moved for leave to introduce C-269, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (improvement of the employment insurance system).
Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in this House today to introduce a bill that my colleague from Chambly—Borduas has put a great deal of work into, a bill designed to improve the employment insurance system. The bill provides for reducing the qualifying period to a minimum of 360 hours of work, lengthening the benefit period, increasing the weekly benefit rate to 60%, cancelling the waiting period, increasing the maximum yearly insurable earnings to $41,500 and introducing an indexing formula.
Whether they are in my riding of Laurentides-Labelle, the rest of Quebec or the rest of Canada, workers deserve our respect and our commitment. The Bloc Québécois is listening to Quebeckers, as it has done since it was first elected in 1993, and is attuned to their priorities.
Unfortunately, thousands of people have been hard hit by the cuts and the mission change made to employment insurance by the Liberal and Conservative governments. The Bloc Québécois will try again to correct this situation in order to give those who were left out of the Conservative budget the respect they deserve.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)