Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Newton—North Delta.
New Democrats will be supporting Bill C-44, an act to amend the Canada Labour Code and the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to the Income Tax Act and the income tax regulations. In part, what Bill C-44 would do is make a number of amendments to the Canada Labour Code to expand leaves of absence available to parents. The bill would allow for the extension of maternity and parental leave by the number of weeks that a child is hospitalized during a leave. It would allow for the extension of parental leave by the amount of sick leave taken during a parental leave, as well as for participation in the Canadian Reserve Forces. It would grant an unpaid leave of absence of up to 37 weeks for parents of critically ill children, 104 weeks for parents whose children have been murdered as a result of a crime, and 52 weeks for parents of children who have disappeared as a result of a crime. It would extend the period of unpaid absence due to illness or injury up to 17 weeks, without fear of layoff .
These changes would apply to workers in federally regulated industries only, but it is hoped that the provinces would make similar changes to their own labour code as happened when compassionate care benefits were introduced.
New Democrats are supporting the bill, but hopefully at committee there will an opportunity for some exchange about how the bill could be enhanced.
One of the pieces that came up when the member for Hamilton Mountain spoke in the House about the bill was the fact that the Conservatives actually changed their approach to this. I want to quote from her speech. She said:
While support for these parents is important, and frankly, long overdue, I am concerned that parents are only eligible if they worked a minimum of 600 insurable hours over the past year. More than anything, this raises a question for me of whether the EI program is the best vehicle for delivering this parental support.
I would point out that at one time the government agreed with me. As recently as 2011 the Conservative Party platform read, “Funding for this measure will come from general revenue, not EI premiums”. The Conservatives were right to adopt that approach.
Whether one is a waged worker, a senior manager, a professional, or a stay-at-home parent, the devastation of a critically ill child is the same. All Canadians who find themselves caring for their seriously ill child are incurring a myriad of expenses that go beyond lost wages, and they all deserve our support.
That is a very important point, because we all know that sometimes family members are not in the waged economy. A child may become ill and there is very little support for families who are not in paid employment. Therefore, although this measure is a good step, it does not look at the larger picture.
I heard the Minister of Labour talk about the fact that there is an expectation, a hope, a wish that provincial governments would line up and make amendments to their labour codes because this only deals with federally regulated workers. I would like to quote from an article in Moneyville, entitled “New EI benefits for parents of sick kids won’t protect jobs”. It highlights the challenges that we have, and I will talk a bit more about jurisdiction issues on another matter. It states:
Prime Minister Harper’s recent announcement of up to 35 weeks of Employment Insurance benefits for parents of critically ill children beginning in June 2013 is laudable. However, unless parallel changes to provincial labour standards are made, parents who are off work to care for sick children may not have a job to go back to.
Since 2004, Canadians have had access to up to six weeks of Compassionate Care Benefits from EI after a two-week waiting period if they have to be away from work temporarily to provide care or support to a family member who is gravely ill....
However, few employees have applied for EI Compassionate Care Benefits and Ontario’s Family Medical Leave because to be eligible for both, claimants need a doctor’s certificate that the patient they are caring for has a specified, serious medical condition with a significant risk of death occurring within six months. This has been a particular problem for parents with seriously ill children.
On that point, there has actually been very little uptake on that six weeks of compassionate leave because of a very complicated set of reasons. Part of it has been this almost requirement that families give up hope that their loved one will recover. For many people, at one time when a diagnosis was given it may well have been a death sentence. With improvements in medical care that are now available, people do recover.
Part of the challenge with the uptake on that compassionate leave piece was the fact that it was acknowledging that the person or the child was going to die. Therefore, there is a need for more latitude and discretion around what serious illness is. Hopefully that will also be clarified.
The article goes on to say:
It is also important to recognize that [the government’s] recent announcement does nothing to correct the fatal flaw in the EI Compassionate Care Benefits program as it applies to non-parents who need time to care for ailing loved ones. If the federal government is serious about offering support to family caregivers, the requirement for medical certification of imminent death should also be eliminated so non-parents can more readily claim up to the six weeks of compassionate care benefits currently available.
Mr. Speaker, I know that you have done a tremendous amount of work around the issue of palliative care and recognize how important it is sometimes for non-parents to provide support for somebody who is seriously ill.
Many of us in the House have aging parents. I am blessed that my mother is very healthy, but a few years ago my father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. There was no way for family members to support him other than to take unpaid time off work.
It is very important with our aging population and other changes happening in our society that we recognize that non-parents are often caregivers and need to be recognized in this legislation.
I want to briefly touch on the jurisdictional issue. Again, we have heard that the government is hopeful the provinces will step up and be part of this granting of leave for compassionate reasons and to care for somebody who is seriously ill.
A number of years ago I was fortunate enough to introduce Jordan's principle in the House, which was a direct result of a critically ill child and jurisdictional issues. I want to quote from this article on Jordan's principle:
Very often it is the harmless innocents that get caught in these jurisdictional black holes and in this case it was a baby from Norway House, Man., named Jordan. He was born in 1999 with a serious genetic and medical condition. It soon became apparent that he would have to be placed in long-term care. After two years the medical staff determined he could be released from the hospital and sent to a special foster-care home. Unfortunately he got caught between competing bureaucracies. The provincial and federal governments quarrelled over who should pay for his care. The tragic outcome was that Jordan spent two more years in hospital and died before there was any resolution. Following Jordan's tragic life and death there was an outcry from the First Nations community and front-line health workers. The result was the drafting of a statement of principle that put the child first when it comes to funding and jurisdictional disputes. It's called “Jordan's principle” in his honour.
In the case of critically ill children, I would argue that at times it could be a stretch to hope that the provincial governments will come to the table with what the federal government has offered. In Ontario there has been some movement around the granting of compassionate leave, but just to assume that all provinces will come to the table and grant this leave under their own labour codes so that non-federally regulated workers are included might be a bit of a pipe dream.
Jordan's principle was passed in the House five or six years ago but we have still not seen the present federal government moving to take leadership and make sure that children and their families actually do come first. I remain to be convinced that this is going to work.
We have seen the Conservative government tinker with parts of the Employment Insurance Act and disregard some of the very serious deficiencies. I heard a member talk about the lack of resources. This is not about the good front-line workers in employment insurance. They are doing what they can, but they cannot cope with the volume. This is not about the fact that only 40% of workers actually qualify to collect employment insurance. It is not about the fact that there has not been significant changes in the amount of money that people are being paid as our economy has continued to stagger.
Although we welcome this bill and think that it is an appropriate thing to do, I urge the government to take a look at why it is that Canadians who have paid into this fund simply cannot collect benefits in this day and age.