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

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-50 at third reading.

I had the opportunity to speak yesterday when the bill was at report stage. The report stage motions were carried and the bill has not been reprinted, but I do not think it is consequential to the points that I want to make in summation with regard to Bill C-50.

The Liberals will not be supporting Bill C-50 because it does not deliver what was promised. I should explain.

The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development sold the idea that the government was going to enhance EI benefits for all Canadians. EI was going to be available equitably to all.

The criteria were set out in a fashion which clearly worked to the advantage of certain kinds of workers who may find themselves unemployed at this time. I looked again at yesterday's debate and I noticed that one of the Conservative members said, “Earlier we heard the member for Mississauga South allude to the forestry sector as being seasonal, which goes a long way to explaining what the Liberals understand about the forestry sector”.

I specifically asked the question just a few moments ago of the hon. member who just spoke. He explained that the forestry industry across Canada is not homogeneous. There are aspects of the forestry sector that do have seasonality.

I also had an opportunity today to ask another member from the Conservative Party whether that member thought this bill was clear as to who was going to benefit and how, and how it was going to roll out. The member's reply is kind of interesting and I think very reflective. He said that one has to have a lot of letters behind one's name to understand how this works.

[An hon. member]

Oh, oh!

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, a member said that was a cheap shot. It is simply a point to suggest that I do not think many people in this place understand exactly who is going to benefit and how they are going to benefit.

If we do not understand it and we are debating the bill and we are going to vote on a bill that is going to supposedly assist some 190,000 people over the period for which these extended benefits are going to be permitted, how could we expect that those people would understand?

I came to the conclusion that it did not matter whether the people understood because it was not sold on the facts and the details of the technical part of the bill. It was sold as a concept that there are people who are hurting in this environment and the government is going to do something to give them temporary enhanced EI benefits. That is saleable. It is not what is going to be delivered but the concept is saleable. It is politicking. It is not legislating. That is the reason the Liberal Party will not be supporting the bill. It does not deliver what was advertised.

It does not matter to the government. The government really does not care. It does not care whether or not we understand that it is basically a very narrow benefit program and it is going to be extremely difficult to deliver. No one is going to be able to figure out whether or not they qualified and so they will have nothing to complain about.

It is a perfect scenario. It is kind of the perfect storm for a bill. The bill can be made so complicated that no one understands it and no one is going to be able to complain.

I listened to the debate. I spent all day yesterday listening to the debates at report stage. After the bill came back from committee there were three inconsequential report stage motions. They were voted on as a block.

The speeches that were given yesterday were speeches on the bill. Many of the members raised the same point that the human resources minister laid it out that it was a simple puzzle, but this is a complex puzzle.

There are a number of industries across the country which have an attachment to the employment insurance system necessarily because they are seasonal by nature. Examples would be the tourism industry to some extent, some aspects of the forestry industry, and certainly the automobile industry, where a plant will shut down for a month while it is retooled for another model. It is part of the system in which we operate. We need those people to be ready to come back to the job whenever the work is ready to go again.

We also have industries like the petroleum industry. The petroleum industry was booming. The price of oil skyrocketed. The commodity prices were going up, but all of a sudden, maybe as an overall consequence of the economic scenario we are in, commodity prices started to fall. All of a sudden the production of petroleum and gas products, in the west particularly, started to drop off and people started to be laid off. People in that industry had never been laid off before. The petroleum industry always had been a stable, secure employment base. As the rapid massive growth was experienced leading up to the commodity prices going up and the price of a litre of gasoline and the cost of a barrel of oil were going through the roof, more and more people started to leave other areas of the country and they migrated toward Alberta and Saskatchewan. House prices went up. The crime rate in those provinces started to go up because there were many more people, but the provinces did not have the social services, the policing or other things to keep up with the demand for those services. There were a lot of problems. They are still having a lot of problems. That is what happens when there is a severe economic shift and all of a sudden there is a massive movement.

This particular bill definitely will be of significant benefit, of anywhere from five to twenty weeks of additional employment insurance benefits for those who worked in the petroleum industry. They did not have a reliance on EI during their careers. There was always work. It was not seasonal work; it was around the clock, every day, 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The petroleum industry was cranking it out. That is why, when we consider the availability of this benefit, it is clear that this particular bill will be most attractive to people in the petroleum industry, which is mostly in Alberta and Saskatchewan and which is mostly where the government support is.

I am not cynical; those are just the facts, and that is pretty good, but I wonder if the rest of the Canadians understand that of the money that will be spent to pay for the benefits that the bill will provide, it is disproportionately going to people who probably do not really need it. They probably do not need it. Even though they may have been laid off, they had secure full-time employment and no layoffs for years and years because there was no seasonal component. There was no layoff component. People had lots of high paying work.

The equity within the employment insurance system is being tampered with by the bill. It is not how the EI system works today.

Having said that, I would like to make a comment or two on the speech of the Bloc member who just spoke. He referred, as many members have, to the significant employment insurance surplus which exists. Members will know that back in--

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

You guys spent it.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

The member said that we spent it. I think it is important to explain that and I hope it will help the member understand what my understanding is.

Back during the Mulroney governments, the two successive majority governments, up to 1993, the EI system was operating at a deficit. It was paying out more benefits than it was taking premiums in. In fact, it was over $12 billion. There was a separate EI account. The government had to continue to fund the overdraft in the separate account. The Auditor General of the day said that because it is a government program it should be included in the consolidated revenue fund or the whole government--

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

That was the Conservative Mulroney government, Mr. Speaker, and--

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

Order. Members will have 10 minutes for questions and comments. If members could just hold off a bit longer, I would be happy to recognize them and they can ask whatever questions they might have.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

Before you ask the member for Mississauga South to re-engage in this stimulating debate, one that has been informative so far, I wonder if you could advise members opposite that in referring to legislation established during the Mulroney years, they cannot use the word “stolen” when they are talking about funds that are part of the consolidated revenue fund. That is expended for government programs which have been approved by the House.

I think that the words “stolen funds” are absolutely unparliamentary. Those members should be embarrassed about exposing themselves to such criticism.

I think, Mr. Speaker, you need to rule on that right now, otherwise the debate will be one where we on this side of the House are speaking to ourselves because the other guys do not understand the language.

[The Deputy Speaker, Andrew Scheer]

I do not see a member from the other side rising. I did not hear anything that was specifically unparliamentary that would impugn the motive of a sitting member of the House of Commons. Having not heard anything unparliamentary, we will go back to the member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I always appreciate it when members stay in the House when I am speaking.

Canadians understand as well that there was a separate bank account for EI, and it was operating on an overdraft basis; it was in a deficit scenario. The Auditor General told the government that it was a government program, that the financial performance of a government should include all its programs, and that this one shouldn't happen to be set up as a separate bank account. They rolled it into the consolidated revenue fund so that if EI operated at a deficit and everything else broke even, there would be a deficit in the government's financials for the end of the fiscal year on March 31.

Then the Liberals came to power and inherited the $42.3 billion deficit in 1993 from the previous Conservative government. It took three years to balance the budget. Then, all of a sudden, we had 10 years of balanced budgets with no recession. Growth was positive, employment reached a 30-year record, and EI premiums went down for 10 years in a row, year after year. The surplus money coming in was more than the benefits being paid out, and it continued even though the rates were going down. Why? It was because the economy was so healthy and because the job situation was so good for those years between 1993 and 2006.

Yes, there was an EI surplus, but it was a notional surplus, and there is legislation that guides how to deal with it. The legislation says that if there is a surplus in the EI account, or now in the notional EI account, we must do one of two things: either we must reduce premiums paid on a current-year basis or we must increase programs and benefits under the EI fund.

Some of those things happened. As a matter of fact, one of them was my own initiative, which was to extend maternity and parental leave in Canada from six months to a full year. That cost money, and it came out of the notional surplus, but there was still--

[Gerald Keddy, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margaret's, NS]

What are you talking about?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

I was in the government of the day. It was my private member's item.

I appreciate the member's intervention.

Because it is all in the consolidated revenue fund, there is no money in a bank any more. It has been used to support government programs and services. It has been used to reduce the amount of borrowing that the government had to do in terms of the national debt. Because of the debt scenario, we were saving money, but the rules of the game for operating the notional EI account also said that they will keep track of not only ins and outs of cash in terms of premiums and benefits, but also of the interest, and that was still a credit. All that money belongs to the employers and the employees who put money into it.

Now the current government has decided to scrap all that. We are going to throw all this notional surplus, we are going to take away the $50 billion that was collected in excess of benefits paid out, we are going to put it in our pocket and we are going to pay for the programs the Conservatives have been spewing out the money for.

How are they going to deal with EI in the future? In the last budget they said we are going to have an EI commission that is going to get $2 billion as start-up money. It will be a separate company, and all premiums and all payouts of benefits are going to go through that commission. In fact, we will go back to the same system we used to have.

Now we have a problem. Why? The Parliamentary Budget Officer said just yesterday in his report, which Canadians can read on his website, that we are in a structural deficit and that we will remain in a structural deficit until at least 2013-14, which means that if Conservatives proceed with setting the EI commission with $2 billion and think they are going to balance the books of that separate off-balance-sheet commission by handling premiums coming in and paying out extraordinarily higher benefits, it is going to force the government to start streaming cashflow into it just to hold it solvent and capable of meeting the benefit requirements.

We have come full circle. Brian Mulroney was operating exactly the way the current government wants to go.

The Auditor General has said that is not reflective of the true economics of a government that is using taxpayers' money to operate programs on behalf of the people and that we have to put it all in one big basket. Now the government has passed legislation that is going to unravel this. It is going to pocket the surplus that it collected from Canadians and accumulated in a notional surplus over the 10 years leading up to when the Conservatives took government. The Conservatives are going to just pocket that.

The situation could have been much worse. If the government had to take the $54 billion and put it into this new commission, $54 billion would be added to the current year's deficit. Then we would have a $100 billion deficit in the current year, rather than the $50 billion that it appears we are going to have, and it is growing.

Unemployment is not going to go down very quickly. We were over 9%; we dropped to a little less than 9%. The experts are saying that we can still go to 10%, that these recoveries are fragile, and the Prime Minister is already setting us up for that.

Members have to understand EI has a history to it. EI is an important tool for the government, but EI should not be used as a political prop, and that is exactly what this bill would do. Bill C-50 would not equitably benefit Canadians who have to participate in the EI benefit program that they paid into. They deserve to receive those benefits equitably. That is the reason I do not want to support the bill. My party will not support the bill, and I know that others will not either.

I hope that explains to the member that this is not just trying to make up stories. These are the facts. The current Conservative government inherited a $13 billion surplus from the previous Liberal government and it has been totally squandered. We now find ourselves facing a $50-$60 billion deficit in Canada due to economic mismanagement by the Conservative Party of Canada.

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

Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker has talked about squandering the surplus. Only a Liberal could talk about paying down debt as squandering the surplus. We paid down $37 billion in debt, and he continually refuses to acknowledge that.

How can he vote against these measures, which would definitely help people who have paid into EI for 20 or 30 years and who actually deserve these benefits if they are now looking for jobs? He knows that in this environment it takes longer to find a job, so adding these extra weeks is certainly going to help them.

I would like the member to respond to that.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives inherited a $13 billion surplus. It went to pay down debt, yes, but that had nothing to do with the Conservative government. The election was in January 2006. In the Conservatives' first year of government, the House did not even start until April, after the end of the fiscal year, so the surplus for the year that ended March 31, 2006, was a Liberal surplus, not a Conservative surplus.

If the member is not going to be honest with the House, I do not care to answer his questions on anything.

However, as I have said, I will tell him that yes, some people will benefit from this measure. The point is--and the Bloc has made this point, and the NDP has made this point too--that it is not an equitable program. In fact, it disproportionately benefits some Canadians over others. That is the problem, that is the political stunt, and that is why we will not support the bill.