Suzanne Tremblay

[Petitions, February 13th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the member for Laval Centre, who is the Bloc Quebecois critic on disability issues, I am pleased to table a petition signed by almost 6,000 people, who ask that Parliament object to any plans to restrict access to the disability tax credit and to ensure that the government hold off on passing any measures in the House without prior discussions and consultations with disability organizations and health care professionals.

[Employment Insurance Act, February 12th, 2003]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-359, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (determination of insurable employment).

Mr. Speaker, for those who thought that this might take a while, I will reassure them by saying that this is the last bill I will be introducing today.

Bill C-359 seeks to turn responsibility for determining whether or not a job is insurable over to the Canada Employment Insurance Commission.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Employment Insurance Act, February 12th, 2003]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-358, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and another Act in consequence, 2002 (Employment Insurance Account and premium rate setting).

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-358 seeks to amend the Employment Insurance Act and another act in consequence in two very important respects: the famous Employment Insurance Account—we do not think it should go into the government's consolidated revenue fund, especially the surplus—as well as the method for setting the premium rate. Those are the two objectives of this bill.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Employment Insurance Act, February 12th, 2003]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-357, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act, 2002 (Schedule I).

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-357 seeks to amend Schedule I of the Employment Insurance Act. This schedule makes reference to the table of weeks of benefits.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Employment Insurance Act, February 12th, 2003]

moved for leave to introduce C-356, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (waiting period).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to introduce this bill which would eliminate the two-week waiting period during which a claimant is disentitled from receiving employment insurance benefits. People who go on employment insurance could receive their benefits immediately.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Seasonal Employment, February 11th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in several sectors of the seasonal employment industry, an increasingly common practice is for employers to accumulate employee overtime hours instead of declaring them in order to extend the work periods and avoid the infamous gap.

Will the minister admit that not recognizing seasonal work is the true cause of these fraudulent practices?

[Employment Insurance, February 7th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, according to the latest figures from Human Resources Development, close to 35% of EI recipients draw all the benefits to which they are entitled. The majority of these are seasonal workers, who are at risk of having no income whatsoever for a period of up to 10 weeks a year.

When does the Minister of Human Resources Development intend to act on the Bloc Quebecois' call for a single EI eligibility level of 420 hours for all workers in seasonal industries?

[Employment Insurance, January 30th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, in her last report, the Auditor General of Canada urged the government to make the mechanism for setting the EI premium rates more transparent. That is what the government promised to do when section 66 was suspended.

When does the government plan to deliver on this promise to make the process of setting the EI premium rates transparent and more objective?

[Employment Insurance Act, January 29th, 2003]

Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to speak in the debate on Bill C-206, which seeks to amend the Employment Insurance Act to allow persons qualifying as caregivers to leave their job to care for a family member.

The member's objectives in introducing this bill are highly commendable. For quite some time, we have looked for a way to help caregivers help their family. We know that there is no better caregiver than a family member to help someone who is ill either regain their health or die with dignity.

We also know that a program for caregivers would take a huge load off the health care system, the CLSCs and the clinics providing home care and so forth. Therefore, the principle of the bill is a good one.

The definitions are set out in section 1. Caregivers, clearly, are persons leaving their job—it says who leave their employment voluntarily or whose employment is terminated—but who want to care for a family member who is ill or who has an impairment as defined in the Income Tax Act.

Next, the bill gives a definition of family. Again, I see no problem with the way family is defined.

But I do see a problem with the fact that families are getting smaller and smaller and, quite often, caregivers have no family ties with the person they are in a position to care for.

There are all sorts of reasons. Perhaps they are neighbours who have become friends, or they are co-workers, one of whom has no family and the other of whom is able to help.

Families are much smaller than they used to be. The bill refers to siblings, uncles, aunts and so on, but nowadays many families are having only one child. We also must consider the fact that family members are not always very close.

There used to be the family unit and everyone lived together. It was not uncommon to see only a handful of surnames in a village. Nowadays, young people often have to leave the region they were born in to look for work elsewhere and they end up very far away. Parents stay all alone. Thought should be given to a mechanism that would allow the concept to be expanded so that someone who is truly close to the person in difficulty could come to their assistance.

There is something else that should be considered. I personally would be very much in favour of this bill being passed by the majority of the members in the House so that we can send the bill back to committee, study it in depth and look at how it could be improved in order to fund this program.

The hon. member from the Canadian Alliance said that it was a problem to take money from the EI fund. Certainly, if this leave were reserved only for people receiving EI benefits, there will be a problem. There are an increasing number of self-employed workers. They need to have access to the necessary funds to be able to become natural caregivers too.

Given that the EI fund has surpluses in the billions, maybe it would be good if the government could come up with a mechanism to transfer part of the EI surplus into a fund to run this program. It would be accessible to all Canadians who may have a certain type of need.

Sometimes a natural caregiver may incur expenses when leaving home to take care of someone else, even if they live close by. Perhaps there could be a way to help the natural caregiver even if he or she is not receiving employment insurance benefits.

The various aspects of this problem need to be looked at. We will most definitely have an increasingly aging population, and will need more help to take care of them. It seems to me important for a mechanism to be found that is adaptable enough to enable everyone to benefit from the program.

For example, we do not want to get into the same bind as with maternity benefits and special sick leave benefits, which are related to workers' accumulated leave, workers who have a job and can draw employment insurance. The program to be developed for natural caregivers must go far beyond that and be capable of encompassing all Canadians.

I am convinced that, if we all support this bill at second reading stage, if we refer it to a committee for consideration and for the necessary hearings to be held so that people can put in their two cents worth, we will really have done something worthwhile. The government will perhaps decide after all that to reverse its position and say to itself, “Now, to move ahead with this bill about caregivers, it strikes us as important to redraft it and produce one that reflects all the comments that have been made”. So, one day, we will truly be able to help out natural caregivers.

[Committees of the House, December 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc has always encouraged the government to pay down part of the debt, but it has never encouraged it to do so by taking money from the fund set up for workers and employers. There is a difference.

If the fund is not used for benefits, then it should be used to fund retraining and new programs, but at no time should it be used to pay down the debt. Misappropriating the fund for this purpose is a disgrace. If our surpluses were taken and 75% went to the debt and 25% for new expenditures, then fine. It could even be 50:50. But, stealing from the fund must stop.