Bill C-56 (Historical)

Fairness for the Self-Employed Act

An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Employment Insurance Act and other Acts by establishing a scheme to provide for the payment of special benefits to self-employed persons who are not currently entitled to receive them.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, as reported (without amendment) from the committee.

Fairness for the Self-Employed Act

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

There being no motions at report stage, the House will now proceed without debate to the putting of the question on the motion to concur in the bill at report stage

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

moved that the bill, as amended, be concurred in.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[An hon. member]

On division.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

(Motion agreed to)

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

When shall the bill be read a third time? By leave now?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

moved that the bill be read a third time and passed.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, it is pleasure to see the bill proceed to this stage.

I am glad to have the opportunity to rise to speak to this important milestone in bringing special benefits under employment insurance to self-employed Canadians. This is one of the most significant enhancements to the EI program in the last decade. It has been a long time coming for self-employed Canadians.

This fulfills a pledge by our Conservative government in 2008 to bring forward EI maternity and parental benefits to self-employed Canadians. A year ago, the Prime Minister said that self-employed Canadians and those who one day hoped to be should not have to choose between starting a family and starting a business because of government policy. They should be able to pursue their dreams both as entrepreneurs and as parents.

In fact, we have surpassed this commitment by also including EI sickness and compassionate care benefits. We do this because self-employed workers deserve to have access to these special benefits. We do this because extending access to special benefits is the fair and the right thing to do.

I think every member of the House recognizes the importance of the self-employment sector in the daily functioning of our economy and of our society.

In over 15% of our labour market self-employed entrepreneurs are a growing influence, not only because of their significant numbers but also because of the wealth of their ideas, innovation and jobs that they generate and create from time to time and year by year.

The self-employed form a diverse group, with widely varying situations and incomes. They include people with small businesses, farmers, construction workers, professionals, tradesmen, those in sales and those who own a home business among many others. Despite their importance, these entrepreneurs do not have the support they need when it comes to the important events of life, such as the birth of a child, adoption, illness and care of a gravely ill family members.

These sorts of events can have a significant impact on the self-employed who have little or no income protection. If they do not work, they do not make any money. Right now, they do not have any of the same EI support measures that Canadians employed by others do.

We are going to change that by implementing a voluntary system. We are following through on our commitment to self-employed Canadians.

It should come as no surprise that our self-employed have long asked for this support. In fact, a large majority of the self-employed want access to these benefits. Recent public opinion research shows that a majority of self-employed Canadians would like to gain access to EI maternity, parental, sickness and compassionate care benefits.

Eighty-six per cent of self-employed Canadians support access to sickness benefits, 84% support access to compassionate care benefits and 64% support access to maternity and parental benefits. The message from self-employed Canadians is clear.

Our Conservative government has listened and we are taking action. We recognize the challenges facing working Canadians as they deal with the dual pressure of holding down jobs and caring for their families. We recognize that nearly a third of all self-employed are women of child bearing age.

Our government knows that families are the foundation of our society. The bill is yet another example of how our government is providing support and choice to Canadian families and people recognize that.

Catherine Swift, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, understands the benefits of this bill. On November 4, she said in the Montreal Gazette:

—the initiative fills a “glaring gap” for people running their own business, especially women....We have a lot of women members. They'd like to have a child and yet abandoning your business is not (an option).

We do not want the self-employed to become discouraged about starting families by ever present financial risks associated with running their own business. We certainly do not want their families to suffer because of unequal access to supports that are widely available to most other Canadians.

Given the strength of our country's economy, especially the strength it gets from our self-employed and their businesses as a country, we cannot afford to leave these people out in the cold. Stronger entrepreneurship means a stronger Canada. We need their skills, their experience and their energy and creativity to meet the challenges to come. This is why our government believes these entrepreneurs deserve to have access to EI special benefits.

We also recognize that there is an increasing number of self-employed Canadians who are taking care of elderly parents while also raising young children. The government believes that these entrepreneurs should not have to choose between their business and family responsibilities, whether those responsibilities are for newborns or parents, the young or the elderly.

By giving our self-employed the option for increased income protection, we are allowing individuals who might otherwise have to leave the workforce to stay fully engaged, to stay productive and to keep contributing to this great country of Canada. Not only does this benefit them but it also means that they can continue to make valuable contributions to their communities and the economy.

We are stimulating entrepreneurship and making self-employment more appealing to all Canadians. That is why we are extending access to EI special benefits for the self-employed and why we firmly believe that it is the fair, responsible and right thing to do.

These benefits are significant. They are as follows: 15 weeks of maternity benefits for a birth mother; 35 weeks of parental benefits for parents to care for their newborn or newly adopted child; up to 15 weeks of benefits for individuals who are unable to work because of sickness, injury or quarantine; and a maximum of six weeks to provide care or support to a terminally ill relative.

Under the proposed legislation, self-employed Canadians would voluntarily opt into the program and pay EI premiums on an ongoing basis for at least one year before receiving benefits. To access EI special benefits, they would need to have earned a minimum of $6,000 in self-employed earnings over the preceding calendar year.

The self-employed could opt out of the program at the end of any taxation year, as long as they have never claimed benefits. If they have claimed benefits, they would have to contribute from their self-employed earnings for as long as they are self-employed.

Self-employed Canadians who opt into the EI program would pay the same premium rate as salaried employees. They would not be required to pay the employer portion of premiums, in recognition of the fact that they would not have access to EI regular benefits.

In Quebec, self-employed residents already have access to maternity and parental benefits through the Quebec parental insurance plan. Now the federal government would provide the self-employed in Quebec with the opportunity to gain access to the sickness and compassionate care benefit under the EI program.

Should they choose to take advantage of the program, they would pay the same EI premium rates as employers in Quebec. Rates there have already been adjusted downward to take into account the existence of a provincial maternity and parental benefit plan.

I would like to bring to light an endorsement from an organization representing an important group of self-employed people, the realtors. Dale Ripplinger is the president of the Canadian Real Estate Association. On November 4 his organization issued a press release that it “applauds the government for taking action to address many of the inequities in the Employment Insurance program faced by self-employed REALTORS”.

The organization went on to say, “This is an important step to level the benefits playing field for self-employed Canadians. We look forward to working with the government to ensure access to EI benefits for REALTORS, which can help balance career and family life”.

I also have a quote from the executive director of the Grain Growers of Canada, Richard Phillips. In a news release on November 3, 2009, he said that the legislation is “very welcome. This has huge potential for quality of life in rural Canada”. He continued, “This could be the difference as whether one member of the family has to seek off farm employment because now families will have a choice. With over 200,000 farms in Canada, if even 10% of them choose to take advantage of these programs, this could help ensure another 20,000 more young families staying on the land”.

It is this kind of thing that allows those who are self-employed and who contribute to our economy to get some benefits that are important to them and their families and ensure that they can continue to pursue their careers and jobs.

This legislation is the most significant enhancement to the EI program in the last decade. It is in keeping with our Conservative government's commitment to make the EI program responsive to the needs of Canadian workers. It is just one of the many enhancements that we have already made to the EI program.

We added five extra weeks of EI regular benefits, helping over 365,000 Canadians while they search for new employment.

We enhanced the work sharing program, protecting the jobs of about 165,000 or more Canadians.

We made unprecedented investments in training to help Canadians receive the skills training they need to enter a new career.

Our government froze EI premiums for two years, which helped employers create more jobs and also kept more money in the pockets of employees.

We added a $60 million investment in the targeted initiative for older workers to help older workers, who obviously have invaluable knowledge and mentoring potential, to transition into a new job.

We also passed legislation recently to provide five to twenty weeks of additional EI support benefits for long-tenured workers, who have worked hard, have paid premiums and are looking to transition into a new job.

Most recently, of course, we have introduced this program, which has been very well received by many.

Our government is protecting jobs. We are helping people get trained and upgraded for jobs. Now we have made changes that allow more flexibility for employers' recovery plans.

We have had the career transition assistance initiative, which has been providing assistance to long-tenured workers who need training to transition to a new industry or occupation. The support under Bill C-50 for long-tenured workers was certainly something that was well received.

All of these ventures demonstrate that our Conservative government continues to make responsible choices to support Canadians now, to support Canadians when they need it, to support Canadians when they find themselves in a difficult time.

With Bill C-56, we are taking steps to respond quickly to the needs of self-employed workers, so that they will also be protected in times of need.

Our Conservative government knows that families are the foundation of our great country. We believe that self-employed Canadians should not have to choose between their family and business responsibilities. They should not be forced to choose between one or the other.

Let us all support self-employed workers for their dynamism and their contribution to our economy. Let us create a stronger, more entrepreneur friendly and productive country in the process. Let us get behind our self-employed and do what is right. Let us do what they have been asking for for a long time.

I would urge all members in all parties to support this bill and to get it through the House at the earliest opportunity.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the parliamentary secretary for giving us a refresher on this bill.

I know that most hon. members support this bill. I note that very few changes were made at committee. I was hoping that there would be further clarification with regard to the transitioning of workers from full-time employment to self-employment. I can only hope that the system will be sympathetic to those who find themselves transitioning to self-employment by personal choice.

With regard to Quebec, though, there are a couple of different scenarios because of the different benefit availabilities there. I understand that a concern was raised at committee with regard to the calculation of the benefits to be payable. An amendment on that was considered at committee but defeated. I understand there is still some question about whether or not the computation of the benefits available in Quebec is in fact correct in the bill as it stands now.

I wonder if the parliamentary secretary could assure the House that the questions raised with regard to the formula for Quebec benefits has been checked by officials and is indeed correct.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I should preface anything I say by stating that this bill provides, first of all, that those who are not in Quebec will pay the same amount that other employees are paying, but they will only be entitled to special benefits.

Therefore, we will have to see the take-up rate and those kinds of things to see how the premiums balance out with the benefits. That is the way it works for the various benefits provided, and for those with respect to Quebec as well.

The big point is that the suggested premium rate is much less than the cost of private insurance, which is the only option that Quebeckers now have, and thus it provides them with a more affordable option. This bill recognizes that Quebec already provides maternity and parental benefits. Quebeckers who chose to opt in will only pay a premium of $1.36, instead of the $1.73 the rest of Canada will pay.

Therefore, provision and allowance has been made for those in Quebec, and, of course, it is an opt-in program. It is a strictly voluntary program throughout. For those who want to opt in, they will.

Those are the premium rates that have been set for simplicity of administration, for simplicity of operation, and they are consistent with general principles. That is how they are meant to apply. I think the bill, as it is, is exactly what it was intended to be.

I would urge this member and all members to get behind the bill. I might say that we have received the support of one member from the hon. member's party in ensuring that the bill proceeded as we now see it before the House.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have often commented that the Conservative Party has not arrived in the 20th century let alone the 19th century.

However, with this bill, I think there is a recognition that the realities of work have changed fundamentally. So many people I know, and people who are younger than me, have never paid into EI because they are self-employed. Nowhere is this more noticed than in the artistic sector, where we have organizations like ACTRA that have been pushing for this for years.

To me, the need to address this massive discrepancy is so obvious, particularly for people who are working in the artistic sector who have been self-employed, who have been asking for action. They asked for action from Liberal government and they got nowhere. They are asking for action from the current government, and we have been pushing for this.

I think this is a bill that everybody should be supporting. What surprised me when I spoke with people from the artistic community was that they were telling me that the Liberal Party seemed to be very offside on this and did not think it was a good idea. I was certainly surprised there would be people within the Liberal Party who were not supporting a motion on extending benefits to the self-employed.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague, has the government been speaking with the artistic community and groups like ACTRA to ensure that their views are heard so that we can move forward with some very progressive legislation?

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, just to address the comments of the member, I know that the Liberal Party opposed the extension of EI benefits by five to twenty weeks for long-tenured workers. That was on the basis, I suppose, that they wanted to force an election that no Canadian wanted.

Having surmounted that part of it and forgetting their own self-interest in trying to generate an election, and I assuming they are past that point, I would certainly hope that notwithstanding the fact they voted against providing support for about 190,000 long-tenured workers, they would actually now have a look at what we are doing by way of providing benefits to the self-employed and disregard their own self-interest and get behind this bill and support it as quickly as possible to ensure that the self-employed will get the benefits.

With respect to ACTRA and the points they have made, they actually testified before the committee and gave their points of view. They thought, as I recall, that this was a very good first step and a movement in the right direction with respect to providing benefits for the self-employed, of which their members certainly compose a large number.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the minister that involves telling us what the projections are as to the number of self-employed people who would participate in the program and whether he has any charts, studies and projections that would give us some of those numbers.

The way the system is set up right now, people have to pay into the system for at least a year before they can collect. Then if they do collect any benefits under the program, they have to stay in the program for the full length of time the business is in existence. If we were to have a situation where a person planned on making one claim over a period of 20 years, it is unlikely the person would sign onto the program.

I get the impression that it is a self-financing program, but then there is an indication that if the demand is not high enough, it may not be self-financing. On that basis, there would be a cross-subsidization from the other parts of the program.

Could the minister fill us in a bit about the projections for the program, how many people he sees would get into it and would it be self-financing from the beginning?

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, there is no question it would be a novel principle if one could pay a premium to get a significant benefit, then after the benefit period expired, decide not to participate in the program. The question has to be looked at on a long-term basis. Do people wish to participate or not? If they do, and claim benefits, they must continue to pay the premium because that is how the premium-benefit ratio is set up.

By and large, the underpinning of the principle is, to the extent possible with the amount that other employees pay, that one would like to see the premiums have some direct correlation with the benefits. It will depend upon the take-up rate. It will depend upon a number of factors. The early projections are that in the initial part of the program, there will be perhaps a surplus and then there will be some deficit. However, after a period of time, when we know what the trends are and the uptake rate is, we will see what the differences will be.

However, by and large, the program has been designed to ensure that the premiums paid are the same as other employees pay and to ensure there is ease in administration, that it is not overly complex and is easy to understand. The way it has been set up, people have some time to decide whether they want to opt in or not. If they do, then they must stay in the program.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to rise today to debate Bill C-56, especially since we were able to avoid a strike with CN. I am very proud to have played some role in that and I am glad to see that things were dealt with amicably.

At the outset, the Liberal Party supports the bill.

I want to talk about a number of issues in the bill that I think could be improved and need to be identified. However, I want to start off by talking a bit about who we are talking about in terms of the self-employed. It is a bit of a nebulous picture. A lot of people think of people who may be working out of their house, doing part-time or contract work, et cetera.

I asked the department to do a bit of an analysis for the committee on who these people were, especially when looking at it from the perspective of gender-based analysis for women. According to the figures for 2008, the majority of self-employed workers are male, or approximately 65% of them. Males represent approximately half of the salaried workers in that area.

Self-employed workers tend to be older and about one-third of them are women of childbearing age. This is also an interesting difference between males and females in this area. We know in the part-time worker area, the vast majority are women and a smaller number of them are males. In the self-employed area, it is the other way around.

It is also important to note that 64% of self-employed people are married, but few of them have a spouse with non-wage benefits. That is an interesting thing to look at as well. Again, it is interesting to note that, of the self-employed, women tend to earn less than men do. On average, women earn about $38,000 and men earn about $64,000. There is a big disparity in terms of what they do.

When we look at the kind of work they tend to do, it is interesting because women tend to be involved in self-employed work that has more to do with social and community issues, whereas men tend to do things that have more to do with industry, et cetera. That does not mean to say that women do not do that, but this is a bit of a different breakdown and it may account for some of the difference in income.

Also important to note is that more women than men tend to work out of the house. More men tend to work outside of their homes, which means they have offices and possibly staff and are spending a great deal more time running their self-employment like a small company. Women are probably mixing, looking after their children, caregiving for children or family and working out of their home, thereby earning considerably less.

These are interesting differences to note as we look at this legislation and how it will perform in the long run. It is very important to ensure that it benefits all people who need benefits under this program.

For quite some time now, the National Liberal Women's Caucus has advocated for covering the self-employed in the area of parental leave, compassionate leave, sick leave and so on. For the last three pink books, as we call them, or our policy on action plans for economic security for women, this has been recommended consistently.

In addition, the Standing Committee on the Status of Women has done a study on the self-employed. I will come to that in a moment when I talk about the impact on women and this structure versus any other. I will get to that a bit later. At this point, I want to clarify some other things with respect to the differences between self-employed men and self-employed women.

There is quite a difference in the kind of work they do, the number of hours they spend at work outside of the home and their income levels. Women tend to earn a lower income than men do. It is quite a considerable gap. I think that will have a great deal of impact on how this works.

With regard to the actuarial work that was done on this bill, it is my understanding that the chief actuary really did not do direct work on it, at least that is what I understood when I talked to him. This was the information we received.

Under the bill, participation would not be compulsory. It would be self-selecting or, in other words, entirely voluntary. People could actually opt out after one year if they had not collected any money. They could opt in to stay in, but that would not be mandatory.

The Standing Committee on Status of Women did a study. All the experts who presented at standing committee said that if it were not mandatory, it would not work actuarially, that it would not be self-sustaining or self-sufficient.

We posed those questions at committee. Officials told us that this was doable and workable. However, I do not think the chief actuary was quite so unequivocal on his statements when we spoke.

Since it would be totally voluntary, it is more than likely that people who would use it would be women who were expecting children, or where members of a family were not well and caregiving was needed. They may be more likely to opt in but others may not do so. I asked the actuary if this would not be a problem as there may not be enough people and this would result in the fund not being self-sufficient.

We must keep in mind that the premiums paid by those individuals who opt in will cover only their own premiums and not those of the employer, meaning the employer portion would be covered by the EI fund. When I raised this issue, an official admitted there could be a shortfall as a result of this but it would be monitored. My concern with that is a shortfall would obviously be subsidized by the EI premiums, not by the government's central fund. These premiums would be contributed by working people.

This brings me to another aspect and it is the fact that the majority of people who work part-time are women. A lot of these women pay into EI all the time. They cannot access parental leave benefits and so on, but they have children and they have to work to make a living to keep their home stable, et cetera. They in effect would be subsidizing the self-employed without ever being able to benefit from the fund. That is a bit of a concern.

Teachers who do not work during the summer are not able to accumulate the required 600 hours under the plan. I received a letter from a constituent a couple of days ago indicating that she was unable to access the fund. She asked why this was the case.

The bill is necessary and we will support it. I would like the government to take a look at this area. Our party has taken the stand for quite some time that accessibility to EI needs to be 360 hours. That is where it would become really accessible to all those who really need it, especially when we look at the gender issue. The fund would then become accessible to part-time workers, most of whom are women, and also professionals like teachers and others who would have difficulty otherwise.

Under this structure, the minimum requirement would be earnings of $6,000 in a year. I am not quibbling with that, but as I pointed out earlier, men who are self-employed tend to earn a great deal more than women so they would probably reach the $6,000 within a month or two of work in a year. Meanwhile, women would have to work longer, and that is fine, but some women would be left out.

I asked the department to do a gender-based analysis on this particular bill, as I did with regard to the previous EI bill, the extended weeks of pay legislation. If there were a proper, thorough, gender-based analysis done on the EI system to enable us to see what is truly the impact on women in this country of all demographics and using proper desegregated data that is available from Statistics Canada, that would take us a long way to having legislation that truly reflects the needs and does not leave people out. This is a whole area that is extremely important that we discussed at committee. I have raised this many times before, and I raise it again because it is of great importance to women in this country.

With respect to the actuarial cost and the strength of that, it is important that the government have the chief actuary do a proper actuarial analysis of the bill to see what shortcomings and shortfalls they expect to have. Whatever shortfall there is should probably be funded through the central government, as opposed to the EI fund.

The other part that is very important to note is on the premiums that will be paid by self-employed Canadians. I am not suggesting or impugning any negative or wrongdoing. I think probably it was quite inadvertent, but certainly there is a mistake with the legislation with respect to the premiums that would have to be paid by citizens of Quebec in this area. It looks as though they will end up paying a great deal more.

The former chief actuary in fact came to committee to point that out to us. We unfortunately found this out at the end, when we were doing clause-by-clause. So it was not possible to try to amend the bill at committee, but I would encourage the government to amend the bill and fix that problem prior to the bill leaving the House. I would love to see that happen, because I think it is very important that it be done. It would be unfair and it is an error that needs to be fixed, and I would hope that the government would do that.

As I said, I am not suggesting that this was intentional. This was probably an error. It is simply an error that needs to be fixed. I would like to see that happen and I hope the government will do that very quickly.

At this point I just want to go back to the amount of money and the amount of time and the opting in and out. I know that people can opt out of self-employment if they have not used it at the end of the year. I am not sure how much instability this will create and to what extent, and also paperwork. For people who are in or out of the system at different times and then having to wait and maintain all of that, I think that would cause some instability.

I feel that the program would be much more stable and much stronger if it were a mandatory program. We had experts at the Standing Committee on the Status of Women. It was very clear that they felt that the program would not be viable or stable if it were not made a compulsory program, because some people would benefit and others would not.

It is important that the government, once the bill is passed, do a thorough evaluation of the bill, probably within a year or so of the bill being in place, and ensure that the potential weaknesses that it might have are fixed earlier rather than later. I would not want us to find, a year or two or three from now, that we have been carrying a deficit and that it is not a self-sustaining program in terms of finances and in terms of who is benefiting.

As well, it would be interesting to see how it works out with the information that I discussed earlier with respect to self-employed women versus self-employed men, because again, there is a disparity and a difference that needs to be watched very closely to ensure that all self-employed people who obviously need this program benefit. There has been a great deal of interest, a great deal of pressure, and a great deal of debate for some time now.

As I said earlier, the National Liberal Women's Caucus has for some time advocated for this. We are glad to see that in fact it is now before the House.

As I said earlier, we support the bill but there are some areas that I believe need to be looked at and addressed, because without that we do not have a bill that is as good as it can be. I would also like to see the bill be self-financing, self-sustaining, and the only way that can happen is if that kind of analysis is done long before it goes forward.

Just before I finish, I would reiterate that the $6,000 that is the minimum is not an area I am quibbling with; it is not an area that is of concern. That equates to about 600 hours. I am not quite sure how they came to that particular number. At about $10 an hour, 600 hours of work is $6,000. I understand that it would be difficult to be able to monitor hours, to some degree. It would be difficult for someone to be able to ensure that the self-employed are not in any way, shape or form hiding hours or what have you.

The $6,000, in and of itself, is not the only parameter that I would like to see. I would like the government to take a look at the hours of entrance as opposed to just the money, the income. The $6,000 is something that I suppose some self-employed men and women could earn very quickly and the 600 hours could take longer. However, I am focusing on the hours because, for me, it is very important for accessibility. As I said, there are part-time people who are paying EI all the time but cannot access any of the programs that we are now talking about in this House and bringing forth for others.

There are teachers who do not work through the summer but do not build up 600 hours easily and therefore are also not eligible. The case that I received in my office is an adoption case where the parent cannot access benefits for that very reason.

Therefore, I would encourage the government that once this bill is passed, and if they amend it earlier that would be great, to really, truly look at the accessibility of it and look at the 360 hours for accessibility, because that in fact would allow part-time workers, most of whom are women, to access it.

Employment insurance is not a luxury. It is not something that we receive as a top-up on some other income. For most families in this country, it is keeping body and soul together. It is keeping a roof over their heads. It is paying their rent and keeping food on the table for their children. It is very critical that employment insurance not only be a strong system but also that it does not leave people out.

Unfortunately, poverty in our country is still very strong, especially now with the downturn in the economy. While the economy is picking up, the reality is that it is a jobless recovery. Whether we like it or not, no matter which way we look at it, that is the reality. In Toronto, my city, the unemployment rate is the highest I have ever seen. Probably, realistically, it is somewhere around 15%, maybe even a bit more. It is very high.

For people who are struggling to survive, to pay rent and to get their jobs and their training, EI is a huge piece of our safety net. A strong EI gives people a chance to be able to rebuild their lives, which then gives them access to training, and so on.

The other thing, before I finish, that is very important and most people forget is that 80% of caregiving in our country is done by women. This talks about parental leave and compassionate leave, but women do 80% of the compassionate leave and they are subsidizing all the rest of the economy. This is why it is very important to me that the government review that aspect of the bill.

We support this bill, and I would hope that the government, in partnership with us, will actually look at some of those areas that need to be addressed.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, New Democrats have long been a party that championed comprehensive social security programs such as employment insurance that have become so important to Canadians to keep them secure in times of economic difficulty, and this act goes some way in helping in that regard.

It proposes to give self-employed Canadians access to EI benefits in very important areas: maternity, parental, sickness and compassionate care. What is really important about this bill is that it will help certain target groups that historically have had difficulty in these areas, primarily women, artists, graphic designers and independent contractors in many different fields.

I worked for a trade union prior to being elected, where we had many truck drivers who were independent contractors and who were not deemed to be employees for purposes of this legislation. This is the kind of legislation that will really assist them so that they can do the same things that all Canadians do, which is to be present to help raise their children when they are first born or to help take care of gravely ill family members. These are values that I think every member of this House can join together on and support.

My question for the member opposite is this. She and her party had three successive majority governments in this country in times of great surplus. I wonder if she can tell us why her government never brought in such legislation when it had the chance to do so.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, actually we did do a great deal. Parental leave is a program that was brought in while we were in power. Compassionate leave is a program that was brought in while we were there.

With respect to the self-employed, that was something that we were actually working on, and then of course we lost the government and another party came in. Of course, we are doing it now, but we started all of this.

The compassionate leave was our work. The extension of parental leave was also our work, and a great many other programs for women. Gender-based analysis was something that we were doing and have been doing for some time, and this is an extension of that. It is fine and it is good, and all I am saying is that we support the bill but we would also like to see covered some of the other things that I mentioned earlier.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I have a very specific question for the hon. member.

First of all, I congratulate her on her speech, and I would also like to zero in on the issue of gender study and do a gender analysis on this particular bill, which she has called for on several other bills as well.

One of the issues, changing gears to another specific part of our economy, would be the part-time workers and just how elements of the EI system could be changed to include things such as a 360-hour requirement, which would reduce that threshold and make it much more beneficial for women who are part-time workers or in other professions, not just those who are self-employed.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, women in this country do 80% of the caregiving, and the majority of Canadians doing part-time work are women. The majority of people who are self-employed are men. There are self-employed women, of course, no question, but again there is a disparity in the incomes there.

Therefore, what is very important, if we are looking at this with a gender lens, in order to ensure that women are covered is to lower the threshold, because the 600-hour threshold is too high. None of the part-time workers, most of whom are women, can access the program or get any benefits such as parental leave or sick leave, all of this. They do not get the parental leave and compassionate leave, so they cannot access it.

There are a lot of part-time workers in this country, and more so in this economy. They are paying EI premiums because they are obliged to, but they do not get benefits out of it. They all have children. They all have caregiving for members of the family who are ill, and so on. If we would lower that to 360 hours, as we on this side of the House have been saying for some time, it would include those people and it would certainly make the system much more equitable.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I asked the government minister a question about projections or numbers of people who would be taking part in the uptake of the program and any studies that it had taken. He certainly did not answer that question at all. I assume the member heard what he had to say.

I think the member does have a point about the mandatory issue here and perhaps the Chief Actuary probably has a point on that, too. I think it is still important for us to proceed with the legislation and get the pilot project started.

However, for the government to say that it is going to be self-financing and not have any statistics available whatsoever to justify that, that people have to be members of the program for a year and then can opt out after a year if they never collected on the program, basically what that boils down to is we are going to have selection against a system. In the insurance business, it is called selection against the company. Basically, when people know they are going to make a claim, they will join in the system.

For it to work properly, it really is going to have to evolve over time into a mandatory system. On that basis, then, it can be a self-financing program.

Nevertheless, it is a good idea. It is something we should proceed with. However, I do think the member is onto what the real story is here.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the government did tell us at committee, and members will recall, that there was supposed to be a task force set up to look at this before it was brought to the House. The task force was actually never set up and the government, I think, got to doing it in the fall. The Chief Actuary told us that he only just got involved in September. And even then, he was ill. I do not think that he was all that involved. So, these issues were not threshed out properly.

As the hon. member said, I do support the bill. We need to support the bill and we need to move on it, obviously. However, we do need to also do the other work to ensure that the problems, that I expect will crop up because of it being a voluntary program, are addressed earlier rather than later, so that they do not become entrenched.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the hon. member for Beaches—East York.

I have been listening to the member. She said the program takes away the rights of women to qualify for EI because 80% of the women work. According to a Statistics Canada study, about 32% of women qualified for EI. I agree with her.

She has been a member of the House for a long time. She said the Liberals did good things when they were in government. However, they were the government that cut employment insurance in 1996 and put the number of hours to qualify for sick leave at 700 hours. Finally, it went down to 600 hours.

For the new person coming in, it was 910 hours. That is the reason why at one point in time over 70% of people, men and women, working people, who wanted to qualify for EI used to get it. However, the Liberal government cut employment insurance and brought up the number of hours they needed to qualify. I would like to hear her comments on that.

Personally, I introduced a bill in the House for 360 hours, and the Liberals voted against it.

[Maria Minna, Liberal, Beaches—East York, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we can always have this mirror if we like, but the reality is that in good economic times when unemployment was down to 6% it was a totally different environment than when we are looking at unemployment rates of 8.9% across the country, nearly 15% in my city. It was a totally different situation for people and so, we are talking about different times.

Also, maybe we did not get everything we wanted, but parental leave was established under our watch. The compassionate leave was established under our watch. What I said earlier, just to correct the hon. member, was that 80% of compassionate care is done by women in this country, and this is why I am talking about this particular part.

It is important to remember that EI is a system that has been there for some time and has been changed over time to accommodate different things, but it is critical that at this time it addresses the current economic situation and not that of the past.

[Jean-Claude D'Amours, Liberal, Madawaska—Restigouche, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to move the following motion:

That the House of Commons urge the Minister of Finance to take every measure necessary for an immediate amendment to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, in an effort to help those facing financial difficulties with respect to their company pension plan by providing them with the appropriate protection in the event an employer becomes insolvent, and to take every measure necessary to introduce a comprehensive piece of legislation that would create a pension protection agency.

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Does the hon. member have the unanimous consent of the House to move the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[Scott Simms, Liberal, Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor, NL]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I am absolutely disgusted by the fact that the government has gone across this country, has provided information, has taken--

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order. order. This is not a point of order.

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 Madawaska—Restigouche, Employment Insurance; the hon. member for Etobicoke North, Health.

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Timmins—James Bay.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to my--

[The Acting Speaker, Barry Devolin]

Order. My apologies.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Saint-Lambert.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to have this opportunity today to speak to Bill C-56, the Fairness for the Self-Employed Act.

I should say at the outset that the Bloc Québécois is opposed to this bill. I do not think that will surprise anyone, in light of the questions I have been asking the past few days. Although we were absolutely in favour of the principle originally behind this bill, we cannot support it, because it would be blatantly unfair for self-employed workers in Quebec. The Liberals and the New Democrats can see this unfairness, but have not bothered to speak out against it. On the contrary, they have endorsed it.

Let us have a look at some of the aspects of Bill C-56. This bill would allow self-employed workers to be eligible for special EI benefits: maternity benefits, to a maximum of 15 weeks; parental or adoption benefits, to a maximum of 35 weeks; sickness benefits, to a maximum of 15 weeks; and compassionate care benefits, to a maximum of 6 weeks.

Contrary to what the Bloc Québécois called for, this bill does not enable self-employed workers to have access to regular employment insurance benefits, but only special benefits. That is important. I believe that self-employed workers themselves understand what this bill means for them. This bill will be implemented on a voluntary basis. Self-employed workers will voluntarily enrol and contribute. They will have to earn a minimum of $6,000 in the calendar year preceding their claim to be entitled to 55% of their income. They will have to enrol when they file their income tax return for 2009 in order to have access to benefits the following year. Consequently, a self-employed worker will have to have contributed for a whole year before he or she can access these benefits.

We cannot support the bill because of the contribution rate that has been set for self-employed workers in Quebec: $1.36 per $100 of earnings. Allow me to explain. Bill C-56 proposes to allow self-employed workers to contribute voluntarily to the employment insurance system. However, unlike salaried workers, they would be entitled only to so-called special benefits, which, as I said earlier, include maternity and parental benefits, sickness benefits and compassionate care benefits.

Since Quebec already has a mandatory parental insurance plan for both salaried and self-employed workers, it goes without saying that Quebec must receive some sort of compensation to reflect the fact that self-employed workers there cannot receive the same benefits as Canadian workers. Moreover, salaried workers in Quebec already pay lower EI premiums because they also pay into Quebec's parental insurance plan.

To come up with the reduced contribution rate, the chief actuary of the employment insurance commission makes a relatively simple calculation that he publishes each year in his annual report on the break-even contribution rate and the maximum insurable earnings for EI. This calculation is as follows: the actuary calculates the portion of expenditures that pertains to parental insurance leave. This portion is then subtracted from the contributions Quebec workers are required to make.

The reduction is direct and based on a calculation, which means that the compensation accurately reflects the portion of expenditures that pertains to maternity and paternity benefits. This is a fair and equitable way to set the contribution rate for Quebec workers.

But in the case of Bill C-56, the government is completely ignoring this logic and proposing a totally excessive and abusive contribution rate for self-employed workers in Quebec.

For some reason, the government has decided to ask self-employed workers to pay exactly the same premium as salaried workers, even though they are not entitled to the same benefits. In other words—and I think all my colleagues here know it—salaried workers receive compassionate care and sick leave benefits, but also regular employment insurance benefits. However, self-employed workers, as I was just saying, will only get special benefits. They will not receive regular benefits, but they are being asked to pay the same premium.

Salaried employees and self-employed workers will pay into the same fund. That seems illogical for the reasons I just mentioned.

That means that Canadian self-employed workers will pay $1.73 in premiums, which would allow them to receive the three so-called special benefits. Self-employed workers in Quebec will have to pay $1.36, but those premiums will allow them to receive just two of the three special benefits. It just so happens that those two benefits are by far the least expensive. If I am not mistaken, the compassionate care and sick leave special benefits represent roughly 25% of the cost, whereas parental leave benefits represent 75%.

It took the working group some time to get answers to its questions on Bill C-56. Nonetheless, according to the estimates that were finally forwarded to us by the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, maternity leave benefits will probably represent 70% of the cost of this new plan for the employment insurance system. You do not need a math degree to know that by paying $1.36, or 79% of what Canadian self-employed workers will pay, Quebeckers are being had.

In other words, Quebeckers are being asked to provide 19% of the funding for the plan, but, according to the department's numbers, they will collect only 6% of the benefits. That is scandalous.

We all agree that it makes sense for insurance plans to spread the risk. That is a basic principle of insurance. Insurance of all kinds is a risk-sharing endeavour that requires all beneficiaries to assume a portion of the risk because they cannot predict what events might cause them to lose their income for one reason or another. What we take issue with, however, is the disparity between how self-employed Canadian workers are treated and how self-employed Quebec workers are treated. The Canadian portion of the plan will result in a huge deficit at a contribution rate of $1.73, while the Quebec portion will produce a huge surplus at a contribution rate of $1.36.

It is expected that the Quebec portion of the sickness and compassionate care benefits, the only benefits to which self-employed Quebec workers will be entitled, will cost some $22 million in 2014, whereas premiums collected from Quebec will amount to $45 million. In contrast, in Canada, also in 2014, benefit payouts will be on the order of $280 million and premiums, $178 million. In other words, the government is asking self-employed Quebec workers to absorb the deficit for self-employed Canadian workers.

Of course we believe that is unfair. And we are not the only ones. We asked Michel Bédard, who was the departmental chief actuary for over 12 years, to provide an estimate of what he considered to be a fair contribution rate for self-employed Quebec workers. As it turned out, Mr. Bédard confirmed our initial suspicions. The contribution rate to be imposed on Quebeckers will be outrageously high, and the return they get will be ridiculously low.

That is why the Bloc Québécois cannot support this bill.

We know that, generally speaking, this government's employment insurance measures in no way meet the needs of Quebeckers. I said so yesterday and I will say it again: the program for long-tenured workers does not apply to Quebec forestry workers. The additional five weeks are a temporary measure. Self-employed workers in Quebec already had access to parental leave, and the contribution rate for compassionate care and sickness benefits is three times what the rest of Canada will pay. So there is a serious problem regarding employment insurance.

We now realize that it is Quebeckers who are always paying for others, although improving the employment insurance system, as the Bloc Québécois as been proposing for several years now, would be a good way to help all workers. We therefore cannot support this bill for the reasons I have just given.

I encourage our NDP and Liberal colleagues, especially those from Quebec, to ask themselves some serious questions and examine this issue closely, because it is very clear that self-employed workers in Quebec will be the ones to foot the bill for everyone else when it comes to this employment insurance fund.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, the fact of the matter is that the number of self-employed people has mushroomed over the years. In fact, people in many cases are being forced into self-employment. They are having to go back to work for their previous employers in a self-employed capacity. Computer companies replace their repair people. The real estate industry has gone largely to a self-employed system over the last 15 years. Companies contract their own cleaning services.

There is a huge number of people who need this type of program, and the number is increasing. While we can argue that the government has not given us the information that we have asked for in terms of the uptake and the studies on how many people will be taking part in this, it is important to get the program started.

Even though the government says it is going to be self-financing, we think that it probably will not be in the first couple of years because it will be selected against. It will be a couple of years before the system becomes mandatory and the premium rates that the Bloc member is talking about will be adjusted so that there will not be the imbalance that she sees.

I think the member is projecting too far ahead. I think she should give the program a chance and then work out the problems as we go along.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. The department's former chief actuary has confirmed that the cost to Quebec is much too high. In fact, self-employed Quebeckers should pay 41¢ for every $100 earned in order for it to be fair.

Calculations are based on 2014, because the government will be re-evaluating this bill in five years. I believe that we should use specific years to evaluate all the ramifications.

We cannot have Quebeckers assume the cost of a program that is designed for all of Canada's self-employed.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the third time and passed.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to read a quote from the hon. member for Saint-Lambert. She said in March, “I think offering self-employed workers the opportunity to contribute to employment insurance on a voluntary basis is long overdue”. That is what this government did.

I wonder how the hon. member reconciles with her constituents, the people she represents, that that party has voted against all the measures that we have brought in on employment insurance? How is she able to go back to her constituents and say that she is trying to help those who are unemployed?

The member voted against the five extra weeks. She is voting against this bill. She is voting against up to 20 weeks for long-tenured workers who need the support the most and freezing EI rates at $1.73 for this year and next. All these measures the member has voted against but at the same time she is saying she is working for the interests of those who have lost their jobs. She voted against the infrastructure stimulus funds and all the community adjustment funding. Yet the member stands in the House and says that she is working for those who are unemployed.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my committee colleague for his question.

In fact, the Bloc Québécois has always voted in the interests of Quebeckers. I repeat, the government's employment insurance measures do not meet the needs of Quebeckers. The program for long-tenured workers does not apply to Quebec forestry workers but is designed primarily for workers in the automotive sector.

The five additional weeks are only temporary and are not a permanent measure. Self-employed workers in Quebec already have access to parental leave. They now have access to compassionate care and sickness benefits. They will be paying three times too much. I do not believe that these self-employed workers, even if the program is voluntary, are interested in covering the entire cost of this project across Canada. It will take a much lower amount, a fairer amount, say 41¢, for them to be interested in signing up for employment insurance benefits for the self-employed. In fact, I am not sure that our Quebec workers are interested in paying for all other workers.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, earlier I had asked a question of the parliamentary secretary with regard to the Quebec rates. The parliamentary secretary's response concerned me a little bit. He indicated that it was set at a rate that was lower than private rates available in Quebec.

Considering the range of benefits that are being provided under this bill, I would think it would be extremely difficult to do a very accurate assessment of what a group rate might be. I also understand there were questions about the rate at committee, yet I notice there have been no changes to the legislation to speak of.

If this matter is serious enough, should there not be an undertaking by the government to do an immediate review of the proposed rates to determine whether or not there is a necessity to bring forward an amendment, either in the Senate or subsequently given review of other aspects of the bill?

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his interesting question.

At the last committee meeting, we indicated that we wanted to meet with the former chief actuary, and the Conservatives refused this request. We wanted to hear what figures the former chief actuary could give us to justify and explain why Quebeckers will be paying far too much. I do believe that we will be meeting with him next week.

We also proposed an amendment before voting on this bill, an amendment that did not receive a majority vote, that would have also called for the government to review the amount paid by Quebec compared to the rest of Canada. When the bill is sent to the Senate, we will have to propose an amendment to look at the calculations of these costs to ensure they are fair.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the member for Saint-Lambert.

I understand the position that the Bloc Québécois is taking. The Bloc Québécois is saying that the way the premiums will be paid is not right. A member talked about what would happen, but I will not repeat what was said.

But this is a voluntary program. So she is saying that the Bloc Québécois is making this decision for the people of Quebec, but they are not required to contribute. They say that they already have a program. Why prevent other Canadians from having access? Why prevent Quebeckers from making a decision for themselves? Why prevent a hairdresser or an artist from making a decision regarding sickness or compassionate care benefits? Why make that decision here, and not let the people of Quebec decide for themselves?

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, we already have the Quebec parental insurance plan.

We agreed with the principle of this bill. I do not see why workers in Quebec should not have access to special benefits. But can we hope to have a plan that is fair to Quebec as well? Why should we accept a bill that asks Quebeckers to pay three times what they should?

We can review these costs, especially since the former chief actuary has stated the costs and confirms what we are saying: Quebeckers will be paying three times what they should.

As a government, we must review the calculation so that it is fair to Quebec as well.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, it is my pleasure to speak to Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, concerning self-employed workers.

I would like to begin by saying, as I have said during other speeches on the subject, that I toured the country to meet with workers across Canada. I went to Gaspé, to Montreal, and to Rivière-aux-Renards. I should mention to the member for Saint-Lambert that her riding is a very beautiful place. I visited all of the provinces—Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and so on—and I went all the way to Vancouver.

That was back in 1999. The Liberals were elected in 1997. I want to emphasize that because earlier, the Liberal member said that the Liberals were the ones who worked on the self-employed workers file. In 1999, I made a proposal to the House of Commons. I would like to read from the record:

The EI program, as it exists, does not take market realities into account. More workers are described as “self-employed”, which is not quite the case. A growing number of businesses are laying off people and then hiring them as self-employed workers in order to avoid having to contribute to EI or to a pension plan. Self-employed workers are not entitled to EI and are practically without social protection. We must take a closer look at what is really happening on the new labour market and explore ways to help so-called self-employed workers contribute to and benefit from the system.

I gave that speech quite a while ago. The NDP will support the bill currently before the House of Commons. In my opinion, it is time to support our self-employed workers, such as artists in Canada and Quebec, hairdressers in Canada and Quebec, and massage therapists, to name but a few. There are countless other categories of self-employed workers who need our help too.

Consider for example parental leave or sick leave. A hairdresser from my riding came to my office and asked how she could take advantage of the employment insurance system. She is a young woman who would like to start a family, but since she is self employed, she will not receive anything. She does not have the financial resources to start a family.

Finally, a bill has been introduced here in the House of Commons today. This bill aims to support people who need maternity leave or parental leave.

I applaud Quebec, which has had a program like this for several years now. It is time for the rest of Canada to have the same thing, through the employment insurance program. This is what people want. Some of the witnesses we heard from in committee even suggested having a separate fund, apart from employment insurance. We heard various proposals in committee.

The unfortunate thing is that the Conservative government introduced a bill for long-tenured workers without allowing us to make any amendments. It is all or nothing, which is unfortunate. Why bother having a Parliament and parliamentary committees and examining bills if the government refuses to be open to amendments and refuses to listen to the people?

This is how Parliament normally works. The government introduces a bill, which is studied in a parliamentary committee. For example, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities would study the bill. The parliamentary committees' raison d'être is to allow Canadians and Quebeckers the opportunity to testify before the committee and share ideas that could inspire changes in order to create a better bill.

But the Conservative government arrived with an all or nothing proposal. Can we call that democracy? The government will say yes to avoid saying no. If we say no, we are saying no to all those workers who would have had a chance to have a program to help them.

I find that a bit sad. That is their business. The Bloc Québécois wants to vote against this bill. The Bloc members will do what they want, but I am sad for the workers in Quebec, the hairdressers and massage therapists and all those people.

Artists, whom we defended so ardently in the last election, will not be able to decide themselves whether they want to contribute. This is a voluntary program. We have to give other Canadians the opportunity to have it. We can do this together. People should exert pressure. I am sure that the Government of Quebec would know how to tell the Government of Canada that its premiums are too high and should be reduced, as they have been in the case of parental and maternity benefits. It is true that they pay lower premiums than others because part of the program already exists in Quebec.

I sympathize with what members are saying today, but I believe that the bill should be passed.

The government has also truly closed its mind to any change. The reality is that this program is going to cost money. According to the figures we have, there will be a $48 million surplus in 2010. I do not know whether it is million or billion, but it makes no difference, it is still money. We are talking about $57 billion. There will be a $48 million surplus with this program, because in the first year, 2010, people will pay into the system, but will not get any money in return, because they will not be entitled to receive benefits until 2011.

In 2011, a $24 million deficit is anticipated. In 2012, the deficit will be $39 million. In 2013, it will be $56 million, and in 2014, $78 million. These are the figures we have been given.

That is why we proposed that within six months of the coming into force of this part, the minister appoint a group of experts to study the effect and application of this part, or this act. Every year for a period of five years, the group of experts would consult the Canadian public and present to the House of Commons and the Senate a report of its findings and recommendations.

We are not asking for the world. We are just saying there is a new program, we are willing to vote in favour of it, but we just want to be sure there is follow-up to see if we are on the right track. This was supported by the Canadian Labour Congress. It was refused by the government. The Conservatives completely rejected this proposal. They said we needed royal assent. The answer therefore was no.

We asked for something else. I think this should be addressed. They say they want to help self-employed workers. That is what the government was saying earlier. I was listening carefully to the parliamentary secretary, who was saying that her government wanted to help self-employed workers. If that is the case, we had another proposal for being fair to those workers and supporting them.

I was saying earlier that the labour market has changed and that today there are more self-employed workers than ever. There are even more today than there were in 1999.

We made another proposal. Self-employed workers are not entitled to regular benefits. They are not entitled to receive regular employment insurance benefits. That is what it says in the act. Let us say that for more than a year, the worker earned 95% of his income from just one client.

An employee who is fired because his employer wants to avoid paying him benefits, and who is subsequently retained as a self-employed worker, should be recognized as a regular worker for the purposes of employment insurance, and be entitled to benefits, if he has worked 95% of the time for that employer. In this case, the commission would consider it to be equivalent to an employer-employee relationship.

Once again, the Conservatives said no. And yet they claim they want to help the self-employed.

There are two things that would have truly helped the self-employed. The latter are asking that a task force, in the next five years, report to both Houses given that the cost will increase. Even self-employed workers stated that they were not aware it would be so costly. It will cost them $78 million in the next five years. They would like to be given the facts and hear what we have to recommend.

We wanted to amend the bill in order to allow a self-employed worker who worked 95% of the time for a single client to be considered a regular worker. We are not talking about 50% or 25% of the time. If he were to lose his job, he should be entitled to employment insurance benefits.

Once again the Conservatives said no. I find that unfortunate. We have to adapt to the new labour market.

That is clear in the government report. It states that, in 2008, 2.6 million Canadians declared they were self-employed. For a vast majority, it is their sole source of income. That is a large number of people. It means that 2.6 million Canadians and Quebeckers do not have a safety net if they lose their employment, even during an economic crisis such as the current one.

The Conservative government would like Canadians and also Quebeckers to believe that the program they are presenting is the best in the world. It has overlooked a fair number of things. We must do more.

Earlier the Liberals were bragging about the fact that they were trying to help self-employed workers. They were in power for 13 years. From 1999 to 2005, they had enough time to implement a program, but they did not.

When a bill was introduced in the House of Commons to consider the best 12 weeks for workers, the Liberals, while they were in power, voted against that measure. Now that they form the opposition, they are saying that the 80% of women in the workforce benefit the least from employment insurance when they are the ones who need it the most.

Only 32% of women are eligible for employment insurance because the Liberals made major cuts to the program in 1996, when they were in power. That is when they decided that to be eligible for employment insurance, a person needed to have 910 hours of employment. They are the ones who have prevented a great number of women from being eligible for employment insurance.

The Liberal member said that, at the time, the economy was doing well and that only about 6% of the workforce was receiving employment insurance benefits. If the economy was doing well, then why did they make cuts to the employment insurance program?

When they made those cuts, the economy may have been doing well in Toronto, but it was not doing well in Atlantic Canada. Fish plants were closing and there were other closures in the forestry industry. There were closures everywhere. That is when the loggers had to leave the forest.

Back in the days of Liberal spending cuts, the unemployment rate out east was around 20%. They could not have cared less about people in the Atlantic provinces.

Better yet, a former Liberal minister—my predecessor, as it happens—told the Globe and Mail that the government would tame Atlantic Canadians. He called them shiftless and lazy. The Conservative member from Nova Scotia said something similar a few weeks ago—or was it last week—when he said that lazy, no-good bastards in Halifax do not want to work. That was almost the same thing. The Conservatives and the Liberals have the same attitude toward workers.

Today, the government said that it would freeze employment insurance contributions until 2011. But look out, because in 2011, rates will go up. In 2011, there will still be a $57 billion surplus in the employment insurance fund, a surplus that was stolen by the Liberals and the Conservatives. There is money in the employment insurance fund. It is not as though it is empty.

Why will premiums have to go up in 2011 despite the surplus in the employment insurance fund? It is funny to hear them talk. The Liberals dipped into the fund and spent the money over a series of budgets. The government paid off $92 billion of the national debt, but $57 billion of that was taken from workers who lost their jobs.

The Conservatives say that the Liberals were the ones who did it. But they cannot lay all of the blame at the Liberals' feet, because they have been in power since 2006. Who passed the bill in the House of Commons? There is a new commission, but it is only getting $2 billion. The Conservatives passed the bill, but the Liberals were the ones who supported it.

In the end, both parties stole the $57 billion because they legalized the theft. That is what happened. In last year's budget, $2 billion was deposited in the employment insurance fund. Now they say that it will not be enough come 2011. They say that they will have to raise contribution rates and make workers pay yet again for the debt acquired by the two parties that were in power.

They could do something else to help workers in Quebec and Canada. For example, the employment insurance calculation could be changed to be based on the 12 best weeks. Better yet, it should not even have a divisor, because under the EI regulations individuals already receive only 55% of their income in benefits. Even if an individual earned $1,000 a week, the 55% calculation would not be based on the $1,000, but on an amount of approximately $750. So the individual would only receive 55% of that amount.

A motion was moved in the House of Commons regarding the 12 best weeks, but once again, the Liberals and Conservatives voted against this motion, just as they voted against a bill for a 360 hour threshold when it was introduced.

Maybe one day workers—if there are any watching us at home—will realize that the Liberals and Conservatives are not their friends. Maybe one day they will realize. They will say that they are not receiving EI benefits because the Liberals and Conservatives made cuts.

They would have us believe that someone who goes to the employment insurance office to receive EI benefits does not want to work. I think that is shameful and unacceptable in our society.

In France, employment insurance recipients receive 75% of their income. The Government of France says that it pays that percentage because it is the workers' employment insurance program, and it injects money into the economy and the community. It does not label those people as lazy slackers, as the Conservatives and Liberals do. It does not do that.

The NDP will support this bill, but we believe it does not go far enough. Other changes need to be made to EI, and the $57 billion must be handed back over to the workers who have lost their jobs. It should not go to paying down the government's deficit.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is quite right with regard to the surplus that was accumulated under the EI system. Indeed, it still is owed to workers and to employers. In fact, under the rules guiding it, it has to be disposed of by either lowering premiums or by expanding benefits, and the member is well aware of that.

Does the member realize that under the last budget, the government will set up a separate commission where it will get $2 billion as seed money and then subsequent to that, all premiums will go into the separate commission and all benefits will come out, but the balance of the $50 billion will never be accounted for ever again. This is where the stealing is happening.

Why did the auditor general tell the Government of Canada, Brian Mulroney of the day, to put the EI operations in the government as an indication of its operations, but the current government has not done that and has put it outside again so it can seize the surplus moneys?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the only thing the member has to realize is this. The reason the budget went through was because the Liberals voted with the Conservatives. The member asked me why the government did that. It did it through a budget for which the Liberals voted.

Many times I hear Conservatives say that members of the NDP is against the employment insurance because they voted against the EI bill. What we voted against was them taking the $55 billion and putting it in a new account. When the train came through Ottawa, they jumped on it, took the money and put it against the deficit, and the Liberals were part of it.

I think the member did not think about the question he asked me. He has to remember that was in the budget and the Liberals voted for it. He asked why the Mulroney government took the money and put it in the general fund. The Liberals had 13 years to take it out of the general fund and give it back to the workers, but they did not do that.

[Josée Beaudin, Bloc, Saint-Lambert, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask my colleague a question since he spoke earlier of unfairness and injustice. I would like to ask him the question he asked me. Is the wrong made right because this is a voluntary program? That is my question for him.

Earlier, the member said that because the bill is voluntary we should let self-employed Quebeckers make that decision. I will ask him the following question. Is the wrong made right because this is a voluntary program? Is it not the job of parliamentarians to ensure that a bill is just and fair for everyone?

In my opinion, this bill needs work to do just that. It is not the Bloc Québécois that should bear the blame but the government because it did not support the amendment proposed by the committee members. The amendment only proposed making this a just and fair bill.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, let us talk about the Government of Quebec. I commend that government for creating a program granting maternity leave and parental leave for self-employed workers. A certain amount of money was taken from the employment insurance fund in order to make that possible. The other workers never had that. It was not fair for them. Personally, I do not think we should turn a blind eye when a self-employed worker does not have the resources to start a family. We cannot ignore things like that.

I can understand the member who said that her party's only concern is Quebec. However, there is more to Canada than just Quebec. I have no doubt that Quebec will find a way to negotiate with the government to obtain its fair share. The Government of Quebec is very good at that. In the meantime, can we prevent self-employed workers from receiving the benefits they have so long been seeking? I do not think we should do that. If the Bloc wants to vote against the bill, that is their decision and I respect that. However, the Bloc members will have to say to the hairdressers and barbers and artists of Quebec that, if they get sick, it was the Bloc Québécois that did not give them the chance to make their own decision. That is what it comes down to.

[Peter Julian, NDP, Burnaby—New Westminster, BC]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Acadie—Bathurst said that it was the work the NDP did that led to this bill. I would like him to tell us exactly why the NDP fought for this change that is going to help workers.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the reason is simple. When I said earlier that I had made a national tour, that is what I did. I was elected to the House of Commons because the people in my riding decided to send me here to speak for them. We had the biggest demonstrations about employment insurance. That was in Campbellton, where the four nations met. When I say the four nations, I am referring to Quebeckers, aboriginal people, Acadians and anglophones. The four nations stood together to say that there needed to be changes to employment insurance.

When I did my tour and I arrived in Parliament—I went everywhere—self-employed workers were saying that they wanted to be part of the EI program in order to have the same protection and assistance as other workers. Some say that becoming a self-employed worker is an individual choice. But that is not true, because some people did not choose to become self-employed workers. They had no other work and had to create their own job. Often, I heard them say that they were forced to do so because they had been cast aside. Today, we can give these people an opportunity to receive the same benefits as other workers, or some of the same benefits.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member hit the nail right on the head when he pointed out that we are looking at 2.6 million Canadians in the self-employed category: hairdressers, artists, real estate agents. For the Bloc to deny them the opportunity to participate in this program is a big mistake on their part, because as the member has pointed out over and over again, this is a voluntary program. Once it is in operation, it can be fine-tuned.

I have asked the government for information and studies and projections on how many people will participate in the program. The government has not been able to provide those. The government says that the program will be voluntary. There is evidence to show that a compulsory program may be the only way it will become self-sufficient. However, that will not stop us from supporting the bill. We want to see the bill passed and see the system put in place, and then we will improve it over time.

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the question was in fact directed to the Bloc Québécois. Why is it voting that way? The Bloc Québécois also voted against Bill C-50, which gave long tenured workers access to EI.

For a party that wants to champion employment insurance, the Bloc Québécois has quite often voted against legislation in that area. A decision will have to be made. It will be up to the people of Quebec to judge the Bloc's actions. Bloc members argued in their defence that EI for long tenured workers applied only to Ontario workers and auto workers. I am sure that the economy did not fare much better in Quebec. Quebec was hit by the economic crisis like everyone else. Yet, the Bloc members wanted to prevent these workers from having access to EI benefits.

I am glad that the NDP voted in favour of the bill. If that could have helped the people of New Brunswick, I would have also liked our cousins in Quebec to help us. They decided against it. They are adults. They are the ones who will have to go back home and, in taking part in the political life there, explain why they failed to help long tenured workers. They are not helping either the self-employed workers who would like to be covered by the EI program when they are sick or need special support.

At any rate, as I said, we are all adults here. Let them make their decisions. We will make our own.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, since I do not have much time, I would like to get straight to the point regarding Bill C-56 to amend the Employment Insurance Act, to establish a scheme to provide for the payment of special benefits to self-employed persons who are not currently entitled to receive them. This includes maternity, sickness, and compassionate care benefits, and parental or adoptive benefits.

It is clear to us on this side of the House that this bill is extremely important for a large part of the population, especially for women who work. For example, we know that many women have to work several jobs, even if they are self employed, and we know they face serious problems, such as a lack of income support during periods of unemployment or an economic downturn. We know that self-employed female workers are often forced to quit their jobs when they are sick, and therefore have no income.

We also know—and I am skipping many parts of my speech—that it is women who traditionally care for children, although many men now help, and it is also women who care for their aging parents. This bill, which aims to help self-employed workers by providing sickness benefits and compassionate care benefits, should therefore provide some welcome relief. However, I would like to remind the House that last week, at the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, we came up against a very important fiscal problem. We learned that this creates a very serious problem for Quebec. I will explain.

Self-employed workers in Quebec already have access to Government of Quebec benefits for parental leave, sick leave and compassionate leave to care for family. This means that, naturally, in the government's calculations for this bill, self-employed workers in Quebec should not have to pay the same premiums as other Canadians, because they already receive part of those benefits, not from the Government of Canada, but from the Government of Quebec. So it seems clear to us that the calculation that was reported to us in committee was incorrect.

Since I do not have much time left, I will simply ask the government to review the situation based on the actuarial forecasts, to look at the contribution rates for Quebeckers under Bill C-56, particularly for sickness benefits, and to have a serious look at the figures. The Liberals will vote in favour of Bill C-56, but I want to be clear: we are urging the government to check its figures and to fix them if necessary.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member has raised a point that has come up several times during debate concerning the determination of premiums for Quebec residents who, under the Quebec system, have substitutes for some of the benefits that are being provided. The parliamentary secretary had indicated that the rate has been set lower than the private insurance rates that would otherwise be available.

This seems like a sloppy way to do it. Indeed, it seems to me that in a number of ways the committee did not have the opportunity to look at the calculations and to receive the information from the proper officials. I wonder if the member would care to comment on whether or not she feels strongly enough that there should be a total review and reassessment of the prescribed rates.

[Raymonde Folco, Liberal, Laval—Les Îles, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague posed an extremely important and difficult question. Outside the committee, we had a very hard time getting real figures in response to the questions we asked. The answers were not very clear. It took us a long time to come to the conclusion I just spoke about in the House.

The whole bill does not necessarily have to be reviewed, because it is a fundamentally good bill that will give benefits to people who definitely need them and are asking for them. What needs to be reviewed are the figures regarding the benefits that will be paid to Quebeckers, to Canadians who live in Quebec. The government or someone else could still review the figures and come back to us with more concrete, real and correct figures.

The house resumed from December 2 consideration of the motion that Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts be read the third time and passed.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will start by saying that I will share my time regarding Bill C-56 with the member for Terrebonne—Blainville.

When the government introduced Bill C-56 to make it possible for self-employed workers to receive special benefits, we were generally in favour of it. It is an idea that the Bloc Québécois has defended for a long time, that self-employed workers should have access to the employment insurance system, with some restrictions, of course. We imagined it would be much more inclusive, but this seems to be a step in the right direction. That is why we voted in favour of the bill at second reading, to refer it to a committee to be examined further.

Right from the start, however, we felt that the amount of $1.36 for every $100, which is not explicitly stated in the bill, was excessive. The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, through the Minister of National Revenue, announced that self-employed workers in Quebec would be asked to contribute $1.36 for every $100 of insurable earnings. Self-employed workers, especially women in Quebec, already have access to parental leave, which was implemented by the Parti Québécois some years ago. This program is very successful, and is partly responsible for the rather impressive and reassuring increase in the fertility rate in Quebec.

We therefore had some apprehensions, but once again, as I said, we wanted to give the government a chance, so we sent the bill to committee. Our fears quickly proved to be well founded. This premium of $1.36 per $100 would be used for two types of benefits: sickness benefits and compassionate care benefits. I would remind the House that we are talking about 15 weeks in the case of sickness benefits and six weeks in the case of compassionate care, if I remember correctly, so these are fairly minimal benefits. In my opinion, very few male and especially female workers in Quebec are going to enrol in this system at a cost of $1.36, even though enrolment is voluntary. As responsible legislators, we cannot accept this approach.

Consequently, in committee, we tried to amend the bill to ensure that the contribution rate for self-employed workers in Quebec would be fair, given the new coverage they were being offered. Moreover, the amendment was designed so that if another jurisdiction in Canada were to offer benefits such as parental or maternity leave or sickness or compassionate care benefits, there would be a formula to reflect that reality and prevent these self-employed workers from having to pay twice for the same type of coverage, either now or in the future.

We tried to debate this in committee, but the Liberals unfortunately did not see things our way, so we will be forced to vote against Bill C-56 at third reading.

In addition, the former EI chief actuary, Michel Bédard, took it upon himself to provide us with his assessment of what the contribution rate should be for self-employed workers in Quebec. He sent an email to my colleague from Chambly—Borduas, basing his calculations on the cost of these special benefits. We are talking about roughly $1 billion for parental or maternity leave. The rest was for compassionate care and sickness benefits. I would like to quote his conclusion:

Quebeckers should pay a contribution rate of $0.41 per $100 under Bill C-56 for sickness benefits. A rate of $1.36 per $100 would clearly be excessive.

The former actuary said that. If I recall correctly, he served in that position from 1991 to 2003, so he has the expertise to make the necessary calculations.

That amount also takes into account system administration costs. The amount the government announced is over three times too high given the new coverage it will be offering to self-employed Quebec workers. We do not want to have anything to do with a Conservative government plan that verges on usurious.

That is why we will vote against this bill. If the bill passes, the Bloc Québécois will take it upon itself to make sure self-employed workers in Quebec know that this plan is a rip-off.

We have to look at things from a broader perspective. We have to say no to this bill because it is just a way to get money from workers whose income is already, for the most part, relatively low. But we think that this scheme is just cover for a Conservative government agenda to bring down the deficit, which is growing on a monthly basis because of the ongoing economic crisis and the recession, which have resulted in lower revenue and higher spending.

Basically, a review of the Minister of Finance's latest documents clearly reveals that the Conservative government will once again use the employment insurance fund as a cash cow to fight the deficit. That is the agenda behind Bill C-56, and we will not stand for it. We did not stand for it when Paul Martin's Liberals used the employment insurance fund—premiums collected from workers and employers, including small and medium businesses—for purposes other than those for which the money was collected.

The Minister of Finance's documents are very clear: over the next few years, more than $15 billion will be taken out of the fund to pad the government's coffers. We find that deeply unfair and unproductive. Everyone knows that employment insurance premiums are an employment tax.

Proportionally speaking, what kind of businesses hire the most workers? Small and medium businesses. That is why this bill will perpetrate an injustice not only on workers, but also on the entrepreneurs who create the most jobs in our economy. That is especially true for Quebec.

We refuse to be complicit in another misappropriation of the employment insurance fund for other purposes. I would also remind the House that the Liberal government diverted somewhere between $55 million and $57 million for other purposes. Furthermore, two-thirds of the money used to pay down the deficit and create a surplus came from the employment insurance fund, and the rest came from unilateral cutbacks in federal transfers to the provinces. If memory serves, there was a surplus of approximately $67 billion from 1998 until the end of the Liberal reign.

We are now witnessing the same scenario. It is a case of déjà vu. We simply cannot support this completely unfair practice. It is unwarranted, because there are other ways to balance the budget. Bill C-56 demonstrates the Conservative government's willingness to use the employment insurance fund to tackle the deficit. It has other means at its disposal. Perhaps those means may require public debates. Perhaps it is easier for them to use, in an underhanded way, the EI fund and the premiums that workers and employers have to pay. Maybe this prevents them from having to hold public debates.

That said, it would be in line with the Conservative way, which involves concealing information and imposing its vision for socio-economic development. And I am not even talking about environmental and cultural decay.

By stating here today that we will vote against Bill C-56, we are sending a clear message that we do not agree with this method of tackling the deficit.

As I said, there are other ways, including taxation measures, for example, particularly in the highest tax brackets. We have seen some bureaucratic spending and spending on federal government propaganda, which have been of no use whatsoever, either economically and socially. Our finance critic presented a plan a few weeks ago.

Accordingly, it will come as no surprise that we cannot accept this bill and that the Bloc Québécois will be voting against Bill C-56.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a feeling that the Bloc's research department should take a second look at this issue. It is supposed to have a very good research department, but I am not so sure it is right on this one.

For example, in this particular bill, this is optional. No one has to buy into this program. If individuals can find benefits that are cheaper in the private sector and insurance market, they are free to do so or they are free to do nothing. Second, the member said that the government would be using the EI surplus to pay the deficit. In fact, this program is not going to produce any surplus at all. There will be a deficit unless it is made mandatory.

I think the Liberal member had it tied down pretty good the other day. She suggested that she could not see how it could possibly make money because it would be selection against the EI system when it is made voluntary. It would have to be mandatory to break even. That is another issue. I would ask the Bloc member to comment on those items. I just think it has it wrong this time.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am always stunned to see how naive the NDP can be. It regularly buys into the Conservative rhetoric for populist reasons. That may be the one thing that the NDP and the Conservative Party have in common: they base their arguments or their strategies on populism.

Our research department had nothing to do with it. The figures were validated. It was the former chief actuary for EI, Mr. Bédard, who did the calculations. Self-employed workers in Quebec will have to pay $1.36, as opposed to $1.73 for their Canadian counterparts. That is a difference of just 43¢, but self employed workers in Quebec already pay 88¢ for every $100 of insurable earnings for parental leave. Therefore, self-employed workers in Quebec will pay $2.22.

First, this is extremely expensive considering what the real coverage is. We are not comparing this to the private sector. That has absolutely nothing to do with it. We are comparing this to how much it is costing the government to offer this new coverage and how much self-employed workers should be paying. Actually, they should be paying 43¢ for that coverage.

Second, Mr. Bédard told us that by 2014 the EI fund will have a $100 million deficit on the Canadian side and a $70 million surplus on the Quebec side. This means that self-employed workers in Quebec will pay for their counterparts in English Canada at a rate that I think is totally disproportionate.

We support the principle of solidarity within a society, but not at the expense of fairness and justice. This bill is unfair to the self-employed workers of Quebec.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is unfortunate that the Bloc is taking such an opposing view of this legislation. I think the Liberals and the NDP as well as our government realize that this is landmark legislation. It has never been offered before. This is something that is going to level the playing field as far as employment benefits for both workers and the self-employed.

If one does not try something new, one will never succeed in perfecting it. If we get this legislation through, we can take some time. If there are some areas that the opposition may feel need to be touched up a little bit, we have the committee to do that. As we go along with this program, which is new and innovative, we are going to see amendments that perhaps can make it better.

Let us understand that the self-employed business person in Canada plays a very key role and should have the opportunity to purchase this extra bit of protection. I am surprised that the Bloc is so opposed to it. Get with this legislation. It is—

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Order, please. The hon. member for Joliette has the floor for a brief answer.

[Pierre Paquette, Bloc, Joliette, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we tried to amend the bill. The Conservatives, together with the Liberals, refused to hear our amendment, which was a formula that would have provided equity for all workers in Canada and Quebec, if such a program were made part of employment insurance. We are talking about parental leave. We tried to improve it, but they refused. That is why we are voting against this bill.

Secondly, Michel Bédard, the former chief actuary of the employment insurance fund, was prepared to testify. He was even in the committee room. We suggested listening to what he had to say. Again, the Conservatives, together with the Liberals, refused to listen to Michel Bédard and hear the truth.

In closing, as I was saying, the reduction for Quebec, which the Minister of National Revenue is boasting about, is 37¢ from $1.73. That represents 21.4% of the estimated cost of maternity leave benefits and parental leave, which, in fact, amount to 75%. Therefore, a 75% rebate should have been given instead of 21.4%

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, we are here this morning to discuss Bill C-56, to amend the Employment Insurance Act.

The Bloc Québécois simply cannot support this bill because, once again, Quebeckers will be paying for the rest of Canada.

We are used to paying for the rest of Canada. We have always paid. We have paid for Alberta's tar sands development because the federal government, with our taxes, has injected money into this sector. We have also paid for various Canadian structures. Now we will be paying once again to improve the employment insurance fund, which soon will be in the red.

The Bloc Québécois really cannot support this bill because it will penalize Quebec's self-employed workers. My colleagues in this House really have to think about that. Once again, the self-employed workers of Quebec will pay for measures that they can already access practically free of charge and will pay for those workers who do not have access to them. That is insulting.

This bill amends the Employment Insurance Act to establish a scheme that will pay special benefits to self-employed persons. The bill will amend certain sections on special benefits. We do not agree with this.

These special benefits are maternity benefits for a maximum of 15 weeks. As for parental or adoptive benefits, Quebec already offers these two types of benefits. We want to be clear about this: in Quebec we already pay for these benefits. Therefore, we do not need the benefits that will be included under employment insurance. Sickness and compassionate care benefits are acceptable.

The bill will give the self-employed voluntary access to special employment insurance benefits. Their premiums will be based on their tax returns. They will need to have earned a minimum of $6,000 over the preceding calendar year to be entitled to benefits equal to 55% of their income. They will have to opt into the program one year prior to claiming benefits. For example, they will have to sign up in 2009 to receive benefits in 2010, and contribute for one year before having access to these benefits.

We have been told that this measure could be in place in 2010 with benefits based on the previous year's income, which would allow self-employed workers to sign up now.

However, once self-employed workers receive special benefits they must continue to pay premiums and cannot opt out. Of course, they will not be paying regular employee premiums.

Self-employed workers in Canada will pay $1.73 per $100 in insurable earnings to have access to the four measures. Self-employed workers in Quebec will pay $1.36 per $100 in insurable earnings to have access to two measures, which are the least expensive ones for the government.

It is as though I had four candies: one for $1, one for $2, one for 50¢ and another for 50¢. I make a deal and sell them for $2. But I keep the first two candies in my pocket. So you end up paying $2 for two candies worth 50¢. It is exactly the same thing.

What is shocking and insulting is that the government did not take into account that Quebec is proactive and already has measures to protect our self-employed workers. If they want to be fair and equitable, they should take that into account.

I hear my colleagues asking questions in the House and saying that this is a historic bill we could amend. But there is nothing historic about this bill, since Quebec has always paid for the rest of Canada.

My colleagues on the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities tried to amend the bill, but no amendments ever passed. An actuary came to explain to the committee how it worked in Quebec, but they were not interested in listening. That is insulting and shocking.

Then, they try to say that the Bloc Québécois is against the bill simply because it is always against everything. Come on. My colleagues need to open their eyes. We have to fix this bill and come back to it, because it is unfair to Quebeckers.

Quebec is unique because the CSST provides some protection for our self-employed workers. It does not make sense that Quebec should always be forced to foot the bill for services provided and measures implemented elsewhere. Self-employed Quebec workers need to know that they are being taken for a ride. Let me be the one to say that this is a dirty trick. My Bloc Québécois colleagues and I will unmask this bill. Why should we have to pay more than anyone else for our penny candy?

In committee, the Bloc Québécois was not very keen on this bill. When the federal government offers what it calls social measures to the rest of Canada, there is always a catch when it comes to Quebec. This is further proof of that. The Bloc Québécois tried to amend the bill, but did not succeed.

Moreover, Liberal and NDP members from Quebec are going to vote for this bill. When will it end? They are going to steal the shirts right off of Quebeckers' backs. That is why this bill is so bad for Quebec. I am quite sure that Quebeckers will not forget this.

This is not unlike what happened with the gun registry. Once again, Quebeckers are falling through the cracks. So many of these bills seem to suggest that the rest of Canada expects Quebec to just suck it up and do as it is told.

I do not want Quebec to be a region. My region—my country—is Quebec, and Quebec is proactive when it comes to implementing social measures well before all of the other provinces.

I have no problem with anyone wanting to copy Quebec's social measures, but it is not right to make Quebec pay the price for the government's failure to come up with its own good ideas.They should have brought in measures to protect self-employed workers a long time ago, like Quebec did. I do not want to pay for the rest of Canada.

I have nothing against them bringing in social measures elsewhere, but I do not want them to tell Quebeckers to foot the bill when the rest of Canada never pays for measures in Quebec. On the contrary, we fight for those measures.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened with great interest to the member's speech. One thing I am a little saddened by is we are very close to Christmas and she seems so grumpy about this issue.

There are a lot of self-employed individuals in my riding. We have been clear for well over a year that this is one of the policies we would like to implement, and they have called for this change. It is a very positive change that will make a big difference for a lot of self-employed individuals. In Quebec there will be benefits for sickness and compassionate care.

Many associations have come out clearly in favour of the changes in this legislation. I am sure the member is aware of the Alliance of Canadian Cinema, Television and Radio Artists. It has said:

This is a positive first step by the federal government and so we are urging all parties to support the extension of parental leave benefits to all workers.

How can she stand in this place and say the option should be removed? It is an option that self-employed people can opt into it or not. How can she say she wants to remove a very good option for those who are self-employed in Canada?

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, first of all, I am not grumpy; I am extremely angry about this bill.

The hon. member is hearing complaints from artists and citizens in his riding. He wants to offer benefits to self-employed workers because he seems to have a social conscience and to have social justice in mind.

How can he decide between Paul and Peter? How can he explain that?

Personally, I have no problem with the idea of granting benefits to self-employed workers. However, it needs to be done fairly, and not by making Quebec pay for the other provinces.

If my hon. colleague has a social conscience regarding artists and other citizens in his riding, will he have a social conscience when it comes to Quebec and will he listen to what Bloc Québécois members are saying, because this could involve an injustice? That is what I would like to ask the member.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the member and she makes a very important point. We expect the legislation will reflect fairness and equity to all persons and regions. That has to be acknowledged and accepted.

Being at third reading, however, and even if there is a fiscal issue with regard to the premiums to be charged to those who voluntarily take up this benefit, we only have a few options, many of which probably are not too salient right now.

One option would be to refer the bill back to committee so it could look at it more carefully and fix it, if necessary. The second option would be to let it go to the Senate so it could look at it. The third option, maybe, would be to have an undertaking from the government to examine this matter more fully and, if necessary, come back with amending legislation to make it fair and equitable.

Could the member comment on what approach we should pursue?

[Diane Bourgeois, Bloc, Terrebonne—Blainville, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have always had a great deal of respect for the member who just asked me this question. I see him in this place all the time. We have even agreed on certain bills that have been extremely important to us, in terms of social justice. I continue to have a great deal of respect for him. He mentioned three options.

The first option would be to send the bill back to committee for amendments. That is in fact what the Bloc Québécois wanted. My colleagues who are members of the committee that deals with employment insurance proposed some amendments, which were flatly rejected. This is no joke. The actuary even came to explain the monetary implications of the bill, but no one would even listen to him.

Second, we cannot always count on the Senate to do our work for us. As members of Parliament, it is our duty to consider all aspects of a bill and examine it carefully.

Third, regarding an undertaking by this government, is the hon. member joking? In my opinion, when a government is not even open enough to listen to an actuary, it would never honour such an undertaking.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I had an opportunity to listen to the debate when it commenced and a couple of items did strike my attention.

We are dealing, as we know, with Bill C-56. I believe this bill in principle has the support of the House, being passed at second reading and because it provides special benefits on an opt-in basis under the employment insurance system to self-employed persons.

I listened to the minister introduce the bill and I thought that the minister carefully framed the issue before us when she said that Canadians should not have to choose between the family and their business responsibilities. We all know that many people choose self-employment because it gives them the flexibility to take care of family responsibilities. Some are self-employed because they have lost their jobs but still have to work, and they have to scramble to make ends meet. There are a variety of other circumstances that may put people in situations where they must be self-employed.

The employment insurance system provides benefits for employed persons who, for a variety of reasons, may have to leave their jobs to get benefits. In addition to those, though, there are a number of special benefits that are attached. I have a particular interest in this act, because one of those benefits has to do with maternity leave under EI. Some years ago I was very pleased to be able, through one of my private member's bills, to get maternity and parental leave benefits extended to a full year from the then six months. I believe that particular change to the EI Act was very well received by Canadians. I would note that in France now, maternity and parental leave benefits are for a full two years, recognizing the research and studies done on head starts for children and how important it is that parents have the opportunity to determine when is the right time for their child to access day care or child care, or when the child needs their parents to be home. The bill will go part way in that regard for self-employed persons. However, I fear it will probably not be enough and I hope that we will be pursuing this area of benefits for families with children. For me, it is so very, very important for families with children.

The minister also wanted to advise the House that self-employed workers in Canada are often the innovators in our economy. They are people who contribute their creativity, courage and capital in pursuit of a better life. They strengthen our communities, and it is the communities that make a strong country.

The minister also wanted to inform us that there are 2.6 million Canadians who are self-employed, and they account for about 15% of the working population. It is clear that this segment of our population faces circumstances that many people do not, or will never in their lifetimes, but it provides specific challenges. The difference for the self-employed is the fact that if they do not go to work or do the work, they do not get paid. There is a lot of work involved, but people make this sacrifice because it provides them with the flexibility to, among other things, make sure that the needs of their family, particularly their children, are taken care of.

Self-employed workers have been asking for these benefits for a very, very long period of time. The case has been well made, and self-employed Canadians do come from a broad range of situations and incomes. Some are professionals, scientists or technicians. They could be tradespeople or retailers, or they could simply be involved in a very small business where they are taking advantage of certain skill sets or abilities they have to provide goods and services. Thus it is an important segment of our economy that we really need to address.

About one-third of all self-employed women are also of child-bearing age, and many of them are choosing self-employment because it does provide the flexibility to combine a career with the responsibilities of raising a family. Obviously in these tough economic times, self-employment does offer a way for laid-off workers to stay active in the labour market and do their share in our economic recovery and, of course, to provide for their families.

Finally, with regard to the minister's comments, I thought that overall, the special benefits for the self-employed would mirror those of salaried employees. Under the EI program, the contributions and benefits for the self-employed would be comparable whether earnings came from self-employment, salaried employment, or a mix of the two; but clearly the overall goal was to make these special benefits for the self-employed the same as those for salaried employees, recognizing that some adjustments might be necessary. Those in fact have come to light in some of the statements made this morning and by the member for Laval—Les Îles, who raised the issue at the commencement of third reading.

In looking at the bill, I found it difficult to go through it because it has consequential amendments to a number of acts. There are also a number of exceptions. For instance, if one is self-employed and ill and wants to receive benefits, there is going to be a test whether one would be classified as self-employed without that illness. That is as simply as I can state it, but if we look at that in the act, it is not as clear as it would seem to indicate.

From the various conditions and exceptions, it looks as if there will be cases where it is going to subject to interpretation, and I only wish that this had been a little simpler. I wish the bill had been more focused on the requirements of people accessing these benefits and that it had relied more heavily on regulations, which allow a government the flexibility to make modifications by using formulas and regulations or by listing the certain kinds of things that would be there.

When we start to put everything in the bill and try to craft editorial remarks or prose around what our intent is, there is a risk of missing something. As I indicated earlier in response to the question by the previous speaker, we are at third reading now. This bill has received approval in principle and it cannot be changed in its macro sense. We can tweak it, but the only way to tweak it at third reading is either to refer it back to committee, or to pass it at third reading and let it go to the Senate and maybe it can help to clarify the bill or, if necessary, correct a problem.

Since these benefits subject to a voluntary opt-in will not kick in for a year, I guess there is time to deal with it in an amending piece of legislation, if we could do that. However, I have to say that when I looked at the minutes of the committee meeting, I appreciated what members had been saying about rushing through proposed amendments. As I read this last night, I see that it took a long time for the committee members to grasp the points that were being made in some of the amendments. There seemed to be a little too much pressure to deal with it quickly and get it out of committee.

That is a risk committees take when they simply take things on their face value. I say this with regard to the issue the previous speaker raised in the House, and also the member for Laval—Les Îles, because there seems to be a problem with the benefits and the premiums proposed for residents of Quebec.

Bill C-56 would amend the act to establish a mechanism to provide payment of special benefits, not the labour-related EI benefits that one can get as a salaried employee if one loses a job. There are other things, including maternity benefits, sickness benefits, compassionate care benefits, and parental or adoptive benefits. These are important to Canadians. We have a system that I believe provides adequately for those who are salaried, but not for self-employed persons.

In all provinces other than Quebec, these kinds of special benefits are not provided by provincial governments. Someone who wishes to have such coverage would have to get it through private insurance.

The Province of Quebec is different. The Province of Quebec already provides some of these benefits, which are included in the provincial tax on residents of Quebec. These benefits are extended to Quebec residents, but they have a real cost for the people in Quebec.

However, in looking at the discussion in committee and also at the representations of previous speakers, there seems to be something wrong. If we compare what benefits someone would get in another province of Canada if he or she opted into this plan with the ones that he or she would need, the differential in the premium a self-employed individual in Quebec would pay and someone in any other province does not seem to match up clearly with what one would reasonably expect in terms of a pro rata cost per $100 of earnings. That is an issue that some members have raised.

We have a situation where the standard of fairness and equity does not seem to have been met for all persons in all regions. Ensuring so is one of our critical responsibilities.

I am not going to go into the mechanics of the premiums, but just so that members are aware, I will say that self-employed workers in Quebec already have access to Government of Quebec benefits for parental leave, sick leave and compassionate leave to care for family. This means that self-employed workers in Quebec should not have to pay the same premiums as Canadians in other provinces, because they already receive some of these benefits, not from the Government of Canada but from the Government of Quebec. Therefore, it seems clear to us that the calculations have to reflect that.

I do not have the precise numbers, but let me give the House a broad indication of them. Since Quebec already has a parental insurance program, all regular employees and self-employed Quebeckers pay into that plan. In recognition of that fact, the general employee EI premium is $1.38 per $100 of income in Quebec versus $1.73 in the rest of Canada. Because Quebec has a provincial plan that overlaps what is otherwise available in EI and the residents of Quebec are already paying for these benefits, the current EI premium structure reflects that reality. Thus we can see the differential in premiums, taking into account the cost of programs that Quebeckers already have.

Under this new bill, self-employed Quebeckers would pay the same $1.38 in premiums. That just does not make sense. If they already have some of the special benefits, why would they pay the same premium after this bill passes as they pay now before it is passed?

Apparently the government has not taken into account in the bill the fact that there is this exception. It is a clear exception. It is not debatable; it is a fact.

Something needs to be done. I asked a government member where the government got the numbers. I think it was the parliamentary secretary who responded that the premium that is going to be charged to Quebeckers is going to be lower than the charge from private insurers. That may be true.

It depends, however, on what assumptions we make about the group which has been covered under a private insurer. It depends on the size, stability and all other good things. I have been involved a little in employee benefits. I am pretty sure I could go to different areas of the insurance system and find a range of premiums based on what one must take or cannot take or cannot opt in, and maybe a plan will not even be customized.

I am not sure it is good enough to say that it is generally lower than what private insurers charge. We need to be more specific. It has to recognize how much it costs for the benefits they already get, and if the premium is going to be adjusted, the cost should probably be deducted. We know what the cost is. There is another way to come at it, from the reverse side rather than to try to build it up.

I wanted to raise that because I do not like to see us get into these situations where a bill is at third reading and it is very awkward, cumbersome and maybe unacceptable for the government to move in one of the directions to make a change now. It would appear to me that there is time, because this program is voluntary, people can opt in, and benefits cannot be claimed until they have been in the program for a full year.

I urge the Minister of Human Resources and the parliamentary secretary to go back and look at what the experts and the witnesses have said. People have expressed a sincere concern. It is about fairness and equity for all Canadians in all regions. In the case of this bill, it would appear that is not the case.

I want to thank the hon. members who have raised this issue. It gave me an opportunity to look at it. I agree with them wholeheartedly that there have to be some changes here, simply from the standpoint of fairness and equity.

[Ed Komarnicki, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour]

Mr. Speaker, I was listening to the member and on the one hand I think he is supporting the bill and on the other hand he is not supporting it. The time has come, perhaps, for the member and his party to decide whether or not they are going to support this bill and its speedy passage.

There are certainly a number of groups such as the Grain Growers of Canada and the Real Estate Association that have said they want to see action to address the many inequities in the employment insurance program faced by self-employed realtors. The director of the Grain Growers of Canada said that the legislation is very welcome, that it has a huge potential for quality of life in rural Canada, and that this could be the difference as to whether one member of a family has to seek off-farm employment because now families will have a choice.

The time is coming when that party will have to decide what it is going to do. It needs to pass the bill here and in the other house. There are important deadlines, such as January 1 when the contributions must commence. People have to decide whether they want to opt in.

Will the member support this bill? Will his party support moving this legislation forward so many people can be helped, and not oppose it as the Liberals did with the extension of the EI benefits from five to twenty weeks for long-tenured workers because they wanted to force an election? Is that party going to get behind this bill and behind us to ensure the bill passes in a timely fashion so self-employed people can actually opt in as soon as possible?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I said at the beginning of my speech that I and the Liberal Party support this bill. I gave the reasons and even cited the reasons laid out by the minister.

I do not know why the parliamentary secretary even wanted to go there. He did use two words which I think are indicative of the reason I wanted to rise to speak. He talked about “speedy passage”. In my 16 years of experience in this place, when we try to do things quickly, we sometimes make mistakes.

I think a number of members have raised the issue that in this case there is a small item, being the premiums to be charged. The bill is at third reading. We want to pass the bill. What I want to know is whether or not the parliamentary secretary, the minister and in fact the government are going to undertake to correct the mistake that they made.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to remind the member that if Quebeckers choose to take advantage of what is a voluntary program, they will pay the EI premiums at the same rate as employees in Quebec where the rates have already been adjusted downward to take into account the existence of provincial maternity and parental benefit plans which have been there for a while.

In addition, self-employed Quebeckers would pay the same premium rate as Quebec paid workers, which is 1.36% in 2010 which is reduced to account for the existence of the QPIP.

Does the member have any comments about that piece of information?

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member repeated the case that I made during my speech. I believe that the bill does not fairly reflect the fact that Quebeckers are already paying for certain benefits under provincial programs that are available and that the prescribed EI premium for them will be more than it should be.

If members would look at what the current premium structure is between Quebec and the other provinces, they would get an idea of what the differential should be roughly in terms of percentage. We know it has to be lower than that. It cannot somehow be equal; it just does not make sense from a pragmatic standpoint.

What I did see in committee were very sincere attempts to make amendments which were frustrated by government members. I think they were blinded by their wish to have a speedy return of the bill to the House rather than to get the best bill possible. That is unacceptable.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

Order. There are about five minutes remaining in the time allotted for questions and comments, but we will now move to statements by members as it is virtually 11 o'clock.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the third time and passed.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

When we left debate on this bill for question period, it was time for questions and comments. The hon. member for St. John's South—Mount Pearl.

[Siobhan Coady, Liberal, St. John's South—Mount Pearl, NL]

Madam Speaker, I am wondering if the member could explain his concerns about the Quebec premium.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question because it probably is the only issue of concern that has been raised at third reading by hon. members.

This particular bill extends special benefits under employment insurance to Canadians, and that those premiums have to be established relative to the value of those special benefits, such as maternity leave, sickness or compassionate leave, et cetera.

The problem is that in the province of Quebec some of these benefits are already provided under provincial programs and therefore paid for by the residents of Quebec already. As a consequence, the remaining benefits for which they would be eligible to opt in to receive under the EI will in fact be less than the benefits all other Canadians would receive in all the other provinces.

The current premium rate that salaried Quebec employees pay on the EI system is actually already lower now than it is in the rest of Canada because the provincial program provides benefits.

If we have this new provision, where self-employed workers could get some of these special benefits, one would think that the premium levels that are paid in Quebec for these self-employed workers to participate would be less than the rest of Canada on a pro rata basis, or reflective of the economic value of the additional benefits that they would receive.

Based on what happened at committee, there seemed to be some haste to get things done. There were some questions raised about the apparent discrepancy or inequity of the premium structure for Quebec, but it did not get resolved at committee. Now we find ourselves at third reading. I raised in debate that there are some options. We could send the bill back to committee to look at it carefully. We could pass it here at third reading and allow the Senate to look into the questions that have been raised. There is a one year period over which no benefits could be derived under this. The government could at least undertake to review this and, if necessary, bring forward amending legislation.

The government is simply interested in speedy passage of the bill. First, we have to have fairness and equity before we have speed.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I did want to follow-up on what the member for Mississauga South had to say, and also remind him, and he already knows, that this is a voluntary program. It would be better to get as much of the arrangements out of the way in this House first before the bill goes on to the Senate, but at the end of the day, if the program does not have a lot of uptake in the province of Quebec, for example, we will have to find out why and we will have to make adjustments at that point.

I did point out to the member before that in light of the fact that Quebec does have some of the programs, that would be included in this offer, that the people of Quebec have in fact had a reduction in their premiums for the last little while.

It is an optional program and I do not see why the Bloc would not understand that if people do not participate in it, it is obvious that they were right in the first place that the rates were too high, but at least people should be given that option.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, the member seems to argue that because Quebecers already have a lower premium rate than the rest of Canada on the salary side now, that they are getting some sort of inappropriate benefit.

The fact that Quebecers pay through their Quebec provincial taxes for benefits provided by the Quebec provincial government, they do not need the coverage provided under the EI system federally, and therefore the only benefits they are getting are the ones they do not have. Therefore, their premium rate is currently lower.

If we now apply that system to self-employed workers, similarly we would expect that the differential between what Quebec pays now for salaried employees and what the rest of the provinces pay, should be also reflected--

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order. Resuming debate, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Mississauga South for his final comments. I think we can get into some of the issues a little deeper regarding the system as it applies in Quebec.

The member should know that in the Quebec system it is mandatory, whereas this is an optional program that the government has brought in. That will lead us to some other issues about whether or not this particular system can in fact be self-financing and whether or not down the road the government may have to make this program mandatory for self-employed individuals because part of the process of making it optional allows a certain amount of selecting against the program.

If that were to happen and people selected against the program, they would only sign in when they knew in fact they were going to be making a claim. On that basis, the program will definitely lose money and will not be able to run on a break-even basis by any means. At a future point, the government may have to look at making the program mandatory.

At this point in time, I am happy the legislation has reached this point. I admit that the idea of this particular legislation was part of the NDP campaign in the last election, as well as part of the Conservative campaign, so the timing could not be better for the two parties to create a piece of legislation that both of their constituencies appreciated and wanted, and bringing it to the fore.

There has been an explosion of self-employed people in this country over the last number of years. Many of us grew up at a time when self-employed individuals were rather rare. When I was going to school, I do not recall many self-employed people at all. Almost everybody I knew worked on the railways. There were farmers, who are definitely self-employed, but compared to the number of self-employed people now, there was no comparison whatsoever.

As of 2008, there are some 2.6 million Canadians reporting income from self-employment, and for a large majority of them it is the sole source of the income. The share of self-employed in the labour force now has been relatively stable over the past decade at 15% and I dispute that figure. I am not certain that is the case and believe that in fact the number of self-employed people actually increases year by year.

People have this romantic idea that if they become self-employed, they become their own boss, and they can deduct all of the expenses they incur while attempting to earn income. And that in actual fact they will throw off the chains associated with a wage job and will be better off for it. The statistics are rather grim.

The fact of the matter is that a very large percentage of small businesses fail within the first five years. Those that continue beyond the five-year mark, many of them into the 10- or 20-year mark, if they are still in existence, basically live hand to mouth, just meeting their expenses.

The bottom line is that by and large they do it because that is what they are used to doing or because they find what they are doing self-fulfilling. Perhaps they have that optimism that things will get better, just as the farmers of this country are optimistic that there will always be a better year to come, that next year will be better than this year. That is a large group of self-employed people in this country.

There is another group. I do not know what percentage of the total 2.6 million people it might be. It is a substantial group of people who have become self-employed not by their own choice. They became self-employed because their companies went bankrupt or their companies left town, moved to Mexico, and left them here. They had no choice but to pull themselves up by the bootstraps, as the right-wing Conservatives are always prone to say. They have become self-employed.

There are other people who have, by mutual agreement, become self-employed. After working for a company for a period of time, they have decided to retire from the company, but they return and work for that company in a self-employed capacity.

The income tax department accepts that as long as they are earning income from more than one employer. They have to find another one or two people to pay them. They cannot be taking direction from any one employer. They need a contract drawn up to indicate that they are truly self-employed people, that they are serving more than one client, and that they are not taking direction from the client. On that basis, they are able to deduct their expenses.

The tax department, of course, is very suspicious about arrangements like that. It is very vigilant and watches very closely that people are not simply leaving their employment because of an agreement with the employer that it will keep paying them and they will keep doing the same job. In that way the employer would escape paying the benefits and they would be self-employed and would be able to deduct all their expenses for travel, for their basement office and for all sorts of other things.

The picture I am painting here is that these self-employed people are not the millionaires that a lot of people think they are. Just because they are tagged as self-employed does not mean they are earning double the money of salaried employees. In some cases, they are earning less. These people have had a tough time of it. Now, they have to go out and make a go of it for themselves.

What these people find out is that they are not eligible for a lot of the benefits they were getting as salaried employees. They may have had a pension plan. They may have had a group plan. They were covered under workers compensation. They were covered under the EI system which gave them benefits. Now they find themselves without these benefits. That is why the business organizations have been lobbying the political parties. I personally have not been lobbied, but I know there has been a lot of lobbying going on to try to convince the parties to get onside with this particular issue.

Once again, we are not offering full EI benefits here. We are only offering the extra benefits, the compassionate care benefits, the maternity benefits, the parental adoption benefits, the sickness benefits. Those benefits are the only ones that are being offered under this program.

I know my office will be getting phone calls from self-employed people over the next number of weeks saying that they heard or read my speech in Parliament and when can they apply for their employment insurance benefits. Of course that is not part of this system.

Furthermore, it is not a mandatory program. We know that Quebec has extremely good programs. I am very proud of Quebec for having anti-scab legislation since the days of René Lévesque. It has a day care system for $7 a day. It is the best in the country. It is no surprise to me that Quebeckers have some of these compassionate care benefits provided by their province. Those are mandatory benefits. They are required. Everyone in the province is required to contribute.

What we have here is a voluntary system. People do not have to sign up. If they want to try the system out and they are residents of Quebec, they can sign up. If they do not think that they are going to benefit from the program, they do not sign up.

Anywhere in the country, self-employed people can look to the private insurance market for these sorts of benefits. Let me say that I have not met a life insurance agent yet who was not very eager to sell people products. If there is a way for them to find out how to do it, they will certainly do it. A lot of self-employed people now go to Blue Cross and buy benefits for their families. Maybe 10 or 15 years ago they could not do that. It just was not available because insurance companies were only interested in large groups of 50 or 100 before they would give quotes on benefits. That is the only way the insurance company could actually make money because it needed a large pool from which to work.

Over time we have seen that the market has segmented itself and there are companies that are available to give quotes on groups of 10 people, and then groups of 5 people. The reality is that the rates are a lot higher because once again, they do not have the pool to work with.

They also know that, particularly when it comes to dental plans, the companies get selected against. People join the plan when their teeth are not in good shape and of course they hit the plan big time the first year. The group plan can sustain that when there are 500 employees. They can take on new employees. They can pay for all these dental benefits in the first year. Once they are paid, they are done, so they will recoup their costs over the next 10 years that the people are in the plan. That is known as selecting against the company. If a woman knows she is going to become pregnant and she signs up for the program, automatically the company knows it is going to be paying out the benefits. A company cannot possibly make money in a system like that.

That is why I found it just amazing that somehow the government thinks it is going to be able to have a voluntary program where it is going to get selected against on a constant basis, and then if people do not draw the benefits, they can get out of the system, otherwise they have to stay in forever. A lot of companies are not going to last forever.

I do not know what the uptake is going to be in the first place, but let us say it is reasonable. We are going to find that the system is going to lose money and they are going to have a make a decision after two or three years to go with a mandatory program.

The Liberal critic is closer to the truth here than maybe even she knows. She was talking about her experiences at committee. The committee had an actuary come in and the members questioned the actuary.

I have not been able to get information from the government about what its projections are. One would think if the Conservatives are bringing in a government program they would have projections about how many people they expect to uptake on the program and the rollout of the program. I asked them questions and I could get no answers from them.

It sounds as though they are operating on a wing and a prayer. They are going to roll out this program with lots of advertising and get as much bang for the buck as they can. They will tell people it will be good old Conservative economics, sort of Grant Devine economics, that this system is going to be self-sustaining when they know that is not what is going to happen. They are going to get selected against in the early stages big time. They are going to have losses. Then they are going to have to come around and say they will have to make it mandatory and that is something that will be dealt with when the time comes.

The point is it is a good program. It is a good idea and we have to ease our way into it. That is why I suggest that the Bloc should have a little more patience on this issue as well, because once again, it is voluntary. There is no one saying that people in Quebec have to buy into the program.

Why should the Bloc say as a party that others cannot do it, that the Bloc is not going to give others the option at all? The Bloc members should be saying that they recommend that people not do it because the premiums are too high or whatever the reasons there are and try to make improvements to the program. That would be the most sensible thing to do rather than to say they just do not like what they see of it so far and they will be voting against it because they do not even want to give people the option and they feel there are not enough redeeming features to the program that it cannot be changed. I do not think that is necessarily the best approach, but once again, I am not in charge of the Bloc.

The fact of the matter is there is a good system in Quebec. We admit that. The Quebec government is on the ball there as it is with a lot of other social issues. It has brought in a system that works well for Quebeckers.

My notes say with regard to Quebec that there is an adjustment made for the fact that since 2006, the Quebec parental insurance plan, QPIP, provides maternity, paternity, parental and adoption benefits available to all workers, salaried or self-employed. Participation is mandatory. There is no voluntary participation at all on these programs. With this measure Quebec's self-employed will be eligible to opt in to claim sickness and compassionate care benefits that are currently unavailable through the QPIP. QPIP offers some of the benefits, but not all of them. Quebec's self-employed who opt in would pay the same premium rate as Quebec paid workers, 1.36% in 2010 which is reduced to account for the existence of the QPIP.

That tells me there is an adjustment. If that is not true, then I certainly apologize to the members for misrepresenting those facts. I want to be on their side on this issue. I think the Bloc members should be giving this program a proper hearing. It will not be good for the Bloc's political prospects in Quebec when the other parties start sending out materials to the artists in Quebec saying that the Bloc had an option to give these benefits and it said no. What are the self-employed real estate agents in Quebec going to say when they get their letter from the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party saying there was a program that agents could have participated in, but no, it was taken away by the Bloc MPs who voted against it. We all know what the Conservatives are doing with their ten percenters and how they personalize them. I can just imagine what sort of write-ups we are going to see on this program.

I have to tell the government members that what goes around comes around. We can come up with some really good ten percenters on their vote against the air passengers' bill of rights. They are going to look every bit as good in their ridings as those gun registry—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order. Questions and comments. The hon. member for Cariboo—Prince George.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank the NDP member opposite and his party for supporting this great bill. It is a landmark bill, as I mentioned earlier.

If I may mention, because this is all about jobs and employment, there were 80,000 new jobs created in Canada in the month of November. That is five times as many as were expected. A lot of those jobs will be because of the small- and medium-sized businesses, self-employed business owners who deserve to have a program like this to draw on for their benefits.

I am sorry to say, with all due respect to the Bloc members, that their argument is simply more about politics than this program, this legislation itself. The reason I say that is because the more they see their fortunes slipping in Quebec as a separatist party and the more they see the resurgence of the Conservative Party in Quebec and it becomes a political threat, the more they are going argue against good Conservative legislation like this bill.

They should be ashamed of themselves for playing politics with a bill that is going to help the self-employed in their province.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, that is a real tough question that the member asked me here.

If there is a fundamental flaw in the program, it is the whole issue of it being a voluntary program. The Liberal critic seemed to be on to something when she said, “Well, we went to committee and we had the actuaries there. The actuaries kept saying that this thing could not possibly be self-sustaining on a voluntary basis.”

That is all because of being selected against. The people will join it when they know they are on the verge of making a claim. It just makes sense. It would be like an insurance company, when someone knows they are going to die in a month and they go out and buy a $1 million insurance policy. That is called selecting against the company. There are procedures in place to make sure that does not happen.

The problem is solved by having it mandatory. The Quebec program is a mandatory program.

I am not saying we go there right now. We have to move one step at a time. This is a good bill for this time. It is a first. We have to support it, but I think over time we are going to find that it is not going to be self-sustaining as the governments says and that—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order. As there are many members standing up, I would like to give more time for questions.

[Thierry St-Cyr, Bloc, Jeanne-Le Ber, QC]

Madam Speaker, I listened carefully to my NDP colleague's speech. The same argument was repeated over and over, namely that it is no big deal if Quebec workers are cheated, ripped off, pay premiums that are three times those of other workers because it is not a mandatory program. To avoid being cheated, all they have to do is not opt in.

Let us suppose that employment insurance premiums in the Atlantic provinces were tripled but that it was no longer mandatory to pay into the plan. Would my colleague vote for such a measure?

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the point here is that it is a voluntary program. It is as simple as that.

Across Canada, if there is no uptake in this program, the Conservatives are going to have an embarrassment on their hands. They are going to have to explain why nobody took up the program.

If they get selected against and the program loses millions of dollars, we will be holding them accountable, asking what kind of an incompetent government could have conceived of a program that came up with so many losses in the first year or the second year of the program.

That is why at this point we have to, at a certain point, accept the figures that we are given. We are taking the government's figures but we are just saying that it stands to reason that unless there are huge numbers joining up, we are going to be looking at losses, and we are going to have to be looking at making the plan—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order. Questions and comments, the hon. member for Mississauga South.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, I think the member needs to go back and look at what the bill does. He is concerned about whether it is going to be self-sustaining. He says that when people think they are going to be ready to use it, they are going to just opt-in and get the benefit. However, the bill does say that one has to be in for a full year beyond one even qualifies for any benefit. I do not know. Maybe he has to read the bill again.

The issue here has nothing to do with whether it is voluntary or not. It is all going to be part of the new EI commission. All premiums go into the pool and all benefits come out. That is the way it is. One cannot say whether it is voluntary or whatever that it is going to matter. The issue here, which has been raised by a number of members, is whether or not fairness and equity have been achieved in terms of the prescribed premiums.

It appears based on what exists now and what is proposed. The differential has gone askew. It is out of line and that is the issue. I would ask the member to please ensure he understands that it is voluntary, but that one cannot just opt-in when one gets sick.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, the member should listen to his own critic. She was the one who was bringing up these questions last week. She had gone to committee and she had talked to the actuary. The actuary was bringing up these questions. She was saying that this was a little bit confusing to her, but she obviously should have received advice from the member for Mississauga South. He would have straightened her out on this issue.

The fact of the matter is that this is the Liberal Party that stole $56 billion from the EI program, put it into general revenues—

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order. I would like to ask the hon. member to withdraw the word “stole”. It is unparliamentary.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, I was not sure what the word was, but my colleague from Edmonton said “transferred”.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Vancouver East. A quick question.

[Libby Davies, NDP, Vancouver East, BC]

Madam Speaker, I think the member for Elmwood—Transcona made the point very well that these EI changes are so long overdue. I know New Democrats have called for years for these changes to be brought about to help self-employed people with employment insurance.

It strikes me that this is a much bigger issue in terms of social programs in general. I wonder if the member would comment on the fact that the NDP has been the champion of trying to make sure that these programs are actually there for Canadians. Whether it is EI, child care, social housing or our health care system, we are so far behind on everything.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, that is an excellent question. We had a Liberal government in power for a 13-year period that never came up with a solution like this. The numbers of self-employed people were growing at huge rates. It is funny that, at the end of the day, it took a Conservative minority government and an NDP opposition to put this together. Maybe that is why the Liberal Party is so sour at this time of year over an issue like this.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Question and comments. The hon. member for Peterborough. A very quick question because there is one minute left, so 30 seconds.

[Dean Del Mastro, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Canadian Heritage]

Madam Speaker, the member for Mississauga South raises an awful lot of cautions and concerns. He says that he has been here 16 plus years and that he would not want to rush this kind of legislation. He says we need to really consider these things and give them a lot of thought. How much longer than 16 plus years does he think we should consider legislation like that? I would like to know.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member has 30 seconds to respond.

[Jim Maloway, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, as our House leader has said, this legislation is long overdue. It is time we got with it and brought it in as soon as possible. Let us get it through the Senate. Let us hope that the Liberals do not tinker with it over there. Let us get it into law so that people can start realizing the benefits of our hard work here.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have heard some rather absurd things today, and I must speak to this bill. I was an accountant and also a self-employed worker in a former life. I started working in 1974, and in 1978, I started my own business as an accountant. Of course, I did many financial statements and tax returns for a number of self-employed workers.

For some businesses, there was a single owner, but some of them were incorporated. Over time, we could see how employment insurance in Canada—unemployment insurance at the time—could work when it enabled an employer, self-employed worker or small business owner to hire a spouse and to have them contribute to EI.

At the time, EI inspectors would often show up to inspect the business's books. They would see that the spouse worked for the business and did not contribute to employment insurance. So they asked them to contribute. If a spouse worked for the business—or for a self-employed worker—and contributed to EI, but, due to decreased sales, applied for EI benefits, the inspectors would show up again and tell them they were not allowed to contribute. There were some standards to be met if the spouse wanted to contribute to employment insurance and be entitled to it if, unfortunately, they ended up unemployed.

For years, each situation had to be examined individually. When I gave advice to my clients—to say whether or not the individual should be insurable—and despite the bad intentions of the employment insurance inspectors, I was always able to suitably defend my position and I always won.

This brings me today to how the Conservatives see the program and employment insurance as such. The Bloc Québécois is constantly calling for some very important adjustments and policy changes with respect to employment insurance. In order to impress Canadians and Quebeckers, the Conservative Party is doing things that make no sense at all. For instance, in the context of the economic downturn we just went through, and which we are still feeling, when we asked that the two week waiting period be eliminated, they instead added five at the end. We cannot criticize that, but it does not have the same impact as adding two weeks at the beginning. Then they accuse us of voting against many aspects of their employment insurance program, but none of it makes any sense.

Now they come to us with a bill that grants special benefits for self-employed workers. Of course the Bloc Québécois agrees with the principle of such a bill to support self-employed workers, since we have always believed these workers should have access to the EI system, as though they were salaried employees. So we agreed with the principle of the bill. However, we are being presented with a program whose intentions are unclear. Of course, we can see them if we carefully analyze the numbers. And naturally, the program proposed by the government would be voluntary.

Many have focused on that aspect, including the NDP, the white knight of justice and equality. The NDP wants the Bloc Québécois to change its mind and make sure that everyone votes for this bill. The NDP also pointed out that the program is voluntary, not mandatory. However, there is something I would like to say to the NDP members who tell us that if Quebeckers are not interested, they need not sign up because it is a voluntary program.

The government is proposing social policy on a voluntary basis. I will not say that anyone is intentionally seeking to rob people, but I will say that someone is seeking to exploit people. If all Quebeckers were to sign up for this program tomorrow morning and pay the set premium, $1.36, they would be financing the sickness and compassionate care portions of this insurance scheme for the rest of Canada. They would be footing the bill for everyone else in Canada.

Why should Quebec have to do that? Earlier, the Conservatives said that what they are doing is strictly political and that they are doing it because they are gaining ground in Quebec. Obviously, they are daydreaming.

Not a single Quebecker would want the Bloc Québécois to make it possible for the rest of Canada to exploit Quebec on such an important issue as sickness and compassionate care benefits.

Their behaviour is just so sad. They were not even interested in hearing what the actuary had to say to the committee. He was in the position for many years and dealt with this issue and contribution rates. In fact, he was the one who did the calculations at the government's request to reduce contribution rates so that the government could say it reduced the rates. The government also made deep cuts to benefits.

Now, what the Conservatives are trying to do with this bill is look like the heroes and make everyone believe that they have done something good for self-employed workers.

I may have lost my train of thought a little, but I have lost none of the anger that I want to convey to the Conservative Party. What the Conservatives are trying to do here is appalling. As I said earlier, they want to look like heroes and make everyone think that they are helping self-employed workers. They finally realized that self-employed workers are strategically, even critically important to Quebec's economy and Canada's.

Quebec already has maternity benefits and parental leave, which cost us 86¢.The government is adding $1.36 to that, for a total of $2.22 for all the benefits, while self-employed workers in the rest of Canada will pay $1.73.

There may seem to be something wrong here. I would say that there is something wrong, but we also have to consider the fact that Quebec is slightly more progressive than the rest of Canada. It has more suitable parental and maternity leave programs.

Still, there is an unaccountable difference that I would describe as almost dramatic. I wonder how a Conservative member from outside Quebec would explain that to Quebeckers.

Quebeckers would certainly like to enrol in such a program, but how will they react when they find out they have to pay for the rest of Canada in addition to themselves?

The proposed rate of $1.36 is three times the actuary's estimate of 41¢. Every self-employed worker who signed up for this insurance would pay for three Canadian workers. I had not thought about it, but maybe that means that one Quebecker is worth four Canadians. But that is not what I want to say.

It comes down to the same thing, because Quebeckers account for 25% of the population. One country represents 25% of the population of another country. But that 25% is actually 100%.

I am stunned that even a single federal member from Quebec could support such exploitation of self-employed workers in Quebec. I am convinced that the NDP member from Quebec, the member for Outremont, will vote against this bill. He will never agree to tell self-employed workers in Quebec that they can get ripped off by voluntarily purchasing this insurance. Does the member for Outremont really want to tell Quebeckers that he is voting for insurance that literally exploits them? Is there something wrong with his idea of fairness and equity?

In speaking of fairness and equity, I would like to point out the contribution of the member for Mississauga South who clearly stated, as did other Bloc members, that we must do much more. We cannot give up. Just because we are at third reading today does not mean we must give up. Some things need to be clarified and others need to be challenged. Some changes may even be required. It begs a fundamental question: should this measure be mandatory? What would have happened if the bill had stated that the measure was mandatory?

Obviously the rate of $1.36 for Quebeckers would not have been acceptable and would not have been implemented. I even wonder if the intent of this premium rate is to have Quebeckers say no to this bill. It is important to ask this question. The Conservative Party constantly introduces bills that seem wonderful but that are at odds with Quebeckers' interests and do not work at all. That always happens. They are always sugar-coated and unfortunately the image projected almost never corresponds to the reality.

Once again, I appeal to all the members of this House and the Quebec members. I am convinced, even though these members sit in cabinet, even though they are ministers, that Quebeckers would never accept that they would agree to a bill to create a program that would shamelessly exploit them.

We actually were in favour of a program providing sickness and compassionate care benefits, but not on these terms.

It goes against our principles of fairness and equity to tell Quebeckers that we have managed to secure a sickness and compassionate care program but that they will have to pay so much and pay for the rest of Canada. I find that unacceptable and if no significant changes are made, if no adjustments are made to reflect the reality then, unfortunately, the Bloc Québécois will vote against the bill.

[Dick Harris, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Madam Speaker, as one from outside Quebec, I would not attempt to explain this to someone in the province of Quebec. I will leave that to my colleagues, the MPs from Quebec and also the candidates from Quebec in the next election.

However, I will try to clarify for the people who live outside of Quebec, who are watching this debate, lest they be misled by the member for Sherbrooke.

The point the member is making is this incredibly low price Quebeckers have for the benefits that already exist in Quebec. I submit that the only reason these programs are still operating and operating with a horrendous loss every year, and they are grossly underpriced, is because of the massive subsidies the province has to put in to support them. That is the reason the taxes in Quebec are the highest of any province in Canada.

The member for Sherbrooke said he was an accountant. He surely must know that we do not get something for nothing.

Where the employers and the self-employed may be paying a small premium for the benefits they are getting, the fact is their property taxes are more and every other tax in Quebec is almost higher than any other provinces in Canada.

Lest the people watching are misled, that is the whole point. The member is not being clear on that.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am one of those who think that everything is worth something and that we have to pay a fair price. That is not the case here. Obviously the hon. member can tell the rest of Canada that Quebec has voted against this. With the figures they are presenting, the premium is being subsidized.

We have more progressive policies in Quebec because we pay for them and the federal government never pays us more than our share. We are not here to beg the federal government for money. We are here to get our fair share. We do not intend to finance the rest of Canada for things that, in some cases, do not concern us. This matter does concern us, but it is not up to us to finance self-employed workers in the rest of Canada. They too have to realize that everything is worth something and that they have to pay what this insurance for sick leave and compassionate care benefits is worth. They will benefit from four forms of insurance for $1.73, while we are already paying 86¢ a year for two that are much more comprehensive and more in line with the needs of Quebeckers. Quebeckers are prepared to pay for what they get, but they should not have to pay for what they are not getting. It is only fair.

Everything is worth something and we will see what the Bloc Québécois is worth to Quebeckers in the next election. Through you, Madam Speaker, I invite the hon. member to come sell his plan to us in Quebec.

[Paul Szabo, Liberal, Mississauga South, ON]

Madam Speaker, we can see what is happening here. There seems to be a dispute in facts. When there is a dispute in facts, let us resolve them. Let us get to the facts because the facts will speak for themselves.

If we took the current salary for people in Canada, here is what they pay and here is what they get and apportion that premium, the $1.73 to each of the elements of EI benefits and special benefits, and if we do the same for Quebec, we will find a couple of those special benefits that Quebec does not participate in the EI program because Quebeckers already pay for them and they are provided by the Quebec provincial government. There is the disparity.

If we put in self-employed people from across Canada, we have to build on that model. There already is a differential for good reason. They are paying for it through their provincial taxes.

However, the numbers and the methodology for the proposed inclusion of Quebec self-employed persons does not build on the basic framework of cost of benefits and that is the problem. It is not subsidizing anything. It is fairness and equity and the numbers will show it.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to once again recognize the contribution of the member for Mississauga South. There are conflicting ideas and positions because there is a very big disparity between the Conservatives' assessment and ours. We heard them. They are convinced that their assessment is the correct one.

There is about a 1¢ difference, but we believe that our assessment is the correct one. Furthermore, the former EI actuary supports us. For years, he gave the government exact figures so that it could assess the situation and, ultimately, so that it could dip into the EI fund.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Madam Speaker, I have listened to the debate and a couple of points stand out.

The first is about the question of vision. I just heard from the government side what I consider to be a small and narrow-minded vision of the kind of services that government can provide to our citizens. The Government of Quebec has an expansive vision in many areas and one of them is child care. Quebec has led the country in providing child care services at an affordable rate. Quebeckers have decided to pay for that service and it serves as a model for the rest of us. I agree services for Canadians should be paid for and valued.

I would like to hear about the member's vision for EI with respect to these benefits. We are talking about giving maternity/paternity benefits, sickness benefits and compassionate care benefits to self-employed people. Would he not agree that self-employed people have children, they get sick and they have family members who they have to take care of? Are these not the kind of programs that provide a good vision for our country, similar to the child care policy?

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, talk to Quebeckers about their government, and they automatically think of the Quebec government because that is the authority that provides most of their essential services.

Talk to people from other provinces about their government, and they automatically think of the federal government. That is the first thing that comes to mind. As such, they easily buy into a lot of what the federal government gives them. But people in Quebec want to do things their own way to best meet the needs of Quebeckers. The other provinces have a frustrating tendency to unquestioningly accept whatever the federal government hands them.

We have our own way of doing things, and when people ask us to do something, we do our best to make it happen. We collect money in lieu of federal services, and we provide Quebec-quality services, which are better.

In the end, what can we do? Quebeckers have a completely different vision. They are moving toward complete independence—sovereignty—because they want to be done with these disputes.

This is yet another reason for Quebec to take charge of all of its own affairs and opt out of fruitless debates in the House.

I am sure that a lot of members must find these debates tiresome. The solution is easy enough: if they stop acting the way they are acting, things might get easier. In the meantime, Quebeckers will progress toward the ultimate and best scenario.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, it gives me great pleasure to rise in this debate. What I heard from my hon. colleague from Sherbrooke was a complaint about a system that is broken and has not been fixed in a holistic way.

The present government, and the previous one that helped dismantle the system, is now in the process of adding band-aid upon band-aid instead of looking at the system that started to break in the 1980s, with a Conservative government led by Prime Minister Mulroney and continued on by Liberal governments through 1990s, when they gutted the system, overcharged us, pocketed the money and squandered $57 billion. Now, in a moment of crisis, we are trying to add a band-aid solution to a program that at one time worked for all Canadians across this land and now no longer does.

I commend the government on one hand for saying we should extend benefits that a lot of us get when it comes to maternity leave, parental benefits, compassionate care and sick leave. That is an equality issue the New Democrats and the labour movement have been demanding for a long time.

Clearly, sickness knows no workplace, whether it be self-employed at home, in industry or the service sector working for an employer. When people get ill, the illness does not knock on their door and ask if they are covered by a sick plan. People get sick and their needs are still the same. In families with only one person working and bringing home income, the need to sustain those families, keeping a roof over their heads, putting food on the table for their children or themselves. remains the same.

To start to add more to the program is a good thing. The problem with this is it simply says that some people might like it and they should think about entering the program. I am not too sure that is the appropriate way to do these sorts of things when it comes to adding on a new program. We need to look at it in a way that tells people these are great programs for them, that they need to join and here are the mechanisms to do it. It needs to be the same for the self-employed as it is for those of us who work for an employer and simply pay it.

Unfortunately, in life people will be faced with one or two of the benefits that will be available to the self-employed if we pass this bill. People will either get sick or require the compassionate care benefit. I have heard folks say for a long time that in life two things are absolute, taxes and the end of life.

When people deal with the end of life, whether it be parents, a loved one or a member of a family, we will all face that predicament. For a group to be singled out and not have the benefits as others who happen to be employed by someone else, to be honest from my own personal perspective, is criminal. We are not going to talk in a holistic way about those benefits. We are going to tell people they come into the program if they choose.

There are some difficulties with the program as there are with every program. I hope the government is listening. When people are sick, the two-week waiting period is an abomination. Regardless of whether people are laid off or get sick, it is really reprehensible when they are sick.

If people get sick and are unable to work, the first thing to happen is they lose money. We ought to be thinking about the fact that people do not choose to be ill. The illness could be of a catastrophic nature or people could end up in hospital, not like catching a cold and being laid up for a couple of weeks. It could be that someone has a major infection, lands in a hospital and is there for three, four, five, six, eight weeks. People have to wait for the stream of income required to sustain them through such periods of time.

They also have to go through the process of filling out cards and doing all those good things that the process talks about during an illness, and that is a delaying process. The two weeks really amounts to six by the time people receive any money.

Those who are ill need one less thing in their lives to worry about that could put them in a more serious situation than they are already in. We need to think about that element in the system. As I said earlier, it is really about justice and equality for all of us.

Why should some workers be treated in one way and others absolutely differently? When we look at the fairness of ensuring people having the ability to get involved in the program, it is long overdue. The New Democrats, as I said earlier about the labour movement, have been talking about a program that works for those of us in the working world because it is a program meant for us, as workers. It is designed for that.

Unfortunately, in the last 20 years, the design of the program is for the government to collect money. We watched the Liberals do it. The Conservatives, in their great thought processes, have looked at the Liberal plan. I have heard them from time to time say that the Liberals gave them a broken system. I have yet to hear them say that they will fix it. They continue with that broken system. They have said that in the House. I know it to be true because they would not mislead the House. What do they do? They do not fix it. That is a crime in itself. They need to fix the system if they know it is broken. Why would they continue with it? Yet they do.

We know the EI rates have been frozen for the next year. When we look at a plan of the Conservatives, we look at what they intend to do. They have obviously learned the lessons of the Liberals in the nineties. The Conservatives will be able to collect the money in 2011, heading to 2012, to 2013, to 2014 and forward. The revenue will be far greater than what they intended to pay out because the system will not be fixed. They are going to leave the 50-odd per cent of those who do not get covered by the system out of the system and collect the money. They saw what the previous government did. Then they will take the money, as my colleague said earlier, and transfer it, I would say squander it, and use it for other things, which places this program in jeopardy.

[The Acting Speaker, Denise Savoie]

Order, please. I am sorry to interrupt the hon. member. He will have twelve and a half minutes when the bill comes back before the House.

It being 1:30 p.m., the House will now proceed to the consideration of private members' business as listed on today's order paper.

Notice of Closure

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, with respect to the consideration of the third reading stage of Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, I wish to give notice that at a next sitting a minister of the Crown shall move, pursuant to Standing Order 57, that debate be not further adjourned.

(Bill C-56. On the Order: Government Orders:)

December 4, 2009--Third reading of Bill C-56, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts--the Minister of Human Resources and Skils Development.

(Motion for third reading deemed moved, bill read the third time and passed.)

Fairness for the Self-Employed Act

[Gordon O'Connor, Conservative, Carleton—Mississippi Mills, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I think you have already passed the point. Had you sought it, you would have found agreement that we would have applied the previous vote to this one, with the Conservatives voting yes.

[The Speaker, Peter Milliken]

It was carried unanimously, so there was no need to apply the vote. What is done is done and cannot be undone.