Mr. Speaker, I will try to compress as much as I can within my six minutes. I will try not to repeat a lot of what has already been said. Many good comments have been made here today by our colleagues from the Bloc and my colleagues within the New Democratic Party.
I have a few questions about the others in regard to how we approach the issue, but to get on with the issue of training and educational opportunities for older workers, I think it is crucial that we do not wait until the last moment, when workers have already lost their jobs, before we give them those training opportunities.
I have been here in Ottawa for about eight years. At different times I have called upon the minister and the government to implement access to employment insurance for workers who want to take additional training.
For example, a request came to us from the nurses union. The nurses said they had members who wanted to take advanced training in their nursing profession or in some other profession. They wanted additional training. They may never have collected employment insurance in their lives, but even if they had, they wanted the opportunity to take some additional training.
Certainly had the workers within the softwood lumber industry been given an opportunity at some point to take additional training, they would have been able to make that transformation to another job without having to go through the crisis of not having employment.
There is a lot that we could be doing within our employment insurance program to prevent the crisis situations for so many unemployed workers, with workers having to go on welfare, their families being under that pressure and the entire system being under pressure. It ends up affecting the health care system and, in a lot of instances, the justice system. It has a major effect throughout the country.
The reality is that there is money in the employment insurance fund. It is not as if there are no dollars available to make those improvements to benefits within the employment insurance fund, certainly to address the issue that we are talking about here today with the opposition day motion, but also on a broader scope to give Canadians the opportunity to enhance their educational opportunities.
I would encourage the government not to look at this issue from just the older workers perspective, which is extremely important, but from the perspective that we need to enhance the opportunities for workers to get that additional training. It is also extremely important to note, and I will highlight this a bit more regarding the older workers, that we are seeing workers staying in the workforce a lot longer, even when they can retire at age 65. We know that a change is afoot to increase the retirement age, because in some work categories people are able to continue working longer. Certainly, though, in other areas people want to be able to leave a type of employment because it is hard on the body and hard on the mind. The longer people are in those jobs the more they feel it from a health perspective.
I think we need to enhance the opportunities for workers to get that additional training. This is something that the government has not been open to. The sad reality of why it is not open to this is that the government is using the employment insurance premium fund for other things. That is the sad reality.
What really sickens me about this is that if we look at that $46 billion, and we all know it came from EI and has gone into general revenue over the years, the Conservative Party is saying to take that employment insurance money and give a $4.6 billion tax break at the expense of all Canadians.
Let me say this for my colleague from Regina--Qu'Appelle. That is the riding where I spent most of my younger years. I do not say I grew up there anymore, because I probably grew up after I left the Regina--Qu'Appelle area. I grew up in a small community called Lebret. Here is what I would like to ask my colleague from Regina--Qu'Appelle. What great advantage to Lebret is that $4.6 billion corporate tax cut?
I cannot imagine the benefit, but I can tell the member that I can certainly imagine the benefits of affordable education, affordable housing and improvements in Kyoto measures and environmental issues. All of these will have great advantages for those communities in his own riding, but he is fighting for corporate tax cuts for Bay Street corporations that may want to expand and pay their CEOs a bit more so they can go and get another place in the Cayman Islands or a holiday offshore somewhere. Meanwhile, the people in his own riding would get nothing, absolutely nothing.
I am going to quickly scan the comments that I was writing down as the discussion was going on about EI. The parliamentary secretary had commented in reply to the hon. member for Burnaby—New Westminster that it is too bad the U.S. does not play fair in the globalization issue on the trade deals. I want to say to the parliamentary secretary, fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Shame on the Liberal government for time and time again getting into battles with our southern neighbour and not doing anything about it, not fixing the faults within the trade agreements that have jeopardized jobs in Canada over and over again. Shame on the government for not acting on behalf of Canadians.
