Thank you, Mr. Chairman. On behalf of the 84,000 Canadians who support the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, we welcome this opportunity to share some time with members of Parliament on the finance committee.
We have put our report in front of you and you have a copy of it. Also available on our website, released yesterday, is “Unmasking Employment Insurance”, our exposé of what we describe as how employment insurance increases unemployment and steals billions from working Canadians.
The theme of this meeting is how a government can promote economic growth by reducing red tape. We have a number of points that we've made in our presentation to you.
First, we can't say it often enough, balance the federal budget by 2014. That was a commitment that this government was elected on. It was an emphatic commitment made by Prime Minister Harper. It looks like you're on track to actually do that in the 2014 fiscal year. We salute you. We tell you to keep at it. Nothing matters remotely as much as having a balanced budget. It affects the confidence of the business community, the economy, and the world community. This government stands for fiscal responsibility, and you absolutely must deliver on that.
On employment insurance, we appreciated the comment from Matthew Mendelsohn, who is the guru of employment insurance at the University of Toronto, the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation. He appreciated how we outlined the very shabby way that the majority of Canadians were treated by EI.
Residents of Ontario have contributed $75 billion more in EI taxes since 1981 than they received in benefits. Albertans contributed $18 billion more. A young person can work in the city of Toronto for 26 weeks and earn about $16,000. They forfeit $700 of their hard-earned wages to EI taxes and they get nothing, not a penny. They don't even get their contributions back. The same person in another part of the country will collect $17,000 in EI. There is no other nation in the developed world that does this. It doesn't matter if this scheme has been around for 40 years, it's criminal. We ask parliamentarians of conscience from all parties to do something about this. It's a scandal.
We also echo the sentiments, facts, and submissions of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business on bargaining with the federal government employees. Everyone believes that federal government employees should be paid fairly, but we also have to recognize that we've been through a tough economic time when the rest of us have had to tighten our belt. Many have taken wage cuts. Over 400,000 people lost their jobs in the financial meltdown of 2008-09.
The government has made back those job losses, but the people who lost their jobs in that period are in many cases working for less than they used to earn. Yet government employees sailed right along. You need to restore some balance to labour markets, and government employees should not enjoy an advantage. Going to work for the government should not be the only responsible choice for someone who wants a retirement or who wants start a family. There has to be parity in the labour market, and we urge you to hold the line in the coming round of contract negotiations.
We have many more recommendations, but those were the ones we wanted to highlight.
Thank you again.