Bill C-50 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to increase benefits

This enactment amends the Employment Insurance Act until September 11, 2010 to increase the maximum number of weeks for which benefits may be paid to certain claimants. It also increases the maximum number of weeks for which benefits may be paid to certain claimants not in Canada.

Employment Insurance Act

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Madam Speaker, number one, I want to congratulate the New Democratic Party for having the wisdom to support our initiatives on EI reform. I think it is obviously in the best interests of all Canadians to do so.

However, I would point out a couple of things that the hon. member may not quite realize; that is, when I spoke of the former Trudeau administration creating this massive debt that we are still paying the price for today, that is absolutely true. In fact, the following Progressive Conservative administration had reduced the debt. That is fact. That is something we can find in the history books.

However, the other thing I would point out, and this is something that has confused me mightily. On one hand, members of the New Democratic Party seem to be now applauding the initiatives we brought forward, but at every single time previous to this, its members voted against any EI reforms. In fact, I think we all recall our last budget we brought in, the members of the NDP said they would vote against it without even reading it.

So, how does anyone, how does any Canadian put any credibility into anything the NDP says when we know its members are taking such an irresponsible course of action as to start opposing budgets before they even read them?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I heard several times during the debate and questioning references to get this bill to committee so we can make some changes, and of course other matters we can deal with, like other benefits, et cetera.

I think that is very noble to suggest that we could do that. However, I think maybe the deputy House leader for the Conservative Party, as a learned man on these matters, knows about scope of the bill and knows that when a bill passes at second reading and is referred to committee, it is approval in principle for that bill for the purpose for which that bill was set up, which is to deal with long-tenured employees.

As a consequence, it would appear to me, and I am asking the hon. member if he would like to also share his views with the House, that changes or proposed amendments, such as self-employed worker changes and other things that we have talked about, in fact, would be beyond the scope of the bill being referred to the committee and, in fact, would be out of order.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Madam Speaker, I think in all cases our government has taken the position that if changes and improvements can be made at committee, to any piece of legislation, we would welcome it. Clearly, substantive changes that would fundamentally alter the act or the legislation brought forward to committee would not be procedurally correct if it were done after second reading. Sometimes bills are referred to committee, as my learned colleague knows, before second reading, and then substantive changes could be made.

What we are suggesting here is that this bill deserves consideration and deserves consideration of all parliamentarians and all members of this place swiftly. Swiftly, we would like to see this placed into law. That obviously means we have to get the consent of our colleagues on the other side of the House and their colleagues in the Senate. However, if we can do that, we would welcome any changes that would improve this piece of legislation. If committee can come up with those changes, fine, we will welcome it; but above all, let us get this bill passed swiftly.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Gatineau, the Public Service; the hon. member for Malpeque, Agriculture.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, I will be splitting my time with my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie.

It is time for leadership. It is time to help unemployed Canadians before they are literally left out in the cold. Presently, 1.6 million Canadians are unemployed and this winter that number will grow and many will run out of EI and risk ending up on welfare. We have a responsibility to help.

New Democrats have long called for improvements to the EI system, particularly during the time of this economic recession, and we are pleased that the government has finally moved forward. These changes will help workers now and New Democrats are more interested in helping the unemployed than we are in provoking an election. Make no mistake, New Democrats are supporting this EI proposal, not the Conservative government.

The NDP plan for EI of reducing the hours needed to qualify to 360, including the self-employed, eliminating the waiting period and raising benefit rates has been passed by the House, and until now largely ignored by the Conservative government. The changes proposed in this legislation are a step in the right direction, but there is much more to do.

New Democrats believe that the best way to effectively use the balance of power Canadians have given to us is not to force another election but to rather force more changes to EI that would see the government work to enact the New Democratic Party plan. It is the responsible thing to do.

I have heard Liberals and Conservatives talk about their economic management and what they think is good. They toss it back and forth like a tennis ball. One party feels it is a better economic manager than the other.

Canadian workers are good economic managers because they contributed to the EI plan for a rainy day. They learned that from their parents. They learned to save for a rainy day. Their savings plan was the EI account and they contributed willingly and dutifully. They thought it would be there for them when the rain came. The rain has come, not as a sprinkle, not as a downpour, but as a torrent.

Where do we find 40% of those Canadians who contributed to the rainy day fund? They are standing in the rain, shivering, freezing, destitute, and without the rainy day fund that they pledged their money to because it was absconded with. Fifty-seven billion dollars would have looked after this torrent.

Canadian workers are asking where that money went. The unemployed are asking what happened to the money they saved. The response, of course, is that someone spent it and unemployed workers want to know what it was spent on. Was it spent on unemployed workers before them? Of course, the answer is no.

Under the changes of Brian Mulroney in the late eighties, continued on by the Liberals in the nineties, the system was gutted so that most folks did not get employment insurance. They simply had to do without.

As that money simply amassed, someone had the bright idea to spend it, and it was spent. First the Liberals spent the bulk of it and the Conservatives spent the rest. The Conservatives are saying they really cannot afford to look after the unemployed because they are running a deficit.

The last number that the finance minister threw out just last week was $56 billion. If the Conservatives had kept the rainy day fund, they would have a balanced budget and that would be good financial management. Neither one of those parties has been a good financial manager. Workers figured out how to actually be good financial managers because they are the ones who saved.

We owe those workers that money. It was not ours to keep. It was not ours to spend on the things that the Liberal government and the Conservative government thought they could spend it on. The pledge to the workers was to collect it for employment insurance to make sure that when they were unemployed they were protected, that they would receive what was due to them. The pledge was not to have it absconded by someone else who simply spent it on whatever. Unfortunately, that is where we find ourselves.

We should not be debating who is the best financial manager because clearly neither the Liberals nor the Conservatives are good at it. We ought to be debating how we intend to protect those workers who, for no fault of their own, find themselves in this torrent, this huge downpour, standing out there freezing in the rain, looking to us for help. The money might only be needed for a while because workers intend to get back on their feet. These individuals have worked for a long period of time and this money will help some.

However, as my hon. colleague from the Liberals said earlier about the loggers, let me point out what happened to auto workers who got laid off last October for seven weeks and then got laid off again permanently in February. They do not have enough hours between the layoff periods to get a new claim in February. They must go back to October 2008. They have worked for 25 years and have never been laid off before. The government plan does not qualify them.

The government's plan says they had to be laid off and have a claim as of January 2009. Their claim will be October 2008. Yet, they are long-tenured workers. They have worked 25, 30 years at a workplace and never collected a dime from the old UI system, which is what it should still be called, unemployment insurance, because it is about insurance for the unemployed, not insurance for the employed.

What it really should be about is making sure that long-tenured workers are covered. The government is not going to ensure that they are covered. Those people are going to go without simply because a temporary layoff happened in 2008 just prior to a permanent layoff in 2009, for which they will not qualify.

What will it say to long-tenured workers, I ask the government, when it looks them in the eye and says, “We made a program for you. Yes, we know you never collected before. I'm sorry, we put the wrong date. Should we have reconsidered the dates”?

I heard my hon. colleague, the parliamentary secretary, talk about taking the bill to committee to perhaps amend it and look for ways to do some things that can improve it. Indeed, we are going to have to do that because as much as it is well intentioned, it falls short. It falls short for long-tenured workers who indeed fit the scenario I have just laid out. There are other cases, as well, that will fall short of what has been set up.

We need to look at all of those things because clearly workers are looking at us and asking, “Why aren't you helping us? That is your role, is it not, as parliamentarians? Is that not what you told us you would do when you collected our money”? We have an obligation to them. We have a debt to them. We ought to repay that debt. That is the solemn promise we made to them when we collected their money.

I hear the idea that we cannot do 360 hours because they have only paid for a short period of time. I can hear the car insurance companies rubbing their hands with glee saying, “If you buy a new car, you pay your first premium and you crack the car up the following week, sorry, your car insurance does not cover it because you have only paid one premium”.

I wonder how many people have had the great pleasure of having teenage drivers in their households who happened to have a fender-bender and find out, indeed, that their insurance would not cover them because they only paid one premium. Insurance is insurance for a reason. It is there to protect people when they need it. It is not there to deny them because they fell on hard times.

The rules are clear in the EI system. I hear the government incessantly saying, “We are not going to give money to folks who don't want to work. If you quit, you don't get anything”. It is clear. The legislation has been clear for years. If people quit their jobs, they do not collect. If they get laid off, that is not their choice. They do not choose to get laid off because if they did, they would be quitting. When people get laid off, they should collect. That is what insurance protects them against. It protects them from being unemployed.

It is there to bridge the gap and make sure they can get from that period of unemployment to a period of employment because that is what the vast majority of Canadians do. When Canadians are asked if they want employment insurance or to go to work, they say they want to go to work.

Let me explain what the benefit level is. Even if people are making minimum wage in the province of Ontario, let us say $10 an hour at 40 hours a week, that is $400. If they go on employment insurance, they do not get $400. Why would they stay home to get 55%, basically $225 or so a week, rather than $400 if they are working? Clearly, no one goes home for less just because they can collect a cheque. People want to work, they will continue to work, and Canadians are proud to go to work. It is our obligation to make sure we see them through these hard times.

We expect this to pass with some changes and we expect the government to bring forward more EI changes that are going to benefit the laid off workers who are waiting and looking to the government to say when it will bring it forward. They need it, they need it now. Let us get on with the job of doing it.

[Roger Pomerleau, Bloc, Drummond, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am certain that my NDP colleague will recall—he will be reminded many times in the weeks to come—that the Liberals took out $57 billion from the employment insurance fund to balance the government books. To accumulate this amount, they had to exclude about half the people who were entitled to unemployment benefits.

Today, we see that the Conservatives have a similar problem. They are accumulating as much debt as the Liberals had paid off. They are implementing measures for the unemployed. However, in order for these measures to help they cannot be given to everyone because we have too much debt. Thus, they are creating two classes of unemployed: the good and the bad. The good are those who have always been employed without missing a day of work. The seasonal or part-time workers, or workers with two jobs who cannot accumulate enough hours, are the bad ones. So you see there is a special class of people among the unemployed.

While we focus on the problem of the unemployed, we no longer pay attention to tax evaders, those who use tax havens, those who file tax returns ad infinitum without paying any tax and white-collar criminals who commit fraud at every turn.

I would like to hear my colleague's comments on this matter.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague is absolutely correct to ask who took money and where it went.

Regarding part-time workers and seasonal workers, this primarily has affected women. When we look across the board, it is women in the economy who have suffered the greatest with the new changes.

I have heard the government complain time and time again that it was the Liberals who gave us the system. I say to my friends across the way to fix it. It is pretty simple. If they got a bad system from the guys across from them, then fix it. It is that simple. It is not that hard. All they have to do is enact the changes. The changes are before them. Take them to committee. In fact some of them are there. The Conservatives opposed the ones I proposed around severance and vacation pay, as did some of the my friends in the Liberal Party. They turned them down.

Vacation pay, which is earned in the year in which people work, is not new money. It is earned in the previous year, the year they were actually working, and it was taken away from them. Why? It is because you have not thought about the unemployed. What you have thought about is collecting the money, and that is not what the employment insurance is about. Employment--

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I would like to remind the hon. member to direct his comments to the chair. I am sure he does not think I do not think about the unemployed.

The hon. Minister of State for Science and Technology.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Minister of State (Science and Technology) (Federal Economic Development Agency for Southern Ontario)]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate getting up to acknowledge that I support this bill. There are a lot of folks in my riding of Cambridge who have lost their jobs. This will definitely help them.

On the one hand, I do want to thank the NDP for coming to its senses, reading a bill for once, and deciding to vote for it. The member for Welland made a comment that Canadians want to work and sometimes they have to collect unemployment. I could not agree more with that.

This government has brought in a number of initiatives outside of employment insurance: economic stimulus programs that are creating jobs. In his own riding, this government made an announcement for the community adjustment fund and the member voted against money for his own area of Welland to create jobs.

The member never once asked me to help get money into his riding. Other members around Welland did that. We were able to help his riding despite his intervention and despite the fact that he--

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I would like to give the hon. member the opportunity to respond. There are 30 seconds.

On a point of order, the hon. minister of state.

[Gary Goodyear, Conservative, Cambridge, ON]

Madam Speaker, I have been here all afternoon and I have noticed there is often a tendency to cut off the question. I do appreciate that there is only 30 seconds. In fact, I think you are justified in this case.

This is my first opportunity to stand up and ask a question. You did not recognize me the last time and you went to the Liberals. I wonder if you could pay some fair attention and give people proper time to ask their questions so we can have a debate that is democratic.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

I can assure the hon. member that I will recognize him in a proper, appropriate rotation as much as I can.

The hon. member for Welland has 30 seconds to respond.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Thank you, Madam Speaker, for allowing me the 30 seconds.

Clearly we are talking about employment insurance and how to make the system correct. A hodgepodge fix of this and that to cobble together a system that is broken and needs to be fixed will not work.

What will work is revamping the system and making it work for Canadians. They expect no less of us. That is exactly what we are saying. To layer the system with more inconsistencies, to put one piece on top of the other in a broken system will not fix it.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Madam Speaker, this past summer I was one of those people who was quite disappointed in two things. One was that there was a very important discussion in Ottawa between the Conservatives and the Liberals on EI that two duly elected parties to this House were not privy to. We were not invited. We were not included. It was not a complete and inclusive process.

With that in mind, I am pleased we are having this conversation, however limited, about an issue that affects so many across this country. It will continue to affect many people as the recession we are in continues to roll on and more and more people find themselves unemployed.

It was unfortunate that more of us were not engaged in that conservation this summer. I think if more of us had been engaged, there might have been more potential for an agreement.

I have been privy to, and part of, many negotiations, discussions and efforts to bridge gaps and bring people together. I have always found that when there are two people it is difficult, particularly when the divide is obvious and the reason for coming together in the first place is so political, not really looking directly at those who would benefit most.

If others are brought in who can water that down a bit and bring a different perspective to the table, we often find agreement where otherwise it might not be possible.

I was disappointed that we were not invited. There are many in the House, the member for Chambly—Borduas who spoke earlier today and the member from New Brunswick, who have led the fight on EI for so many years. I, and others, have tremendous interest in this, and we have a lot of experience and knowledge. We have been around this issue a number of times. We could have contributed in a significant and important way to that discussion and to the end result, which I think would have gone a long way to assist all our constituents who are struggling with unemployment.

I was disappointed that we were not invited, and I was disappointed that the two parties who came together, as we got reports through the media, seemed to choose to play politics as opposed to getting down to work, rolling up their sleeves and getting something done for unemployed workers and their families in this country.

It was unfortunate and sad that given the amount of time from the middle of June until the middle of September that we were not able to get to where we could say to the people of Canada that we have come together with goodwill, worked hard and this is what we think we can provide, what we think is necessary for the people of the country.

That is why it is important that we have this opportunity, all of us together in this place, and hopefully at committee, to sit down and seriously discuss what has been put in front of us so we might assess its value. Then, in assessing its value, if it falls short, all of us can come to the table with our best game, bring our best ideas forward.

There are a lot of good ideas out there. There have been a number of EI bills brought forward to the House by individual members, their staff and caucuses, who have worked hard to improve the lot for workers and their families in this country. There is no shortage of good ideas and ways forward that would be helpful to the workers, particularly the unemployed workers of this country.

That is why it is so important that we take full advantage of this moment, that we do not continue, as happened this summer between the Conservatives and the Liberals, to play politics at a time when that is not what is needed--as a matter of fact at a time when it is needed least--and that we do something that will be helpful for those hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers and their families.

That is why members of the New Democratic Party want this work done before considering the possibility of an election at some later date. Getting to the meat of the matter, there are hundreds of thousands of people who are unemployed and will continue to be unemployed, and there are more to come. The economists who are looking at this recession as it moves forward are saying on one hand there are signs that perhaps the recession is over, but it is not over for the workers of the country and it will not be over for a number of years.

There will not be a stalling of the rising unemployment we have experienced over the last number months. They are telling us that actually the number of unemployed is going to increase substantially. It is incumbent upon all of us to make sure that those supports and resources are in place so that those people and their families are looked after, in order to allow them to participate in the economy in a way will that will stimulate the economy. If we do not do that, we will be failing those who will not qualify for the unemployment supports that they need to look after themselves and their families, and we will be contributing to the worsening of this recession.

In June I was at a breakfast meeting in Sault Ste. Marie and listened to an economist from the Export Development Corporation. He told us that this recession is coming at us in waves. He described three of the waves we had already been through. He knew what he was talking about. He said that the third and perhaps most damaging and difficult wave for us to manage as a society and as an economy, is the wave that will see hundreds of thousands of people who have been unemployed fall off the unemployment rolls and on to welfare. Those hundreds of thousands of people would then begin to default on their mortgage payments, car payments, student loan payments, and many other things. Many men and women who have children, families and homes are trying to keep body and soul together, who are working to make their communities well will find themselves in a position where they will have little or nothing. Anyone in this country who has ever had to live on welfare will understand that it is not a happy situation.

I ran a soup kitchen in my community for about seven years before I got into politics. I say in all sincerity that there is no one in this country who of their own will would want to be on welfare. It is a debilitating, mind-numbing, paralyzing experience for anyone who has been forced to be on it. It alienates people from the workplace and eventually from their family and friends. In order to get back into the workforce and participate as they previously had would cost society, government and the community in which they live millions of dollars more than it would if we had simply made employment insurance available to them in the amount necessary for them to provide the basics for themselves, to pay the rent, feed their children, send their kids to school, participate in their community.

Because of the very difficult economy we are in, today in this place we speak about that which is of most importance to the people we represent. I ask all members in this place to work together to do the right thing on behalf of their constituents.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Madam Speaker, my colleague made a great speech. From my personal interaction with him, I know of his hard work and compassion for the less fortunate in our communities.

One of the things I worked on since first being elected was the issue of providing increased opportunities for skilled trades workers. Recently I was able to participate in announcements at Conestoga College for the expansion of opportunities for skilled trades workers through the knowledge infrastructure program. In addition to that, my colleague will know that our government has made significant strides in encouraging apprenticeships with the incentive grant and the completion grant. These are important initiatives to address the issue of skilled trades labour.

With those provisions and all of the great provisions in Bill C-50 to reach long-tenured workers and provide additional training opportunities, I wonder if my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie could comment on what he thinks the reasons are that the Liberal Party has chosen to ignore the plight of the workers which my colleague has outlined so well.