Mr. Speaker, I asked a question in the House of Commons about the following situation. in the early 1990s, the fisheries industry was in crisis in the Atlantic provinces and in Quebec. At that time, the Liberals found nothing better to do than to cut employment insurance, thus abandoning workers. Today they are trying to pass themselves off as the champions of employment insurance. My question was this: Will the government show more respect for unemployed workers than the LIberals did?
The House has voted in favour of changes to employment insurance. When will the Conservatives abolish the waiting period and reduce eligibility to 360 hours as the NDP has called for?
The reason I put the question like that is that we are going through an economic crisis right now. We agree on that even though, during the 2008 election, the Conservative government refused to acknowledge that there was an economic crisis. Now, changes are being made to employment insurance—a few changes anyway. The minister answered my question about the 360-hour eligibility criteria and eliminating the waiting period by saying that they had added five weeks at the end. As though five weeks was somehow better than the two-week waiting period. We have been hearing that from the Conservative government in the House of Commons for a long time now.
First, the difference is that the employee who works and loses his job faces a qualifying period, what some call the two-week waiting period. I do not call it the two-week waiting period. I do not agree with that expression. It is two weeks of punishment because when someone loses their job, they are not entitled to the first two weeks of employment insurance. It is not a two-week waiting period. People have to wait 28 days before getting employment insurance benefits. It is two weeks of punishment with no income. In addition to that punishment, they end up with 55% of their salary. For example, if they earn $700 a week, they receive only 55% of $700. If the person earns minimum wage, let us say $8 an hour, they receive $4 and change, which is less than social assistance. The punishment is twofold.
As for the five weeks added at the end, that does not help people any more than the two weeks, because people who have lost their jobs have to wait 28 days before they receive EI and, in addition, they lose the first two weeks. They get a cheque for one week. That is the difference. That is why we called on the government to act and why, in the spring, a majority of members adopted our motion in the House of Commons to change the waiting period. The motion concerning the 360-hour eligibility criterion was adopted by the majority. Here again, what was behind this motion was the fact that less than 50% of workers in Canada are eligible for EI.
I cannot wait to hear what the parliamentary secretary will say, because earlier, he said that employees pay a premium so that they will have income when they lose their job. The current formula prevents workers from qualifying for EI. The formula must change so that workers can supposedly receive benefits. As the parliamentary secretary said earlier, this program belongs to workers, who need to be given the chance to qualify for benefits. At this point, we are really talking about people who have lost their jobs, period. If someone has lost his job, is he entitled to employment insurance? Because of the number of hours, this person does not qualify.
After the government's response, I will talk about the economic crisis and what happened in the fishery in the 1990s.