is illegal. The bill we are examining today is a follow up to that decision, and that is why it should be improved. I will explain why shortly.

That decision acted as a trigger to actions aimed at strengthening the steps taken against those involved in this activity. We know that pirating signals undermines the competitiveness and cost-effectiveness of broadcasting, and threatens employment and investment. Signal theft deprives artists and broadcasters in Canada of millions of dollars in revenue and contributions to broadcast production funds.

The purpose of the bill is to deter dealers from importing and selling unauthorized equipment in Canada. The Bloc Quebecois supports the principle of Bill C-2, because it seeks to do more to fight satellite piracy. Satellite signal piracy deprives Canadian broadcasters and various funding agencies such as the Canadian Television Fund of millions of dollars. Piracy endangers thousands of jobs in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada, and threatens the long-term viability of Canada's broadcasting system.

The Bloc Quebecois supports the principle of the bill for several reasons. In particular, the bill is intended to help the broadcasting system, and we are very sensitive to that. The system seeks stability and financial prosperity in order to assist television producers, among others.

Nevertheless, the Bloc Quebecois wishes to obtain guarantees on some elements of this bill. These elements may have to be modified because we think that amendments regarding so-called housekeeping measures can intrude too much into people's private lives. If unable to get the desired guarantees, the Bloc Quebecois might decide to vote against the bill at third reading.

We know that, during committee hearings, we will hear from people who are very much aware of this aspect of the bill and who will certainly want to enlighten all the members sitting on this committee. We are very concerned about finding out whether these changes will be made.

I would like to speak about what housekeeping measures are and tell you why the Bloc Quebecois is concerned about these measures found in clauses 5, 7, 8 and 9. We would like some of them amended, unless all our concerns are answered.

We have filed an appeal with the Privacy Commissioner to obtain clarification and comments on this issue. Our question concerns the meaning of clause 5 of the bill in the light of section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Section 8 states:

Everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure.

We will be in a better position to judge the scope of clause 5 of the bill once we have received the comments of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. Obviously, the answer will be provided during committee hearings; that is what we were told by the representatives who will appear on behalf of the Privacy Commissioner.

Consequently, why are there so many concerns? One thing that raised concern initially was simply the meagre information we received, particularly on the importance of changes to clause 5 of the bill. Neither the press release from the ministers, nor the backgrounder, nor even the question and answer paper explain what changes will result.

Yet clause 5 is at the heart of the bill. Is the government afraid of how the various stakeholders will react? Why such silence on clause 5? When the Privacy Commissioner appears before the committee, the Bloc Quebecois will ask why we should be concerned. If we do not obtain the appropriate guarantees with regard to the scope of clause 5, we might have to vote against the bill. For this reason, we hope that all stakeholders, and the government in particular, will be open with regard to clause 5.

Clauses 5(1) and 5(2) grant enormous powers to the inspector entering a place for examination purposes. An inspector may, at any time, decide to examine any data contained in a computer, simply because he considers this reasonable. These powers mean that the inspector has access to everything belonging to the owner of the premises being inspected, as departmental officials confirmed during the technical briefing. All personal information will now belong to the public domain, and the inspector will be authorized to reproduce any records, seize them and copy them as many times as he wishes for use as evidence at trial.

Do we believe that satellite signal piracy is so serious that accused persons no longer have any right to privacy, and that everything they possess is liable to be used against them in court, regardless of the actual nature of the property seized? That is one of our concerns. Can we live with such a major intrusion upon privacy for a crime of this type. Does the severity of the crime, that is satellite signal piracy, justify this excessive intrusion into people's private lives? Those are questions that need to be asked and answered.

We know that satellite signal piracy has not, until now, been taken particularly seriously by the government. The Supreme Court had to show us the path to follow on this. By raising the penalties for dealers, the broadcasting industry will perhaps at last have access to more program funding, because of its increased profits. This would make it possible to provide more help to producers. There could be stable long-term funding for the cultural community, for instance the Canadian Television Fund. Hence our great interest in this bill.

Satellite signal piracy is serious. Quebec ran advertisements trying to get across the message that pirating satellite signals was as much theft as stealing a handbag. We know that this had an impact; a number of people became aware of what they were doing.

Satellite signal piracy is a serious crime and the penalties should reflect that. Stiffer penalties are therefore logical. Until now, the courts have been too soft on people pirating satellite signals. It is high time that the government got the message that broadcasting deserves help and that it will be encouraged by stiffer penalties for those who break the law.

The Bloc Quebecois is very keen on this bill. We are most anxious to have the opportunity to debate it in committee and to hear what all the witnesses there will have to contribute.

Can we continue to live with a crime such as this, when our privacy is threatened? That is one of the questions the Bloc Quebecois will be raising during the committee hearings.

With that, I will end my speech. It was only 10 minutes long, despite the importance of this issue.

[James Rajotte, Canadian Alliance, Edmonton Southwest, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am disappointed with the way that the government is bringing forward this legislation. This received less than one day of debate as Bill C-52 in its original form and now it is being pushed through to second reading in less than half a day.

This is a complex subject. I think even the government would agree. We should have many days of debate before we push it on to committee.

Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act, serves to increase the penalties and provide for civil remedies against those individuals and corporations who sell and use illegal radiocommunications equipment, specifically satellite television dishes to receive signals from satellite television program providers who are not licensed by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission.

The CRTC currently licenses two suppliers to provide direct to home satellite television services to Canadians: Bell ExpressVu, which is the largest of the two and has approximately one million customers; and Star Choice, which is owned by Shaw Communications Inc. and has approximately 700,000 customers.

In order to protect this programming, the signals are encrypted or scrambled by the broadcaster. To be received in intelligible form, the signal must be decoded or descrambled. I want to acknowledge that both Bell and Shaw have begun to aggressively take on satellite signal theft. They have been diligent in pursuing in-house technology that will allow them to block illegal users. I would like to recognize the efforts of these companies in trying to deal with this issue through the private sector. I would also like to thank them for taking the time to meet with us to discuss their systems and programming.

Before I get into the contents of the bill, I would like to outline the position of the Conservative Party as advocated in the past with respect to black market satellite users versus grey market users. This is a very important distinction for our party.

Industry Canada does not keep statistics on the number of black market or grey market users. The information I have is a best guess. Approximately 700,000 Canadians are using black and grey market satellites, enough to offer very significant competition to both Bell and Shaw.

A black market system occurs where a Canadian uses a satellite dish that allows him or her to access American, Canadian or foreign satellite programming through the use of an independently manufactured or pirated smart card purchased from a non-authorized dealer. There is no interaction with the service provider. For example, black market users could own a Bell ExpressVu dish but never pay a cent to Bell Canada for the service. The black market system allows virtually unlimited access to all channels with all profits going to the smart card dealer rather than the lawful service providers. Satellite and cable service providers and broadcasters on both sides of the border characterize black market as theft, and so do we in the Conservative Party of Canada.

There is another type of user, a grey market user. The grey market user pays the satellite company that provides the service. For instance, someone in Windsor, Ontario could be in possession of an American Direct TV dish and be paying Direct TV for the use of that dish by mail, credit card or other means. The problem is that Direct TV is not licensed in Canada by the CRTC, so there is a grey area. The company providing the service is being rightfully paid but Canadian regulations are not allowing access to that service.

With respect to the content of Bill C-2, the Conservative Party has a number of concerns with the proposed amendments to the Radiocommunication Act that relate both to the grey market and the black market.

I want to talk about border enforcement by highlighting the clauses and policies in this bill that we support. We support the importation initiatives outlined in this bill in principle but with certain provisos. We agree that the border is a good place to address the problem of distribution of satellite dishes that are currently considered illegal in Canada.

I understand that large shipments of dishes frequently cross the border for resale in Canada. The border is a good place to address this black market problem; however, we want to ensure that Canadians who also have residences in the United States are not unduly stopped or harassed at the border for travelling with their satellite dishes. I would like assurances from the Minister of Industry that so-called snowbirds will be allowed to store their American dishes in Canada and allowed to cross the border freely with their equipment. I have written to the Minister of Industry, and the past minister, to seek clarification on this issue. We have yet to receive a response and are looking forward to that.

This bill also gives Bell and Shaw the option to pursue cases in civil court. We support this idea and hope that this provision frees up police and government resources. However, I am also seeking clarification concerning what, if any, public resources would have to be employed to settle civil matters. Again, I have written to the Minister of Industry for clarification and am awaiting a response.

There are several sections of the bill with which we do have problems. The primary concern of our party is that precious police resources will not be diverted from crimes of a physical or violent nature toward neighbourhood satellite surveillance.

For instance, it is my understanding that one satellite case in Hamilton engaged 62 RCMP officers and 12 Industry Canada employees at one time. That is 62 officers who could have been working on other issues such as missing children or domestic violence, rather than patrolling our living rooms and controlling what we watch on television. Clearly, that is an inappropriate use of taxpayer dollars.

Under Bill C-2, penalties and jail time have been increased for both individuals and corporations. For instance, for individuals convicted of decoding an encrypted signal or modifying equipment for this purpose, penalties would be increased from a maximum $10,000 fine and/or maximum of six months in jail to a $25,000 fine and/or a maximum of one year in jail. Licensed satellite programming providers would have the right to seek statutory damages of up to $100,000 against an individual or corporation committing signal theft for commercial gain. The fines have been increased to send a message to both the courts and to black market users that the government is serious in this undertaking.

I hope that we explore the issues of fines, penalties and civil action when the bill comes to committee as I would like to compare this legislation to similar legislation that assesses penalties and fines.

We are concerned that the inspection provisions have been broadened. While we recognize that other electronic devices, such as computers are linked to satellite piracy, the current clause that delegates the power to open any package or container that may be related to satellite piracy is too open.

One of the most important issues this bill raises is related to Canadian content and channel availability. I am somewhat confused as to the broader policy directions of the government when it comes to telecommunications. First, it does not want foreign ownership in the telecommunications sector, then it does. Now we have one government department working against satellite piracy and another government agency making decisions that support piracy.

I agree that the telecommunications file is confusing by nature. The division of the Radiocommunication Act and Telecommunications Act between industry and heritage is part of the problem. However, governments are elected to provide leadership and vision. Canadians have suffered under 10 years of Liberal rule with very little leadership in the area of telecommunications.

While we do support attempts by the federal government to stop the importation of large shipments of illegal satellite receiving equipment, we must recognize the growing demand for cultural and religious broadcasting in Canada.

Why do we not have access to such channels? It is because of the Canadian content restrictions in the CRTC. Let me give the House some examples. Sky Angel, a set of 36 Christian English and Spanish television and radio channels, is only available to EchoStar subscribers, a U.S. satellite service. Not one of the 36 Sky Angel channels is available on the CRTC's list of non-Canadian services that are authorized for distribution in Canada. Why? Because Sky Angel carries virtually no Canadian programming in the official sense.

Some Christian Canadian programming is available through Crossroads Television and the Miracle Channel. However, we can certainly understand why Christians, as well as Muslims, Jews and others who are looking for more religious programming would be frustrated. Sky Angel offers 36 channels of programming in the United States where the CRTC limits and restricts access to programs.

Let me also highlight the case of the Canadian Cable Television Association's recent application to the CRTC. The CCTA applied to add popular American channels, like HBO, Showtime and ESPN to its digital channel lineup. Currently HBO programs, such as The Sopranos and Six Feet Under are either aired on pay TV or by Canadian networks, months or years after they were originally broadcast in the U.S.

In November 2003 the CRTC refused the application. The CRTC argued that the cable operators did not have strong enough arguments to bring the channels to Canada. In its decision, the CRTC actually recognized that by blocking these channels it could in fact be contributing to an increase in both grey and black market users in Canada.

The Liberal approach to satellite television is, on the one hand, having a government agency, Industry Canada, introducing a bill to try to prevent satellite privacy, and at the same time and during the same period, we have another government agency, the CRTC, making decisions that will encourage satellite piracy. Where is the common sense here?

The Conservative Party agrees with the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage recommendation that calls on the CRTC to permit Canadian broadcasting distribution undertakings to offer a wider range of international programming while being respectful of Canadian content regulations.

We also believe that a sound direct-to-home satellite policy represents an opportunity to support the ability of Canadians to develop an international market for their programs.

Our approach would be to negotiate a reciprocity agreement with the United States to create an open market in the licensing of television satellite distribution. We believe that a prudent and proactive response is to make Canadian programming available in the United States and allow foreign programming to be available here in Canada for the benefit of all Canadians.

To sum up the Conservative position, we agree with the importation restrictions created by Bill C-52, but we want better guarantees that snowbirds will not be stopped and harassed at the border. We believe the government should not be devoting precious police resources to patrolling neighbourhoods for satellite thieves. We encourage the CRTC to quickly and aggressively open up licensing restrictions.

I look forward to participating in the debate on the bill in committee.

Bill C-2—On the Order: Government Orders

February 5, 2004—The Minister of Industry—Second reading and reference to the Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology of Bill C-2, an act to amend the Radiocommunication Act.