Mr. Speaker, the motion before the House asks the House of Commons and a committee of the House to study, analyse and report on Canada's social security system. As a matter of fact, it asks that we study the modernization and restructuring of the social security system with special reference to the needs of families with children, youth and working age adults. It is commendable
that we study, analyse and revisit our social programs, our income support and income replacement programs. However I want to remind the House and the minister that there are some things we should keep in mind. We will encounter serious difficulties in doing this examination of our social security system.
I want to remind the House that this was done with some intensity in the 1970s when the Hon. Marc Lalonde was the Minister of National Health and Welfare. A very serious attempt was made to rationalize and bring up to date our social security system. While some good improvements were made at that time, some of the simplistic approaches that were first suggested were found not to be workable.
We have different types of social security systems. We have those where the payment is universal and comes out of our general tax revenue, for example the old age security system. We all pay into it in varying degrees through our progressive tax system but at age 65 we all receive the same payment no matter what our income is. On top of that we have the guaranteed income supplement which pays additional amounts to people who do not have other sources of income, who do not have private pensions or RRSPs or whatever. That is one kind of social security support system where the payment is the same to all individuals. I am talking about old age security which is paid for through the general tax system.
We have other types of programs such as unemployment insurance and the Canada assistance plan. Depending on our income we pay in varying amounts. If we have lower incomes we pay in less. If we have higher incomes we pay in more. When we collect we receive more if we have paid in more and we collect less if we have paid in less.
The principle behind it makes sense. The highly skilled worker who pays the top premium because he has a higher income will have made commitments and entered into debt for homes, cars, household appliances. When unemployed he still has to meet those higher commitments so he gets a higher payment. But he has been paying in at a higher rate.
It is the same with the Canada pension plan. If we have paid in at a higher rate we get a higher payment at the end but it is usually because we have been living at a higher standard of living. Usually the rent, mortgage and other payments are higher and when we retire or are unemployed we need that.
When they tried to rationalize all these systems back in the 1970s they found that to put together a flat payment system with the systems that were based on varying contributions and varying payments was not an easy task. As a matter of fact they were not able to do it. I bring that to the attention of the House.
Some programs are geared to meet the types of debt and commitment we have made while we are working. When we become unemployed or when we retire or when we are forced to leave work because of injury or disability we need payments that will meet that type of commitment.
For example we do not want skilled workers to have to sell their homes simply because they are unemployed or because they are retired. To suggest we should have one payment for everybody no matter what they have been doing when they were working does not make sense. It could drive a lot of people into poverty and that is not what we want to do.
I want to refer also to the unemployment insurance system. There has been some suggestion that, and I do not know whether it goes that far, in order to collect unemployment insurance one should be obliged to participate in training programs or in some type of community work or whatever.
First let us deal with the training programs. It is a fact that a good number of our unemployed are highly trained already. They are skilled. They are machinists, electricians, architects, professional people and trades people with highly skilled trades. Their problem is not training, it is the lack of jobs. To suggest the solution to all our problems is to simply retrain or upgrade everybody is not correct.
It is true a large number of people cannot find work because their trades are out of date or they have no trade whatsoever or they are illiterate. Those are the people we have to train and make competitive with the people in the United States, Europe, Japan. I fully support that. However, let us not overdo it and suggest that the total solution is to retrain everybody. Many people come to my office and probably to my colleague's office every day who are trained but their problem is jobs, not training.
We hear another suggestion on the street. It is terrible these people are on unemployment insurance and they should be made to do some kind of work until they get a job. One of the major tasks of the unemployed person is to look for work. It is a time consuming undertaking. If unemployed people are serious, and most of them are, they spend a lot of time going for interviews, searching the newspapers and writing letters. They want to get back to work in the field in which they are competent.
Let us be careful so that this sort of work fair is not overdone. To put to work or in training programs as a condition for receiving benefits certain young people who are in good health but have no training is fine, but let us be very careful that we do not overdo it.
I want to remind the House and my own party that in the two previous parliaments we savagely attacked the Conservative government for the amendments it made to the unemployment insurance system, amendments that made it more difficult to qualify and amendments that reduced the benefits. In a previous set of amendments, it increased the penalty for those who quit or were fired without cause, as defined in the act, up to about 11 or 12 weeks. This was quite a considerable increase in the penalty.
In the last round of amendments in 1993 the Conservative government took away all benefits from people who had quit their jobs for serious reasons but could not meet the definition of just cause in the act. It was the same with those who were fired, according to the bosses for just cause, but which was very often in the mind of the employee not a just cause. It was simply a case of harassment or trying to get rid of those people with trumped up charges against them.
We questioned the minister at that time. We said: "Well you just amended the act a couple of years ago to increase the penalties from six weeks to twelve weeks"-or whatever it was-"and now you are completely eliminating any benefits at all. You are going to a very extreme penalty without ever really testing the penalties that you put into place a few years ago".
We attacked those sorts of things. We attacked the government for totally removing the $2.8 billion that the government used to contribute to the unemployment insurance fund. Prior to those amendments in the last Parliament, the Government of Canada always contributed to the fund after the unemployment rate went over a certain level. The other contributions to the fund came from workers and from employers. It was a three way contribution: the employers, the employees and the Government of Canada. The Government of Canada then withdrew its contribution of $2.8 billion and put the entire burden on workers and employers. The rates went up. They were another form of taxation. We were very critical of that. We said that was not the way to do it.
What happened is by doing these things to the unemployment insurance system, by cutting back the benefits, by making it more difficult to qualify, by throwing people out of work without any benefits whatsoever in some cases, it simply shifted the burden to take care of those people to the provinces and to the municipalities. When people do not have work and they cannot find work someone has to support them. We are not living in a cruel, inhumane society. We do not let people starve to death. What happened was the provincial social security systems had to pick up those people and take care of them. In Ontario and Nova Scotia the cities had to and they could not afford it. It was simply a shifting of the burden.
I am trying to remind the House and my party that I fully support this re-examination of social security. However, I am also reminding them that we have to be very careful in not overdoing it to the extent that we are cruel, inhumane, insensitive, unfair and unjust.
Let us study, let us recommend, let us save money if we can through a better delivery system, let us eliminate duplication. Let us not take benefits away from those who worked for years and years, built this country and contributed to funds, such as the old age security fund. Let us not take benefits away from those who worked and contributed to unemployment insurance. Let us not make our workers slaves of their bosses.
Let us be consistent, I say to my own party, with what we said in opposition. Let us be consistent with what we said in the campaign. Let us be credible. Let us be fair, just and compassionate in this country.