Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you for coming. This is the last meeting we're going to have hearing witnesses on Bill C-50. It has been an interesting set of hearings that we've had. Normally when a bill comes forward you have people who come and say they support it, it makes sense, it's what's needed. You have others who come and say they don't support it and that it doesn't make sense. What we have on this bill is really two schools of thought: one, those who say it's a bad bill and it can't be supported; and others who say they don't like it, it doesn't do enough, but we'll take it and then move on to try to get other reforms. I don't think we've heard anybody, except perhaps the minister, suggest that this is the ideal solution to what EI needs right now. We have a bill here that is discriminatory, that is inadequate, that doesn't cover enough people, and that doesn't go back enough months to deal with the circumstances we have.
Armine Yalnizyan was here earlier this week. I was looking at her testimony to the Senate committee. The Senate did a pre-hearing on this bill. When she appeared before the Senate she put it as well as I've heard it so far. She said these are unprecedented economic times and it is an economic tsunami; therefore, it is incumbent on the government to address everyone who has been swept by this wave of economic dislocation, not only those who have been cherry-picked to be the most deserving of help.
Those others who have not been long tenured and who have not used EI for the period specified also had no control over whether they would have a job. Those in the fishing industry, forestry, tourism, hospitality, agriculture, and large parts of the construction industry, through no fault of their own, have periods of unemployment when they need to go on the EI system. Nobody who I have seen in the last six months while EI has dominated the national political landscape has suggested that this is the best solution for what we need. We've heard all kinds of other things, but we haven't heard this. Yet we're in a position now where this is the solution before us. As I've said before, I don't think it's realistic to say, “You take what you can get and move on,” because I don't think there is anything else.
At a suggested cost of $935 million, this is almost the cost of what it would be to have a 360-hour national standard, which the Parliamentary Budget Officer pegged at less than $1.2 billion, as an example.
So we're in a difficult position. This bill doesn't seem to make it. The chair said we sometimes have statements. I only have questions, but sometimes they're long. I want to ask you the question because a lot of people really aren't sure about the numbers either. We hear $935 million we hear $190,000. I'm not suggesting you should have the resources, but have any of you actually been able to look at those numbers and see if they make sense? We have to vote on this bill very soon.
I open that to anybody, if anybody has had a chance to do that.