Mr. Speaker, it is an honour for me to rise in this House today in order to debate Bill C-278. This bill is the initiative of my colleague from Trois-Rivières, who has made a timely presentation illustrating the need to pass this bill quickly.
What is the urgency? People are deeply hurt, on a personal level, by the fact that they are being denied the employment insurance benefits to which they have contributed for their entire lives and to which they are entitled.
It is also a welcome initiative because we know that the federal government definitely intends to maintain the status quo and continue to dip into the EI fund, which is totally unacceptable.
There is the occasional serendipity or somewhat disturbing coincidences. Today, April 4, is the 70th anniversary of the relief camp workers' strike in British Columbia. These workers went on strike to demand a number of working conditions and measures that would provide them with income if they lost their jobs. This happened on April 4, 1935, and the strike began at 11 a.m., just as my speech this morning was scheduled for 11 a.m.
In a fortuitous and also very unusual coincidence, at 11 this morning, an initiative by the Mouvement des sans-emploi called “En marche” was launched in Montreal and other places throughout the province. It calls upon the government to substantially improve employment insurance. Coincidence? Perhaps, but it is certainly a nice reminder to this government that the Bennett government was defeated in the 1935 election, after adopting a position and measures quite similar to those adopted by the current government on the unemployed and people facing employment difficulties.
This government could very well meet the same fate. Currently, the problem for people in Canada—but which does not exist in Quebec—is that there is no viable political alternative with which to replace this government. That is the only thing missing. Otherwise, this government would have been defeated in the last election on June 28.
There must be a viable political alternative even with regard to employment insurance. I invite the Conservatives, today, if they want to improve their image, to vote in favour of Bill C-278; otherwise they will be tarnished with the same brush as the Liberals.
Obviously, the unemployed are the ones affected, but so are their families and their children. We know that, in Canada, the quality of life of children has deteriorated, because children have gotten poorer. And children are getting poorer because parents are poor. One factor contributing to family and child poverty is denying the unemployed what they are owed, despite the fact that they have an insurance fund guaranteeing them benefits should they have the misfortune of losing their job. Unfortunately, the Liberal government has used this insurance fund for other purposes.
This is the same Liberal government that tightened up EI eligibility criteria in order to finance or to balance its budget on the backs of the workers. The Bloc's position is to start by creating an independent fund and an independent commission so that the government can no longer get its hands on it.
In ten days or so, we will be looking at Bill C-280. The government needs to pay back, over ten years, the money it has got its hands on, and that is what is in our Bill C-278, along with having the commission set the contribution rates. The commission must have a balanced representation of employers and workers because they are the ones who contribute to it. As well, the entire employment insurance system needs to be improved.
The position of the present government, the public needs to be reminded, is devious and dishonest. Why so? Because, having pillaged the fund, the Liberal Party made the commitment in the 2000 election campaign to fix what it had destroyed. It did not do so. In 2001, Liberal Party representatives on the Standing Committee on Human Resources and Skills Development, which was addressing the situation with EI, voted unanimously in favour of correcting the situation. Not only was that not done, but as well the Liberals have continued to betray the public by dipping into the fund for other purposes.
Speaking of devious and dishonest, in the last election, barely a year ago, the Liberal government again made a commitment to remedy the situation. Not only did it not do so, but this House, on the initiative of the Bloc Québécois last November, recognized unanimously that the employment insurance fund must not be used in future for any other purpose than unemployment, because it is contributed to by workers and employers and no one else. One might then have expected the fund to be left untouched. But no, the government continues to help itself to money for other purposes. Even the Auditor General pointed this out in her report last November. Liberals on the Human Resources and Skills Development Committee voted unanimously to remedy the situation, based on the set of measures set out in Bill C-278. Since then, the Liberal government has again been doing everything it can to get around these recommendations and enact measures that are contrary to that recommendation.
I want to go back very briefly to the measures proposed in Bill C-278. We have to ask ourselves if we have the money to implement these measures. We do and that money is in the fund. As I said earlier, what needs to be done to restore sustainability, not for the fund but for families, is first to give special status to seasonal workers by setting a single minimum qualifying period of 360 hours for all those who contribute to the fund. We must remove the existing discrimination caused by the disparity in the number of hours required, eliminate the gap by extending by five weeks, from 45 weeks to 50 weeks, the maximum benefit period, and provide special benefits for older workers under POWA, which is a program to help older workers who lose their jobs.
We should also amend the Employment Insurance Act so that persons related to each other are no longer treated as if they had cheated—if somebody cheated, it is definitely not workers. We should also increase the training fund to 0.8% of all insurable earnings; abolish the 910 hour rule for those who become part of the labour force or who rejoin it; increase from $2,000 to $3,000 the threshold of insurable earnings to qualify for benefits; increase the rate of benefits from 55% to 60%; and increase the maximum yearly insurable earnings to $41,500.
In conclusion, all these measures could easily be implemented with the surpluses that the fund will generate again this year, which are in excess of $3 billion, while the proposed measures would only cost $1.8 billion.