Anne-Marie Day

[Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act, May 10th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, what the member just told us does not make sense. The Conservatives want to increase the retirement age from 65 to 67 and are telling people who are 54 that they will be affected, but not those who are 55 to 65. In other words, those who are 63 today will not be affected and will not work until they are 67. We know that, at present, a large portion of the population is between 55 and 65. Most of the aging population is in that demographic.

Why should we punish future generations, 13 years from now, by forcing them to work two years longer when there will be fewer seniors and we will have the revenue to support them?

[Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act, May 10th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-38 amends the Employment Equity Act so that it no longer applies to federal contracts. Women's groups have been fighting for pay equity for several decades.

Would the member, who has a federal contract, agree to be paid less for her work rather than having equal pay for equal work?

[Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act, May 10th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, the fact is that eastern Canada has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions, while western Canada has increased emissions. Despite the provinces' ongoing efforts, the situation is still not under control.

Why is at least one-third of Bill C-38 about environmental deregulation?

[Employment Insurance Act, May 9th, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to rise today to say, on behalf of the NDP, that we completely refuse to support Bill C-316.

It is not favourable treatment, as the hon. member said. A prisoner who is serving a sentence of less than 52 weeks is there because of a minor crime. He is not there because he killed someone or committed a major crime. He is in prison for a minor offence.

Suppose the person worked for 15 years and was then sentenced to less than 52 weeks in prison for committing a minor crime. Under the current legislation, that person can claim employment insurance benefits when he gets out of prison because he has to return to society. Suppose that person served a sentence of 30 weeks in prison. He has to return to society.

How would such a person reintegrate into society? How would he go about looking for employment? How would he approach different workers in a small or large business, depending on his occupation and training? This person was in prison for a certain period of time and therefore has to reintegrate into society. In all likelihood, he will have a lot of difficulty doing so because people do not want to have anything to do with former inmates.

Someone getting out of prison receives EI benefits in exactly the same way as everyone else who is entitled to receive EI benefits after having worked for a certain amount of time, and this period during which he receives benefits will allow him to find a job and return to society.

If this person is not given this time to reintegrate into society, he will not be able to earn a living and there is a good chance he will return to petty crime, which would only send him back to prison. This person, therefore, has a right to a period of EI benefits.

This bill would repeal the provisions that extend the EI qualifying period and the payment of EI benefits to a claimant who has been in jail or prison or any establishment of that sort. This is completely discriminatory and does nothing to address the real flaws in the Employment Insurance Act.

To understand the negative impact of these amendments to the Employment Insurance Act, we have to look at the facts.

Currently, the legislation stipulates that where a person proves that the person was not employed in insurable employment for one or more weeks during the qualifying period because the person was confined in a jail, penitentiary or other similar institution, that qualifying period is extended by the same number of weeks during which he or she was detained and was thus unavailable for work, to a maximum extension of 52 weeks. The maximum qualifying period, as we know, is 104 weeks.

Having spent 52 weeks in prison, a person applies and is entitled to 52 weeks. All the other measures are applied as well, but it depends on the unemployment rate in the region and the number of weeks worked before going to prison. This measure does not, of course, apply to inmates who are detained for more than a year.

I want to come back to the story of the woman who prompted the hon. member to introduce this bill. She went to the member's riding office and told him her story. She told him that she went back to school after having worked for 15 years. Then, when she was looking for work, she became sick and was diagnosed with cancer. She went back to see her MP to find out whether she could get employment insurance benefits.

Two wrongs do not make a right.

Instead of dealing with the woman's request properly and helping her find a solution, and instead of introducing a bill to amend employment insurance, the member combed through the bill for something else he did not like. He discovered that a prisoner can have spent time in jail, be released, claim employment insurance and be entitled to receive it. The member figured that was not fair, but the two scenarios have nothing to do with each other. As I said, two wrongs do not make a right. The two have nothing to do with each other. He is mixing up two completely different issues.

What the member should have done was introduce an amendment to the bill to enable the woman to collect sickness benefits during her cancer treatment, then, once she recovers, to collect employment insurance benefits so that she can reintegrate into society because she is unable to work.

It is abundantly clear that this bill is a badly disguised attempt to further restrict access to employment insurance for people who have paid into the system, and this at a time when fewer Canadians than ever before are eligible.

Furthermore, if these former inmates are denied employment insurance to help them get out of the cycle of poverty and petty crime, they will be forced to turn to social assistance.

This downloads the cost onto the provinces, and the provinces will have to foot the bill when these people are released, if they are not given access to employment insurance.

When I first became aware of Bill C-316, my first thought was this: who on this planet could possibly oppose the rehabilitation of our most vulnerable citizens? Who could possibly oppose the rapid reintegration of people into the labour market?

When he appeared before the committee, the member for Cariboo—Prince George explained what led him to create his bill. During his testimony, the member said he had been informed of an unfortunate situation facing one of his constituents, as I said earlier.

As he was reading the legislation to try to help his constituent, the member for Cariboo—Prince George learned of the measures that are available to inmates and he was outraged.

It should come as no surprise that I do not believe that this way of doing things serves any purpose or is constructive in any way. A society makes progress by constantly improving its legislation and not by regressing and bullying more and more people.

The Employment Insurance Act does have shortcomings that this government should hasten to address in order to make the system more accessible and fair for everyone, particularly for unfortunate people such as the one we just spoke about or for women who lose their jobs when they return from maternity leave.

What is even worse is not that the government is doing absolutely nothing to resolve the shortcomings in this legislation and to help Canadians; the worst thing is that this government prefers inflict more pain on other people who have certain rights.

Why not find positive solutions and introduce a bill that would extend the qualifying period and the benefit period for people who are not covered under the current legislation, such as the woman who wanted to upgrade her skills but fell ill?

In the end, we must simply conclude that, when people go to a Conservative office to ask for help, they come away empty-handed. I am certain that the woman who, one day, asked for help from her Conservative member was not thrilled to see that this government has done nothing to resolve her problem and that it now wants to do away with the special provision for inmates—in the interest of fairness, or so it claims.

In his testimony in committee, again to explain the merits of his bill, the hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George said that it was completely unfair to grant favouritism to someone who has committed a crime but not to someone who has gone back to school to upgrade her skills.

I would like to remind the House that this information is false and borders dangerously on misinformation. Inmates are not granted any favouritism when they receive employment insurance benefits. They are simply on standby to receive their benefits because they worked before going to prison.

If the inmate is eligible for benefits, it is because he—out of his own pocket—and his employer contributed enough to the employment insurance plan for a specified period of weeks.

If a person who wants to upgrade his skills or go back to school in order to enter the labour market falls ill, then that person does not have access to employment insurance benefits because he did not contribute to the plan for the number of weeks or hours required. It has nothing to do with the fact that the person was an inmate but everything to do with whether that person worked the number of weeks required to be eligible.

It is important to remember that when a law is amended it must be amended for the better.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, I just received an official request for support from the Beauport women's resource centre, asking that the Women's Health Contribution Program be maintained. This program has existed for 16 years and provides evidence-based facts and vital information on women's health.

This organization and all women's health organizations are asking that this particular program be renewed. I would like to hear the member's thoughts on this.

[Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act, May 8th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, the hon. member spoke of good governance.

I do not believe this bill is a matter of good governance. Take, for example, the fact that this bill repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.

Instead, the bill talks about measures to protect the pipelines and whatever the oil companies propose. The government is taking money out of other envelopes and using it to fund oil companies and corporations, which should be using their own money to do this work themselves.

Can my colleague explain all this?

[Employment, May 4th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, lower salaries mean that people will be spending less money in local businesses. Less spending means less income for business owners. Everyone will pay the price if the Conservatives continue to race to the bottom.

Why did the Conservatives decide to hide these changes in an omnibus bill? Why do they not address the real problems in the employment insurance system, such as wait lists that are too long, instead of risking slowing down our economic growth?

[Employment, May 4th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, the budget bill that the Conservatives are afraid to debate with the opposition proposes repealing the provision under which a worker who is looking for a job is not obligated to accept one where the working conditions, including the rate of pay, are less favourable than those offered by good employers. In short, the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development wants to lower both salaries and purchasing power in this country.

Why are the Conservatives attacking the workers who are the lifeblood of our economy?

[Employment Insurance, May 4th, 2012]

Madam Speaker, with thousands of jobs about to disappear because of the Conservatives' deep cuts, thousands of Canadians will need the social safety net to which they are entitled, employment insurance.

These workers have contributed all their working lives, with the help of their employer and without the help of the government, in order to have some security in difficult times. However, this government is looking for every conceivable way to reduce access to employment insurance, which is already at a record low.

Fewer than four in ten unemployed persons currently have access to employment insurance, even though all workers contribute to the fund. Unwarranted changes to boards of referees, reduced wages for temporary foreign workers, and the outrageous appropriation of the authority to define the notion of suitable employment point to one thing: the Conservatives' professed contempt for the workers of this country and their rights.

The Conservatives must amend Bill C-38 to give Canadians the support they need when they most need it.

[Canada Labour Code, May 3rd, 2012]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie for his bill.

I also thank my colleagues for so brilliantly expressing their opinions about this bill to allow pregnant or nursing women who are subject to the Canada Labour Code to avail themselves of provincial preventive withdrawal provisions when they are more beneficial.

The Quebec program known as “Pour une maternité sans danger” allows a pregnant or nursing worker who believes that her job poses a risk to her pregnancy or the health of her child to ask her employer for another assignment. She must obtain a doctor's note, which is submitted to her employer. If it is impossible for the employer to eliminate the risk or to assign the worker to other duties, she can use preventive withdrawal and receive compensation.

Quite by accident, I recently came across an article indicating that all pregnant American women have many chemicals, including some that have been banned in Canada since 1970, such as DDT, in their system. I am talking about the United States, which is not very far from us. We know that pollution has an impact on the environment and that it crosses borders.

Chemicals are used to manufacture non-stick cooking utensils, in industrial foods and in beauty products. Think of all the women who work in hair salons, spas and nail salons. They are constantly in conditions where they are breathing in chemicals. We know that these women who work for minimum wage cannot afford to leave their jobs.

This was the first time anyone had counted the number of different chemicals that can be present in the body of a young woman, one who is pregnant to boot.

The purpose of the study was not to link chemicals and their effects on health, but a number of chemicals were measured in concentrations that have been proven to be harmful to children, causing reproductive problems in boys, delayed neurological development from mercury poisoning, altered neurological development and thyroid problems.

These chemicals are able to pass across the placenta and reach the fetus. They can be found in the amniotic fluid, the umbilical cord blood and the meconium. Exposing a child to chemicals during pregnancy increases the risk of miscarriage and premature birth and also has an impact on the child after birth, not to mention the mother.

The point here is to protect pregnant and nursing women. People are perhaps not aware, but I live in a province, the only one in the country, where women have access to this kind of program. I can give many examples where this program has been extremely useful and has protected a pregnant woman and her baby. I am thinking of a particular woman who was expecting not just one, but two babies. For a first pregnancy, twins are already quite difficult, but in addition, this young woman worked in a rehabilitation centre for violent adolescents. So there was an additional potential danger that she might be hurt when one of the adolescents was aggressive. I can tell you that this was a familiar scenario.

In this kind of situation, there are two options: either the person withdraws from her employment because of the danger that it represents, or she is reassigned to other duties, for instance, administrative duties where she is not in danger.

There was another woman who had to spend the last four months of her pregnancy on bed rest. I am giving examples that I have come across in the various jobs that I have held. That decision was not particularly exciting, but it was necessary in order to prevent the woman from giving birth at a stage when the fetus’s vital organs, such as the lungs, are not fully developed.

I could also talk about all the women who work standing up in banks or other businesses, and God knows there are a lot of them. They have to stand up all the time. Their legs are tired. Being pregnant is tiring.

For these women and hundreds of others in Quebec, the special provisions on preventive withdrawal have enabled them to carry their pregnancy to term in a safe environment. This is a provincial program, administered by Quebec's occupational health and safety commission, the CSST.

The Canada Labour Code stipulates that an employee who is pregnant or nursing may cease to perform her job if she believes that, by reason of the pregnancy or nursing, continuing any of her current job functions may pose a risk to her health or to that of the fetus or child. The employee can request reassignment, if the medical practitioner determines that a risk exists. While waiting for the medical report, the employee continues to receive the wages and benefits that are attached to that job. If reassignment is not possible, the employee can take an unpaid leave of absence. I took these notes from a speech that was given previously by a member of the Bloc Québécois.

This bill is fair for all pregnant and nursing women in Canada whose workplace could be hazardous to the proper development of their fetus. For now, only Quebec has a preventive withdrawal program to protect pregnant and nursing women. This program allows women to receive up to 90% of their salary if their working conditions are deemed hazardous for them or their babies. Other Canadian women are only entitled to unpaid leave. We believe that this situation is unfair to women who do not live in Quebec.

This is a good example of a two-tiered system. It is completely unfair to nursing and pregnant women in Canada who live outside Quebec. The NDP is of the opinion that the federal government must meet its responsibility toward these pregnant and nursing women by offering them the same conditions as women in Quebec.