Through the chair, my point is that there is commentary here about the effectiveness and the need for change, and about why we would want it to be in another committee. Well, we can only work from the experiences that we've had as individuals.
In my case, I happen to have been in a position where I helped make the appointments for the labour people who are on tribunals, so I have a sense of it. But if you haven't been there, if you haven't seen that in action and the problems that were there for the individuals....
Now, we're concerned that this change is talking.... It's going to have linguistic problems. It's going to have cultural differences for the people. There are not going to be enough people, as Mr. Caron has said before, and that's a serious concern.
But it's the EI definition of suitability of work that's going to generate appeals. That's going to have people who are going to have their applications set aside.... As for the jurisprudence that carries over from one tribunal to the next, from the CPP, the OAS, and the EI, that jurisprudence is going to take an amount of time for people to learn, because it has been condensed down so.
The loss of institutional memory from those people who were a part of these boards and were out there doing the best they could to sort through the EI appeals.... Not all EI appeals are justifiable. I will agree with that, and there's a case to be made that some of them need to be turned down, but it needs somebody with the competencies, the skills, and the history to be able to do that.
Now, we've had people allude to web-based.... Well, when you're unemployed, probably one of the first things you're going to cut is your access to the Internet. Also, are there going to be travel requirements for people? On video conferencing, if places are set up and individual communities have the capacity to do that, it may be something you can do.
I was part of the pre-budget hearings, and I don't recall anybody in the pre-budget hearings calling for these changes. Have we had testimony at this committee calling for these changes? No—because the system has been working in a reasonable degree. Does it need some fine-tuning? I doubt if there's a department in the government that couldn't stand some fine-tuning. We could probably agree on that.
But it needs to be put before the proper committee of the House where the critic areas are covered. Also, if you believe that the time allotted to this offers us a real opportunity to study the implications of the legislated changes in the various areas of this government's activities, I think you're mistaken.
Thank you.