Thank you very much.
On behalf of the 3.2 million members of our Canadian Labour Congress, I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our views on Bill C-50.
Members of the committee, I am not here today to provide you with our thoughts on the technical aspects of Bill C-50 or whether there should be amendments to improve the bill.
I am here with only one message: pass Bill C-50 quickly so that people like Rosalie Washington, who is here with me today, can get the help they need now. They deserve no less from you and your colleagues in the House of Commons.
But once you've finished that, get back to work and help the other equally deserving unemployed people in this country who are struggling daily and don't qualify for this help. People have run out of or are running out of benefits and have no prospects for work. There are no jobs out there. That's why there was a decline in the number of people receiving EI benefits in August--the benefits are running out.
We spoke to workers in seven communities across Canada this past summer. What we found was a picture of increasing despair and crisis. The people I'm describing to you are real and so are their experiences.
I'm thinking of people like Tom, from New Brunswick. He wrote me earlier this year, looking for help. He was laid off from his job on October 31, 2008. He did everything right. He took a part-time job thinking he'd quickly find another full-time job, but that didn't happen, and eventually he was laid off from that part-time job too. When he applied for EI, he learned that he was 60 hours short of the hours needed to qualify in that area.
Another young man from northern Ontario wrote to me about being deeply in debt because he couldn't find full-time work and he resorted to using his credit cards to buy the necessities like food. He said, “When I needed it most I was denied EI benefits, forcing me to seek low-paying jobs to compensate for what was required, and now my own credit has been destroyed.”
I am thinking of people like Tammy, from Oshawa, a single mother of three who worked midnights in a paint shop. “Bankruptcy is the next thing that's in order for me,” Tammy said, when the CLC spoke to her.
Are these people living beyond their means? Of course not.
Said a woman named Shannon, from Simcoe, “Have I lived beyond my means?” “No,” she said, “I've just simply lived.”
In the Miramichi region of New Brunswick, 3,100 people were thrown out of work between August 2008 and August 2009, which was a 30% decrease in the employment rate in that area. Food banks in the Miramichi are seeing a rapid rise in the need for their services. The number of residents in that area declaring bankruptcy is increasing. Many will be forced onto social assistance after their EI runs out.
For many years, our congress has sounded the alarm about the crisis that was unfolding in our manufacturing and forestry industries. Long before this financial tsunami hit full force last September, communities across this country were being devastated by an industrial crisis that had been years in the making.
At one time, the Miramichi had one of the largest pulp and paper mills in Canada, which employed over 1,000 people. Today the largest employer in that region is the hospital.
Unemployed workers in Sault Ste. Marie are facing delays in getting EI benefits. Here's what one steelworker told us. Listen to this:
We're talking about people here who can't eat, can't pay bills. It's totally unacceptable that the people have been laid off work for three months and have received so far nothing because the employer forgot to tick a box.
In Campbell River, British Columbia, the Elk Falls pulp mill shut down its kraft production in July 2008 and with it went 440 jobs. A high Canadian dollar and U.S. subsidies were cited as reasons.
The regional disparity in hours of work needed for EI is stark. Mitch, on layoff in Campbell River, said to us:
I think they need to be more fair in all the regions. Just a little north of here you don't need as many hours. They're working for the same company but they don't need the same hours we need. They get longer benefits and it doesn't take them as long.
Even in areas where the full force of this crisis is less visible, the effects are no less real. In Saskatchewan the resource revenues mask an uneasy truth. Aboriginal and first nations communities in the area say this to us:
Economic crisis? The recession? Our communities would welcome moving up from abject poverty and neglect to the status of a recession.
These are the faces of unemployed Canadians in Canada. These are the stories of people who are looking to parliamentarians for leadership and help.
The economic devastation is affecting communities in ways you cannot imagine. In Oshawa, Simcoe Hall Settlement House has watched the number of people coming through its food banks increase by 20% a month. A skilled tradesperson, a plumber, using the food bank said to us, “Never in a million years did I ever dream I'd be coming to a food bank to feed my family.”
Our congress has been on record many times before this committee on what's needed to fix EI so that it works for those it was designed and intended to help. A uniform 360 hours would be good. Longer benefits, of at least 50 weeks, in all regions so that fewer unemployed workers exhaust their claims, particularly in times of economic recession, higher weekly benefits based on the best 12 weeks of earnings before a layoff, and a replacement rate of 60% of insured earnings would be a good start.
The current EI program leaves far too many Canadians, especially women, lower-wage earners, and insecure workers, out in the cold. We're asking you to pass this bill quickly so that those people it is meant to help, long-tenured workers who have not accessed EI much in the past, get what they need now. But we're also saying you have unfinished business and there's more work to be done.
I want to remind members of this committee that since this financial meltdown brought our economy to a grind, the House of Commons has barely been in session to address the urgent needs of Canadians. In the four months following the start of the economic meltdown in September 2008, this Parliament sat for just two weeks. Parliament was dissolved on September 9, 2008, for an early and unnecessary election, and it didn't reconvene until November 18. That session was prorogued just two weeks later and did not come back until January 26 of this year.
I want to also remind the committee that workers and employers have paid over $55 billion more in premiums into the EI system during the last decade than were paid out in benefits. That's our insurance fund. The huge surplus was spent by successive governments on everything but unemployed Canadians. If the piggy bank had not been robbed, today there would be enough money for unemployed workers.
Workers paid those premiums in the belief that EI was their protection for a rainy day. That day is here. It's pouring out there, and people like Rosalie Washington aren't being helped. It's time for you to turn your attention to the job you were elected to do: protect citizens like her.
