On behalf of the Conseil national des chômeurs et des chômeuses, I would like to thank you, Mr. Chair, and all the MPs from the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities. It is not easy to finalize the list of invited speakers, but we have to thank you for this invitation.
Yesterday, Mr. Jackson and I appeared before the Standing Committee on Finance to talk about Part 7 of Bill C-50, the creation of the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board. It was not until the end of the meeting, at about 5:15, that I understood that Bill C-50 would probably pass in its present form, without amendments, because the government is making it a confidence issue. It sometimes takes a while to understand; that is how life is.
When I got up this morning, I almost wanted to sing along with Dalida, Paroles, paroles. But we have done our homework all the same, Mr. Chair. We have studied Bill C-50. And in particular, we have compared it with the current employment insurance legislation and found that there are not many differences. I am going to give you a few examples.
Paragraph 66(1)(a) of the current Act, which would be slightly amended, for example to include the Financing Board, says that the premium rate should generate just enough premium revenue to cover payments that will be made. That is what the current Act has said since 2005. The intention is to balance revenue and expenditures by creating the Employment Insurance Financing Board.
Subsection 66(2) of the current law says that the annual variation in the premium rate may not exceed 0.15%. We sometimes think that it is the Financing Board that would impose that requirement. It is already the case. Subsection 66(3) says that the Governor in Council may substitute a premium rate if it considers it to be in the public interest. That is also already the case now. We could keep going with this list for quite a while.
There are not many differences. There is however one difference between the current situation and the planned establishment of the Financing Board: the creation of an independent account. That would mean that workers' and employers' contributions remain in the fund and can no longer be siphoned off and used for other purposes. This is a significant difference.
We know that from 1995 to March 31, 2007, the government confiscated $54.1 billion from the fund. That is the official figure. The announced establishment of the Crown corporation for the sole purpose of managing the fund and setting premium rates is not bad news in itself. The independent account is not bad news. Very little else has changed, however. Most of the provisions of the bill were already in effect and under the Commission's responsibility. It would even be possible to envisage — and I am not proposing this — the establishment of an independent account under the control of the Commission, and this would do the job. In either case, with or without the Financing Board, under the Commission's responsibility or not, this would still not solve all the problems. Some of these problems have been raised here.
What do we do about the $54 billion that has been diverted and confiscated, when it should have been used to protect workers? The employment insurance scheme was severely cut in 1995-1996 and before, and a necessary and unavoidable improvement has to be made.
We have no illusions regarding the proposals that might be made. Section 80 provides that if the Employment Insurance Account is in deficit, the Consolidated Revenue Fund, the government, could lend it money, which the account must repay with interest. What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. The government owes the Employment Insurance Account $54 billion, and Bill C-50 should provide that the Consolidated Revenue Fund owes the Employment Insurance Account $54.1 billion. In other words, if the Employment Insurance Account is in deficit, the government should not lend it money, it should repay it out of the $54 billion.
The primary, crucial and unavoidable issue, and the only one that deserves to be fought for, is the improvement that must be made to the employment insurance scheme.
A few days ago, we got the Monitoring and Assessment Report. One figure struck us right off: the beneficiary-contributor ratio. The way in which the government has assessed the coverage of the employment insurance scheme since 1940 is called the beneficiary-contributor ratio. At the moment, it is 46.1. In other words, out of every 100 workers who have paid employment insurance premiums, 54 will not be entitled to benefits if they need them.
This is the issue! It is eminently political. I invite parliamentarians to debate it. Either everyone closes themselves off in their own truths, their own discourse, their own way of seeing things, or we try together to find a solution we can all rally round to improve the employment insurance scheme and provide the workers of this country with better protection.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.