Madam Speaker, I rise again tonight to speak to an issue of great importance to people, not only in my riding of Random—Burin—St. George's, but in the country as a whole, particularly people who are trying to obtain employment insurance and cannot do so because the government has not taken sufficient measures to enable them to access employment insurance on a timely basis.
We are dealing with individuals throughout the country who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own and find themselves in a position where in many cases they cannot pay their mortgage, buy medication, put food on the table for their families, buy clothing for their family or themselves, they cannot put gas in their vehicles, all because they do not have any income. They do not have an income because they have lost their job. Just as importantly, they are not able to access a system that should be there to ensure they can do all these things just as they could when they were working.
I have listened to the government tell the story that it put in additional resources. If that is the case, why is it that people still have to wait 50, 60, 70 days to get a response to their employment insurance claim? This is money that individuals across this country put into this program. This is not the government's money. This is money that is owned by the individuals throughout the country who paid into an employment insurance program for emergencies. When people lose their jobs it is just that, an emergency.
If the government has indeed put in additional resources and hired additional people to try to speed up the claim process because of the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who have lost jobs in the recent number of months, then why is it we are not able to deal with it more efficiently? Why is it that we are not able to get these claims moving a lot quicker than they are at present?
If in fact we are not able to respond, or not responding in a timely manner to this dire situation that people find themselves in, why are we not putting more money into the program? Why are we not taking more measures to move things quickly? I am told that the money going into doing that comes from the employment insurance program itself. It is not as if the government has to take responsibility for paying additional people. That comes out of the employment insurance program itself. If that is the case, why is the government not doing more? Why is it not moving quicker and hiring more people to make sure the process works much quicker?
We have people who are losing their jobs through no fault of their own, and they are being victimized again because they are not able to access an employment insurance program. Why is this necessary? Why did the government not foresee that this was going to be a problem, knowing we were in a recession, knowing that companies were laying off people by the hundreds of thousands? Why is it the government did not take the measures necessary to make sure we had an employment insurance program that could respond readily to the emergency that many individuals across the country find themselves in?