Evidence of meeting #18 for Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was cost.
A recording is available from Parliament.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
9:30 a.m.
Bloc
Yves Lessard Bloc Chambly—Borduas, QC
Mr. Chairman, we're not talking about a minor difference, but about figures that are double the original ones quoted. Minor adjustments have doubled the figures, whereas the main component of the program comes down to two important measures, namely the 360-hour requirement and the best 12 weeks. I'm not saying that you did not do your job properly. I'm simply trying to wrap my head around the issue. I feel that we did a good job in 2004. It's easy to say today that we did a poor job in 2004. Yet, we did take our work seriously. Committee members spent several hundred hours on this task, which led to studies and produced these results.
Today, it's easy to say that all of this was done in haste in two days. If that were true, then we should have been informed at the time, when we made our recommendations based on the information supplied to us. We were never told that these figures might not be quite accurate. We were never told to take them with a grain of salt because the work was done quickly. So, we made some recommendations, a number of which were unanimously endorsed. The report's first eight recommendations were unanimous, while opinion was divided on those made on February 15.
Furthermore, people are acting as if nothing happened in the interim, when in fact several bills calling for either a full or partial reform were tabled by the opposition parties. The Bloc Québécois tabled two bills, namelyC-278 andC-269, both of which called for a complete overhaul of the program.
We cannot merely overlook the situation this morning, Mr. Chairman. Did we base on work over the past three or four years on erroneous information? If we did, then it's a very serious matter. Every time we debated one of the bills in committee, government officials were present. Each time, we used these figures. I'm very surprised to find that the figures quoted to us this morning are double the original estimates in both cases.
Having said that, we're being told that the bill is different from the recommendations. Then show me how it is different. I've looked at it and I've studied our recommendations, and they are virtually identical. When we debated the matter back then, we also examined how these recommendations might possibly interact.
I do not wish to belabour the point, but I am very surprised to hear this argument this morning.
9:30 a.m.
Conservative
Lynne Yelich Conservative Blackstrap, SK
I can see this happening. It just happened with the RESPs, the registered education savings plans. We were told that it would never cost $900 million once it was out there. People who see the reality, like Mr. Drummond in the newspaper this weekend, think it's going to cost us $2 billion. You can see these kinds of things happen, because once the analysts sit down and do this work they realize these kinds of things are more costly. That's perhaps why we reject some of the bills so easily in this committee, because you haven't taken into consideration the other or bigger costs, and you are just focusing on one of eight recommendations made four years ago. And in the eleventh hour, before an election, or whenever—I'm not sure when the report was done, in the end—this can happen.
I don't understand why we're even talking about this right now. We're supposed to be going to clause-by-clause consideration. It was explained. Maybe we could come back to it another day, but I think we should go on to clause-by-clause and forget about what he feels he's been misled about, in all fairness.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Okay, we're going to move to Mr. Savage and Mr. Godin, and then hopefully we can get to the other costing, etc. You know what I mean.
Go ahead, Mr. Savage.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
Michael Savage Liberal Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS
I appreciate that, Chair.
I just want to respond to Ms. Yelich, because this is exactly why we need this information. This is not new. This bill was introduced in the last Parliament. The government has had ample time, all kinds of time to come forward with information so they could bring it to this committee and say what the costing is according to them. We can then do our own work.
Mr. Godin did some research when he put the bill together. The government has access to all kinds of resources we don't have. It's not reasonable, in my view, that we come to clause-by-clause and are told that the cost is $1.5 billion. It was leaked out last week, so I asked for the information so I could determine what we should be doing on this bill. Well, it may not have been leaked out, but Mr. Lake mentioned it last week, and I immediately asked for the information on that because we want to try to get at what the cost of this bill is.
If it's so unreasonable, then the government should have done some work on this before, said what their costing of the bill was, and talked about it before we got to the clause-by-clause, so that we don't get into this kind of mess on the back-and-forth.
We have more information on Madame Deschamps' Bill C-269 where they reference back to 2004. We're using older information. If there's newer information, we should have it. It's not reasonable to come five minutes before we vote on the bill to be told what the costs are. That's too late, and that doesn't make for good committee business, in my view.
9:35 a.m.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
I just want to try to find out what you have said. For example, for the RESP they had voted on, the information you have is $900 million, and the vote was done on that.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Lynne Yelich Conservative Blackstrap, SK
The vote wasn't done on that. It changed the RESP in the speculation....
9:35 a.m.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
Was that the information you had, Mr. Chair? Was it not $900 million, the information that you were getting?
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
I would assume that's the information that's been dealt with in the main.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
Lynne Yelich Conservative Blackstrap, SK
It wasn't anything that I had acquired or that we had, but it was information that was out there.
9:35 a.m.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
It was $900 million, and all of a sudden when the vote took place and the government didn't want it, they found somebody who will pull out $2 billion.
March 11th, 2008 / 9:35 a.m.
NDP
Yvon Godin NDP Acadie—Bathurst, NB
That's what I find funny. Here's one that we talked about for four years that cost $390 million, and all of a sudden when it comes time to deal with the bill it's $1.4 billion. It's all of a sudden and just before.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Dean Allison
Here's what I think we could do to maybe solve this for the future. As a committee we decide who's coming and what's going to happen, and my suggestion is that we get the department officials in earlier if we believe there's going to be an issue with cost. Mike, I think that's your point. We can have the discussion before we go to clause-by-clause. It may mean adding an extra meeting, which by all means we can certainly do. We're masters of our own destiny. Let's look at that in the future, especially if we think there's going to be an issue with cost. I think that would be helpful for our amendments as we come to clause-by-clause.
Let's go to clause 1.
9:35 a.m.
Liberal
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Director General, Employment Insurance Policy, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
I'll put some particular caution around one of the amendments that's related to the reduction in variable entrance requirements by 70 hours. In that one in particular, to fully and accurately cost the change we would need more information about the benefit entitlement table related to that amendment. I believe that's Mr. Savage's amendment.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Director General, Employment Insurance Policy, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
Yes.
9:35 a.m.
Conservative
9:35 a.m.
Director General, Employment Insurance Policy, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
In speaking to that amendment, basically we interpret that as being a reduction in the variable entrance requirement by about 70 hours across the board, and a second element of the amendment is related to a reduction in the new re-entrant requirement by about 70 hours as well.
Again, I would say on the first number I'm providing there's a high degree of uncertainty in the sense that we aren't able to fully cost it based on the information provided. But we estimate that cost would be $150 million per year and that it would affect 34,000 claimants per year.
I'll proceed now through the additional aspect of that amendment, which is the reduced entrance requirements from 910 to 840. Our estimate on that is $160 million per year and 34,500 claimants benefiting.
9:40 a.m.
Director General, Employment Insurance Policy, Skills and Employment Branch, Department of Human Resources and Social Development
The 910 down to 840 is $160 million per year and 34,500 claimants. Again, these are estimates of populations we're not serving right now. They are more difficult to estimate than populations we are serving. For example, an increased benefit rate just applies to an existing population, but in these cases we have to make additional assumptions about people who the program is not presently serving, but those are estimates.