Thank you for having invited us, Mr. Chair, members of Parliament.
I represent Comité Chômage de Montréal, but more broadly, the Conseil national des chômeurs et chômeuses, the CNC, for which I am a spokesperson. The CNC is an umbrella organization comprised of groups from different regions throughout Quebec.
To begin with, I'd like to see if we can agree on three simple matters.
The first point is that the unemployed are not marginal. An unemployed person is not defined in society based on his or her social status. You're not defined as an unemployed person, you are defined first and foremost by your work, your profession, your roots, the places where you have ties, and your family. Unemployed people are workers. An unemployed person is someone who used to work and who will work again, but between jobs, such individuals are temporarily unemployed. And let me be clear: “are temporarily unemployed”.
In 1940, when you needed replacement income between jobs, it was called unemployment insurance. Since 1996, it has been called employment insurance. And it is also for a limited period of time. That's the first thing I'd like us to agree on.
The second thing—and it would seem more and more that this is true, according to the prognosis of a number of economists—is that we are heading into a period of labour shortage. So that raises the question: why do you need employment insurance and unemployment insurance if you are about to face a period of labour shortage?
We believe that even during a period of labour shortage, you never actually eliminate unemployment or the need for employment insurance. Now, why is this? Well, it is because of what has characterized the new jobs created in Canada over a good many years and the way in which work has been reorganized over the past 20 years. This has been documented by Statistics Canada, for example. Most jobs created in Canada for many years have been described by academics as atypical: part-time work, temporary or seasonal work. That's what jobs look like nowadays. Between two temporary jobs, obviously, people need a replacement income. And that's what employment insurance does.
Let's see if we can agree on a third point. We all know that the employment insurance system has been pruned over the past 20 years. This has been documented and publicized. It's now time to stop documenting these cutbacks because we are aware of them and have fought against them. We will continue to fight against them. But the time has come to find solutions.
We believe that Bill C-265 is part of this groundswell movement to find solutions to the problems which exist.
On behalf of our organization, I'd like to take this opportunity to commend the sponsor of this bill on his devotion and tireless hard work. He has fought hard for many years to find solutions to the problems faced by thousands of people throughout Canada who don't qualify for employment insurance benefits.
We believe that there is a political solution to these problems. There will not be a political solution without a political and social majority. The one and only eligibility criterion which features in Bill C-265 is the 360-hour minimum, and in our opinion, it is the way of the future. The CNC has been fighting for this for over 10 years.
The dialogue and exchange between a number of organizations and political parties over the past several years has not led to a majority of people being willing to find solutions to the problems which exist.
Last year, we brought together the three opposition parties: the Bloc Québécois, the NDP, and the Liberal Party of Canada. We got them to all sit around a table just like this one with representatives from Québécois and Canadian labour associations and groups of unemployed persons. We had a discussion and an exchange of points of view. Sometimes we agreed, sometimes we managed to find solutions, and to reach compromises. We agreed to a five-pronged agreement in order to improve the employment insurance system in the way that it needs to be improved.
Included in this five-pronged approach is the 12 best weeks benefit-setting formula. However, the single eligibility criteria was not included because we didn't manage to reach a consensus on this issue. We agreed on relaxing the eligibility criteria by 70 hours. There are two categories of beneficiaries: ordinary beneficiaries and new beneficiaries. The ordinary beneficiaries qualify based on a variable standard ranging between 420 and 700 hours; we would suggest that this range be lowered to 350 to 630 hours.
BillC-265 impacts on two areas: the eligibility criteria and the 12 best weeks benefit-setting calculation. Both here and in other areas, we find ourselves at a crossroads: either we get boxed in by the rationale for our demands—the fact is that we do not have a majority—or we look for a more appealing solution so that we can get a majority that will actually be able to impose a solution. This formula must be the result of a compromise and it will enable us to enhance the current level of protection provided to workers in Canada.
When Parliament debates this issue, it always says that it is going to cost the government money, and that it doesn't have this money. We asked an economist to calculate how much these two measures would cost, i.e. the 12 best weeks formula and relaxing eligibility criteria by 70 hours. A very serious individual who worked for a political party's research service and then at a union produced a document stating that relaxing the criteria by 70 hours would cost $400 million and that the 12 best weeks formula would cost $320 million, for a grand total of $720 million. Now you can play around for a long time with these figures, but that's the assessment that we made.
We know that the employment insurance fund is posting surpluses. On March 31, 2007, there was still an additional surplus of $3 billion, totalling $54 billion. We know that on March 31, 2008, or in a couple of weeks—the figures will be announced in a couple of months—there will once again be a surplus. So the money is there.
The creation of a crown corporation on unemployment insurance funding should help to strike a balance. A document submitted to the committee by the Conseil du patronat du Québec in 2003, in reference to comments made by the employment insurance chief actuary, stated that: “each 10 cent variation in the premium rate would affect revenue to the tune of [...] $840 million”.
In other words, we believe that the premium rate won't even need to be changed because the money is already there. But if necessary, there would be an increase in the premium of less than 10 cents which would enable more Canadians, in fact tens of thousands of people, to qualify for employment insurance. That's not a lot, considering that the premium rate was much higher in the past: it's previously been over $3.
I'd like to quote a line from the Conseil du patronat: “[...] the employment insurance system must rediscover its original mission which is to provide replacement income.”
It is our belief that we need a compromise formula that will help us garner this majority. It's time for solutions, and we need a majority so that we can impose these solutions. The debate has to take place above the partisan fray and it needs to focus on the welfare and betterment of our society. We need to find better ways of protecting our workers.
