Bill C-24 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (additional regular benefits), the Canada Recovery Benefits Act (restriction on eligibility) and another Act in response to COVID-19

This enactment amends the Employment Insurance Act in order, temporarily, to increase the maximum number of weeks for which regular benefits may be paid under Part I of that Act and facilitate access to benefits for self-employed persons under Part VII.‍1 of that Act.
It also amends the Canada Recovery Benefits Act to
(a) add a condition to provide that a person is eligible for benefits only if they were not, at any time during a benefit period, required to quarantine or isolate themselves under any order made under the Quarantine Act as a result of entering into Canada or
(i) if they were required to do so, the only reason for their having been outside Canada was to receive a necessary medical treatment or to accompany someone who was required to receive a necessary medical treatment, or
(ii) if, as a result of entering into Canada, they were required to isolate themselves under such an order at any time during the benefit period, they are a person to whom the requirement to quarantine themselves under the order would not have applied had they not been required to isolate themselves; and
(b) authorize the Minister of Health to assist the Minister of Employment and Social Development in verifying whether a person meets the eligibility condition referred to in paragraph 3(1)‍(m), 10(1)‍(i) or 17(1)‍(i) of the Canada Recovery Benefits Act and to disclose personal information obtained under the Quarantine Act to the Minister of Employment and Social Development for that purpose.
And finally, it amends the Customs Act to authorize the disclosure of information for the purpose of administering or enforcing the Canada Recovery Benefits Act.

Employment Insurance Act

[Raquel Dancho, Conservative, Kildonan—St. Paul, MB]

Madam Speaker, when I was the critic for immigration, I saw the vast mistreatment and the lack of dignity for new immigrants and newcomers.

Again, the Prime Minister and the Liberals have provided no strategy and no plan on how to reopen our economy, how to return to our free lives, other than vaccinations, maybe by September, and maybe that is when we will reopen.

However, it has been a year. I firmly believe Canadians deserve more than a maybe seven months from now. As a Canadian and as a parliamentarian, representing nearly 100,000 people, I urge the Liberal government to bring forward a plan to reopen the economy, to bring back jobs and bring back life and living.

It is time for a plan. It is time for hope.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, I thank the member for Kildonan—St. Paul for an excellent speech that will be very difficult for me to follow.

Here are the hard facts. While it is important to provide interim support for people who are jobless during COVID, what people really want are paycheques. This is all against the backdrop of an unemployment rate that is by far the highest in the G7. It is higher than the rates of the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany and Japan.

The government has tried, since these data points have come out, to claim that unemployment rates no longer matter and that we should look at some other statistics that it has cooked up. The problem is that since the Prime Minister took office, he has said, on 49 occasions in the House of Commons, that the unemployment rate is precisely the measure we should look at to determine how our job market is working. However, right now it is not working.

There are 850,000 more people unemployed today than there were in February 2020. Interestingly, the government brags that Canada has secured a larger recovery of the lost jobs in percentage terms than other countries. That is, of course, the result of the fact that we lost more jobs in the first place and had more to gain back. Even with the minimal recovery we have had of jobs, we still have a higher rate of unemployed than our competitors.

It is getting worse. The most recent monthly data showed the loss of another 200,000 jobs in the same month that the United States gained jobs. The leading indicators of what job losses are to come are even worse. According to the largest association of small businesses in Canada, the CFIB, between 70,000 and 220,000 business owners in Canada are thinking of closing their businesses for good. This is between 7% and 21% of all businesses in the country. If they were to close, we would lose between one million and three million jobs, a catastrophic outcome for our economy.

Forget the fact that other countries are roaring back, recovering and putting their people back to work, and that foreign workers are getting paycheques while ours are getting credit card debts. Let us stop talking about stats and start talking about people, because a job, though it means a paycheque, means so much more than that. It means the pride, purpose and independence of getting up in the morning and taking control of one's life. People who lose jobs lose this pride and independence, and the data shows that their mental health suffers dramatically. According to a study by the University of Calgary, the suicide rate rises by two percentage points for every one percentage point increase in unemployment. People take their lives when they lose their jobs.

Since the pandemic began, we have had a 50% increase in opioid overdoses in Alberta and Ontario. In British Columbia, 911 operators reported a surge in phone calls from family members and loved ones who are begging for a paramedic to come and rescue someone who has overdosed, usually on opioids. This is the result of depriving people of work. It is good and necessary to provide interim income for those people, but it is not the ultimate resolution to their problem, which is that they do not have a job and do not know how they are going to pay the bills in the long run.

This is not just because of COVID. The whole world is facing COVID, yet all the other G7 countries have lower unemployment than Canada. This is the result of a government policy that has systematically destroyed employment in this country for four years.

The government has blocked the energy east pipeline, which would have delivered a million barrels of western oil to eastern refineries, creating jobs for energy workers out west, refinery workers out east, steelworkers in central Canada and trades workers everywhere across the land. It vetoed the northern gateway pipeline and therefore deprived dozens of first nations communities of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars' worth of agreements to share revenue, money that would have paid for schools, hospitals and job training for the youth.

It has imposed job-killing taxes that have driven employers out of Canada and into the United States. Right now, Canadians have $800 billion more invested outside of Canada than foreigners have invested in Canada. Why is that? It is because right now Canada is not the place to invest to get things done. In Canada it takes 170 days longer to get a building permit for a pipeline, business park, factory, warehouse or any other economic infrastructure in this country than it does in the United States. In fact, we are ranked 34 out of 35 OECD nations for the delays associated with getting approval from government to build anything.

Our first nations communities are forced to send their own revenues to Ottawa and then apply to get some of them back, rather than being allowed to harvest the revenues directly from their own economic activities. Leading first nations entrepreneurs talk about how long it takes for bureaucrats and politicians to sign off on commercial and other development activities on first nations lands, preventing them from giving paycheques and purpose and pride of a job to their own people.

When immigrants come to Canada and seek out the chance to work in the fields for which they were trained, they are prevented by professional bodies and other occupational licensing regulators from getting a permit to work and are not told what they have to do to get one. Therefore, we have doctors earning minimum wage, architects who are unemployed and mechanics who are stuck only changing oil and tires when they could be running a full service mechanical operation and earning six figures. These people deserve the paycheques for which they were trained, but because of the bureaucracy of our permit-driven economy they are prevented.

The government should put paycheques first. The federal government should set the goal and drive all other levels of government toward it to be the fastest place on planet earth to get a building permit for any kind of economic project, to allow first nations people to approve their own economic developments and to welcome home ownership for their people. We should allow first nations communities to keep more of the revenue from these projects.

We should repeal Bill C-69, the no new pipelines bill, so we can actually deliver our oil to market and get full world prices. We should end the offshore shipping ban off the northwest coast of British Columbia so that our energy producers can get world prices as well.

We should reduce the tens of billions of dollars of regulatory red tape costs that hold back businesses and force them to spend their time serving bureaucrats rather than hiring workers and serving customers. We should knock down interprovincial trade barriers so that Canadians can buy and sell goods from one another rather than importing and enriching foreign businesses abroad. We should reform our tax system so that it rewards work, savings and investment, and allows people to climb the income ladder rather than being penalized for each extra dollar they earn.

Right now we should be encouraging municipalities to make it easier for new and long-term vacant office space to be repurposed for housing for people who desperately need it. Here in Canada, despite having one of the most sparsely populated countries on earth, we have among the highest real estate costs for people trying to find a home.

These are all actions we could take right now to get—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate the comments by the member for Carleton today, and I took note of one comment he made right after rattling off a whole bunch of stats. He said, “Let us stop talking about stats and start talking about people.” That is really good advice, because the reality is, which the member goes on about a lot, that our approach to dealing with COVID-19 was different from the U.S's approach. As a result, we do have an unemployment rate that is 2% higher than that of the U.S. At the end of 2020, ours was 8.8% and the U.S.'s was 6.7%.

When it comes to people, another very interesting thing the member never mentions is the fact that the fatality rate as a result of COVID is about a third in Canada than what it is in the States. About 506 people per million have died in Canada as a result of COVID. In the States, 1,298 people out of a million have died as a result of COVID.

Yes, let us talk about people; this is about people. The approach this government took is much different from the approach our neighbours to the south took, and I do not think that is a surprise to anybody.

My question for the member is very simple. What percentage would have been acceptable to him in order to save the number of people we saved?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, that self-righteous member did not save anyone. In fact, he and his government left the borders open for months after the military warned them to close borders to keep COVID out. They invited 2,000 people from the most affected region of China to come in after they were warned by the military. They then were the slowest among the G7 to get rapid testing, which would have helped us safely open our economy and protect people's lives. Now we are in last place in the G7 for vaccination rates.

I think we have all had enough of hearing government members claim that the reason they have destroyed so many livelihoods is they were busy protecting lives. They were not protecting people's lives. If they were, we would not have the worst vaccination rate in the G7 today and we would be competing with countries like—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Elmwood—Transcona.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, in his remarks, the member said that Canadians want paycheques and want to be able to work. I agree with him. It has been a difficult time for that obviously, and there has been a need to support them through these challenging times.

However, it is because of the truth of that statement that in many cases where there have been pilot projects for a guaranteed annual income, it has been shown to have a negligible impact on workforce participation. People do want to work when they can work, even if they have income support. However, what we find is that some of the serious mental health consequences the member mentioned are mitigated when they know they have a guaranteed income to back them up. We know that usually people do not participate in the workforce because they are caring for family or pursuing some kind of education or training that later helps them participate in the workforce and contribute to the economy. Of course, a guaranteed annual income is there for people who may want to work but simply cannot because they are living with a disability or something else prevents them.

Why does the member so often express opposition to the idea of a guaranteed annual income?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, NDP members cannot tell us how they would pay for this. They say this money would fall out of airplanes into people's hands, but they do not tell us from where that money would come.

There is no study, actually, that has simulated what the effect would be on people's health and well-being of raising their taxes by seven or eight points on the GST to pay for the scheme he describes. If he can come up with an explanation for where he will get the money, then I will look at the proposal and judge it on its merits. It is just that so far all we get are dreamland promises that cash will fall from the heavens, with no idea where it is going to come from. The previous proposals that have come forward by, for example, the provincial Liberal government in Ontario would have actually hurt working-class people and disproportionately given money to families that are well off at the expense of working-class families.

We need to work through all those details before we can talk about just dumping money out of airplanes into people's hands, because as we know, money comes from people who earned it in the first place.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam speaker, I seek the unanimous consent of the House to share my time with the hon. member for La Prairie.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker (Mrs. Alexandra Mendès), Liberal, Alexandra Mendes]

Does the hon. member have the consent of the House?

Seeing no opposition, I grant the request.

The hon. member for Thérèse-De Blainville.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, the crisis we are going through today has hit hard. The numbers speak volumes. In barely three months, at the beginning of the crisis, the unemployment rate hit 13%. In March 2020, 167,000 women were laid off compared to 96,100 men. This crisis has been especially devastating to women, who saw their unemployment rate spike from February 2020 to December 2020, from 37% to 48%. In January, the number of long-term unemployed hit a new record at somewhere around 512,000. Still today, the market is far from being stabilized in a number of sectors including restaurants, hotels, tourism, arts and culture, aerospace, and so on.

At the beginning of the crisis, several emergency measures were adopted. Why? Because the current EI system is not equipped to respond. We are in favour of Bill C-24, which increases the number of weeks of regular EI benefits to 50 weeks. However, do we have a choice? The answer is: not really. The employment insurance system as we know it today failed to protect workers in times of crisis, but also in normal times. The current crisis revealed of the cracks in the employment insurance system.

We know that the coverage rate is just barely 40% and a little less for women. Many workers, including contract workers, part-time and casual workers and self-employed workers, are excluded from the program. Seasonal workers experience long gap periods, or periods between two periods of employment where they are without income. The government also tried to mitigate those impacts with pilot projects that were extended but never improved upon to put an end to the EI spring gap once and for all. There are also women who are on maternity or parental leave who are not eligible for regular benefits if they lose their job after they return to work.

All that to say that there are many examples to show that a comprehensive reform of the employment insurance system is necessary, and soon. On my initiative, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, of which I am a member, began work on this necessary review of the EI system. I want to thank my committee colleagues for agreeing to make this study a priority. There was a lot of interest in this study and there are many witnesses who want to share their ideas about changes that should be made and solutions that should be implemented.

Need I remind members that the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion was given the mandate of modernizing the program? Need I remind members that, in the last parliament, the minister was also given the mandate of reforming the EI program? What has been done in the past five years? Nothing. The government, through the President of the Treasury Board, even had to acknowledge last spring that the reform of the program had been put off for too long.

I would say that the time has come. Time is running out because what are we going to do when the temporary measures end? The status quo is not acceptable. The time has come to plan for changes to EI that will be structural, foreseeable and sustainable so that the objective of the program is once again to be a safety net for workers.

Furthermore, I would be remiss if I did not raise the issue of sickness benefits and the injustice that workers are suffering today. Why do we think it is acceptable that a person with cancer has only 15 weeks of sickness benefits? The Bloc Québécois has spoken several times about this issue. A motion was moved in the House and passed unanimously. A bill was also introduced. We are asking for 50 weeks of sickness benefits for sick workers and we are still waiting for the government to take concrete action on this.

The reason the EI system needs to be reformed is that, pandemic aside, the job market has undergone a number of changes in recent years, and these changes make a review of the program necessary. I will talk about a few of these changes.

The fact is that the number of workers earning minimum wage is going up. According to Statistics Canada, the proportion of minimum wage workers grew from 5.2% to 10.4% between 1998 and 2018. One in six workers make minimum wage. According to one study, just 45% of workers earning $15 an hour or less are covered by the EI program. If this trend continues, more and more workers will fall through the cracks. Furthermore, there are many factors that make it hard for workers to find a job after being laid off, such as their age, sex, race and immigration status. These workers therefore need more time to find work. The system must account for this reality and give workers the resources they need to overcome these challenges.

The job market has also seen an increase in the number of self-employed workers in recent years. Statistics Canada reports that approximately 15% of workers in 2019 were self-employed.

At the risk of repeating myself, I would say that solutions are out there, solutions that focus on eligibility criteria, qualifying hours, qualifying weeks, regional unemployment rates and the income replacement rate.

I urge the minister and the government to listen to what various groups are recommending and to start overhauling the system now.

In conclusion, if there is one thing I would like people to take away from my speech, it is this: The government clearly had to take action by means of this bill. That is why we support the bill before us. However, the government also needs to work on a long-term vision, because the crisis has exposed the many flaws in the EI program and the gaps that existed long before the pandemic. Great crisis brings great opportunity. The government should seize this opportunity to reform the system and ensure, once and for all, that all workers have access to a true 21st-century EI system.

[Leona Alleslev, Conservative, Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill, ON]

Madam Speaker, my colleague offered some suggestions for improving the EI program.

Can she tell us more about that and explain why this reform is important so that we can better understand what this is about?

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

I will not give a crash course on employment insurance. That is not my objective.

It is no coincidence that the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities is going to conduct a study on this topic. This will not be the first time that a study is carried out to review the employment insurance program. It is important. The EI program is a social safety net that seeks to protect workers in case of job loss. Since it was implemented in the early 1970s, the program's coverage has grown more restricted rather than broader.

The current program is not adapted to today's labour market, and even less so in periods of crisis. Workers are falling through the cracks. That is why we need to implement emergency measures. These measures, however, are only temporary. What will happen on September 21, 2021? The priority is to expand the program's eligibility criteria to make it more inclusive.

[Daniel Blaikie, NDP, Elmwood—Transcona, MB]

Madam Speaker, earlier, we heard government representatives say that the bill sought to implement urgent and targeted reforms.

However, a major flaw in this bill is the fact that it does not provide for additional weeks of employment insurance sickness benefits. We know that there is an urgent need in that regard and that the House of Commons has twice called for the EI sickness benefit to be extended to 50 weeks.

I would like to hear what the member thinks about that, and I would like to know whether the Bloc Québécois would include such a measure in this bill.

[Louise Chabot, Bloc, Thérèse-De Blainville, QC]

Madam Speaker, technically, incorporating this change into the bill would have been simple, because we would have amended many of the same sections. We understand that it is not the same thing for the government, and that this bill comes in response to an emergency.

However, some people are feeling the urgency because they are no longer getting anything or will not get anything in the short term. We must therefore act quickly and refer this bill to the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. The government can still take action on this issue.

I would remind the House that the government committed to increasing EI sickness benefits. The Bloc Québécois had a motion passed in the House calling on the government to provide benefits for 50 weeks. We now expect the government to follow through on that commitment in its upcoming budget or through legislation. These EI sickness benefits are absolutely necessary, which is obvious when we look at the people who are affected.