Bill C-50 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to increase benefits

This enactment amends the Employment Insurance Act until September 11, 2010 to increase the maximum number of weeks for which benefits may be paid to certain claimants. It also increases the maximum number of weeks for which benefits may be paid to certain claimants not in Canada.

Employment Insurance Act

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister and to the Minister of Intergovernmental Affairs]

Madam Speaker, I thank you for this opportunity to contribute to the debate on employment insurance and the Conservative economic action plan.

Hon. members, many Canadians and their families are facing the real and immediate effects of the global recession. It is important for people to be aware of the action this government has taken to help men and women who have lost their jobs during this global recession, through no fault of their own. These Canadians who, as the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development said, have worked hard and paid taxes their whole lives and have found themselves in economic hardship and need a hand up. That is why our government is extending EI regular benefits nationally for long-tenured workers through this legislation. This extension of regular benefits would range from between five and twenty weeks, depending on the number of years they have contributed to the program.

This new measure is in stark contrast to the reckless scheme proposed by the coalition parties. The Liberals, the Bloc Québécois and the NDP had proposed that someone collect EI after working only 360 hours, or 45 days. That is why we call it the “45-day work year”.

Noted American thinker, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, once said, “History is a better guide than good intentions”.

I have no doubt about the good intentions of my distinguished friends across the way. The 45-day entrance requirement returns us to the failed Liberal policies of the 1970s. These policies had a catastrophic effect on the economy, and they would have the same effect today. The 45-day work year proposal would cost billions, balloon the deficit, accelerate turnover of workers and suppress job creation.

Beyond that, the problem with the 45-day work year is that it forgets the deep-rooted Canadian value of hard work.

The Prime Minister's economic action plan values hard work and it rewards it, too. It helps families invest in their future, with the Conservative tax-free savings account. It lowers income taxes for the average family by roughly $500. It creates jobs, with construction projects that will help in communities across the land, like the Strandherd-Armstrong bridge for which I secured funds. It lets people put their tax dollars back into their homes, with the Conservative home renovation tax credit. This Conservative tax credit creates jobs for painters, builders, roofers and carpenters. It creates new demand for wood products that helps our troubled forestry sector. It lets Canadians increase the value of their most important asset, their homes.

The Prime Minister's economic action plan not only creates new jobs, it protects the ones that we already have, by expanding work sharing aid for businesses to 52 weeks and simplifying the program to help businesses get it faster. Work sharing programs, for those members who are not aware, are programs that help workers who accept reduced a work week, while their employer recovers from the effects of the global recession. Right now, there are close to 5,800 work-sharing agreements across the country, protecting the jobs of 165,000 Canadians. This measure allows businesses to retain employees, thereby avoiding expensive rehiring and retraining costs. In turn, employees are able to continue working, keeping their skills up to date and holding on to the pride of a good job.

Finally, we have frozen EI premiums for two years during the period of this economic action plan, to help businesses create jobs and to award workers by letting them keep more of their own money.

That is why I would call on all members of the House to put aside the Liberal leader's obsession with an immediate election that would waste tax dollars and disrupt the recovery and focus instead on the economic action plan that the Prime Minister has initiated to create jobs right across the country.

I thank my distinguished colleagues for their attention and I encourage them to support this bill and the economic action plan of which it is a part.

[Alan Tonks, Liberal, York South—Weston, ON]

Madam Speaker, having listened to the speech of the hon. member, I feel compelled to stand and ask this question. The question is predicated on challenging the premise that the member has used, which underscores the government's approach to the use of employment insurance: “the deep-rooted Canadian value of hard work”.

I come from a constituency where people and many new immigrants are involved in seasonal and contract work. They are involved in absolute bare-essential work that is at minimum wage. They contribute to employment insurance and they have that deep-rooted value. However, the member is acting on the premise that the employment insurance fund is the only fund that can be tapped up on the basis and tapped into to create new opportunities.

I challenge that and the House should challenge it as well. There are many resources available to government, including employment insurance, that can be used to give incentives. That is what the 360-hour work year is about, and I would like the government and certainly the member to consider that.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, my distinguished friend raises the important point about the various resources that we have in our country to create jobs and opportunities for Canadians of all walks of life.

Our economic action plan does exactly that. It lowers taxes for families so they can spend and invest more and create jobs. It brings in a Conservative tax-free savings account that allows families to save for their future, independent of the government. It creates a Conservative home renovation tax credit that allows families to redirect their tax dollars back into the value of their most important asset, their homes. At the same time, they create jobs for carpenters, painters, roofers, landscapers and others, while creating new demand for forestry products and helping that troubled sector.

That is the Conservative economic action plan. I invite the member to be a part of it.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Madam Speaker, since this morning, I have been listening to the Reform-Conservative government talk about Bill C-50. I have a question for the parliamentary secretary.

If the government really cares about what happens to unemployed workers, why introduce a bill? A bill has to get royal assent, and that takes time. Why not just implement a pilot project, which will produce swifter results?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the member for her question.

The Conservative Party wants to act swiftly. That is why we have an economic action plan that respects Canadian labour values and helps families that need help.

That economic action plan is not only helping people who have lost their jobs but helping them find new ones. I hope the member would support us rather than support an election.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, we have to recognize that the government inherited the EI rules left to them by the 13 years of Liberal government. With this bill, the Conservatives have clearly agreed that EI is broken and needs to be fixed.

New Democrats have long proposed additional changes like dropping the two-week waiting period, removing severance pay from EI calculations and increasing the amount of benefit received. Could the member opposite comment on these proposals?

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The parliamentary secretary has 30 seconds to reply.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Nepean—Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for making proposals. We do not always agree in this place, but that does not mean we cannot work together.

I appreciate that the member will be supporting this Conservative measure to help long-term workers get through a difficult period brought on by the recession. At the same time I respectfully disagree with the 45-day work year proposal that would cost billions, balloon the deficit and suppress job creation. That is a coalition proposal and I respectfully reject it.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise on behalf of my colleagues in the Bloc Québécois on the bill to amend the Employment Insurance Act and increase benefits for certain categories of claimants.

First I want to tell the House and the people listening to us that it is false that the Bloc Québécois is going to engage in demagoguery on the backs of people who get employment insurance benefits. The Bloc Québécois has said—and its leader has repeated ad nauseam—that when bills are introduced by the Conservative government, the Bloc will react like a reasonable, responsible opposition party and will study each bill and each motion that is introduced on a case by case basis, regardless of any background noise related to minority government, pre-election periods or election alerts.

The Bloc Québécois cannot support this bill as it now stands. To avoid all demagoguery from the Conservatives—of the kind only they are really capable of—I will explain why this is so. I want to warn the House, though, that the Conservative big wigs will launch huge media attacks claiming the Bloc Québécois is against unemployed people.

The Bloc Québécois opposes this bill because it does not get to the heart of the problem, that is to say, the ability of the unemployed to access benefits. The problem—as everyone knows—is accessibility. If the government wanted to act in good faith, it would first resolve the accessibility issue. There is no point in having the best of programs if people cannot qualify for them. That does not do any good. This is why we cannot support the bill.

Together with the committees of the unemployed, the mouvement des Sans-Chemise and the labour unions, the Bloc Québécois wants 360 hours in order to qualify for employment insurance. The problem is that when workers who have paid their premiums ask for EI benefits, they are told they do not qualify yet because the do not have enough hours. It is a bit like someone who pays for fire insurance and then suffers a total loss. He goes to his insurer to make a claim and rebuild his house, but the insurer says he failed to read the fine print saying that the insurance does not cover the first total loss, just the second. What would we call this insurer? We would call him a fraud, a thief. That is the big problem.

In my riding of Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, especially in Côte-de-Beaupré, the Île d'Orléans, the greater Charlevoix area and Upper North Shore, there is a category of workers who are nowhere to be found in this bill. The government could provide 300 weeks of benefits, these workers would still not get anything. I am talking about the situation of seasonal workers.

My colleagues here know very well that seasonal workers face a very unique situation in our regions in Quebec. Even if they wanted to do some planting, some reforestation or silviculture work, I am sorry, but in February when there are four feet of snow in the forest, people cannot go around planting little spruce trees.

Even if we do manage to develop winter tourism in our regions—with Europeans, for example, coming to snowmobile, or dogsled or whatever—there is one fact. Most of our inns in the regions close after Thanksgiving. Our innkeepers are hospitable. They would like to remain open year round. The problem is the lack of business. When you work in an inn and there are no guests, the employer does not pay you to sit around and knit. The employer has to lay people off.

I see my colleague from Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine. In the winter, when the river is locked in snow and ice there is no fishing. Fishermen are another category of seasonal worker. If this government, then, which claims to be sensitive and attentive—let me say that we know how the Conservative government operates—had a single ounce of sensitivity, it would have taken account in its bill of the reality faced by seasonal workers. It has been shown that the EI plan in its current form, with the initial cuts made under the Liberals and more made by the Conservatives, is unacceptable. That is why we say that Liberal or Conservative, it amounts to the same thing.

The plan is unfair to certain categories of workers. I mentioned the seasonal workers. I could say exactly the same thing about women, young people and older workers. The current system is unfair. The government should have taken this into account and really corrected the situation and not made cosmetic changes in order to use the coming week off to say in the media that the Bloc does not support the unemployed. The people in our regions know that the Bloc is the only party defending the unemployed in this House.

The best proof that the Bloc wants to change and improve this bill, which is totally unacceptable as it is written—and this is why we will vote against it—is that we said that, before a vote is taken in the House, the committee should hear from the groups concerned. We should invite the Quebec forestry industry council. We should invite the representatives of committees of the unemployed, unions and the Conseil du patronat du Québec to tell us where the bill is unacceptable and how it could be improved.

That is why this very morning the House leader of the Bloc Québécois sought the unanimous consent of the House to send this bill to committee before second reading so the groups concerned, those directly involved, could inform parliamentarians from all parties and tell them why this bill, as worded, is not acceptable.

The government will tell us that 190,000 unemployed individuals will be eligible for the new program. I am convinced that they examined the eligibility provisions. They apply to workers who have had a job for a long time and find themselves unemployed, but what about the categories I mentioned earlier? One industry in Quebec has been hard hit by layoffs for five years. In my riding, they are still happening, and i am talking about the forestry industry. Those workers will not be eligible for the measures in Bill C-50.

The Globe and Mail, a paper not known for its sovereignist leanings, spoke about the bill. Does the Globe and Mail support sovereignty for Quebec? It pointed out that the bill proposed measures that will apply to workers in the automobile industry.

Which automobile industry is that? It is the one in Ontario, because there is hardly anything left of the auto industry in Quebec.

There was one assembly plant left in Sainte-Thérèse, but it closed. There was a Hyundai plant in Bromont, but it is closed too. We have parts subcontractors, I admit, but the automobile industry is concentrated in Ontario, for the most part. So this bill is custom made for Ontario.

We members of the Bloc proudly representing the regions and workers of Quebec cannot support a bill that provides additional benefits to 190,000 people who are unemployed, but practically nothing to Quebec. It is not designed for our forestry workers.

In conclusion, I would like to thank the two groups in my riding that are working very hard to stand up for the rights of the unemployed. I am thinking of Lyne Sirois of Mouvement Action-Chômage on Haute-Côte-Nord and Danie Harvey, who is behind the Sans-chemise movement in Charlevoix. I am certain that these people agree with the Bloc Québécois position that Bill C-50 does not address the needs of the unemployed in Quebec. For these reasons, the Bloc Québécois cannot support the bill.

The Bloc Québécois invites the other parties—because there are talks under way among the parliamentary leaders—to think seriously about the Bloc's offer to hear from the groups directly affected by this bill, before a vote is held, so that they can give us their perspectives. In light of these presentations, the government might listen to reason and amend its bill.

I repeat that we need real reform of the employment insurance program.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Madam Speaker, there is a targeted initiative for older workers of $60 billion which the member is not totally happy with. There are 190,000 people who are being helped and he is not happy with that. There is a work sharing agreement that helped 160,000 people which he is not happy with. He is not happy with the five extra weeks.

Using his logic, if he were to vote against the bill and it failed, what would he tell the 190,000 people? Would he tell them that the bill did not have everything he liked and he did not support it because of some reason? Would he say to each one of those 190,000 people that he knows they need additional assistance but he will not help them because he does not like everything in there? How can he justify that to the 190,000 who need the support? It does not matter where they live in the country; it is better that they have that benefit than no benefit at all. The member's logic escapes me.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Madam Speaker, my colleague's remarks show the Conservatives' contempt for and insensitivity to the situation in Quebec and especially in the regions of Quebec.

He mentions talking to the 190,000 unemployed in Ontario, but what will the government say to the unemployed in our regions who have been suffering for five years because of the forest industry crisis? Plants are closing left and right in Quebec. People have paid employment insurance premiums.

I think the member should also stop being paternalistic and more or less implying that this money is coming out of his pockets. These workers pay taxes. This money is not coming from Conservative members and ministers. Employment insurance benefits come out of the EI fund, which is made up of employer and worker contributions. The Conservative government and the Liberal government, under Paul Martin, boasted about—

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine has the floor.

[Raynald Blais, Bloc, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Madam Speaker, I do not know if I can put as much passion into it as my colleague just did but at the very least I will say this: with regard to the 190,000 eligible people, when it was time for questions the member for Chambly—Borduas asked the Conservatives where they are. With respect to Gaspésie and Îles-de-la-Madeleine, one of the Quebec regions, I have a great deal of difficulty finding unemployed workers who might be part of this group of 190,000.

Is it possible that this figure of 190,000 has been exaggerated just like so many other things presented by the government? I believe that the member who just spoke, the Bloc Québécois whip, is surely very aware of the fact that the figures mentioned by the Conservative government are, for the most part, wrong.

[Michel Guimond, Bloc, Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, QC]

Madam Speaker, this would be a good opportunity in the debate. If the government is talking about 190,000 persons, that number is not coming out of thin air, it has not been reached at random. You do not say, “Oh, I just pulled out the number 190,000!” I would like some member of the government who will be talking about this bill to give us the geographic breakdown of the 190,000 unemployed persons. We shall see if we are right. If there are 189,000 of them in Quebec, I will withdraw my words and make a statement in the House. However if it is true that the great majority are auto workers, I hope this government has the courage to say so to our faces.

[Michael Savage, Liberal, Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS]

Madam Speaker, I congratulate my colleague for his speech. I have enjoyed working with him and his great colleague from Chambly—Borduas on issues like this.

We do not agree on everything, but I think we agree on some of the basic issues. One of the things that are particularly annoying and frustrating about the government is its insistence when referring to the 360-hour work year or the nine-week work year is a lack of respect for Canadian workers.

I want to ask the member if he believes, as the government does, that Canadian workers will purposely put themselves in a position to be unemployed so they can get all these great benefits from employment insurance.