Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak at this time, particularly in light of the comments just made by the hon. member.
First of all, the motion before this House is incorrect and so are the comments made by the hon. member from the opposition. I will take this opportunity to set the record straight.
For one thing, this year, there will be more jobs for Canadians, and particularly for Quebecers. The Conference Board said there could be as many as 57 per cent more jobs for Quebecers this year, as compared to last year.
Unfortunately, the opposition fails to mention the positive initiatives, measures and efforts the government and the private sector have made to create employment across Canada.
In saying that, I do not think we are here just to argue about figures. I think we are here to argue or talk about a very deep felt need by Canadians to have the opportunity to share in work, to have a sense of dignity, of making a contribution to their own and their family's well-being. The prospect, the hope for a job, for themselves and for their children is one of the great ambitions that we have always held out to Canadians.
What is not recognized in anything I have heard or listened to by opposition members so far is any recognition whatsoever that the world of work has changed and that we cannot simply fall back on old methods, that we cannot simply defend the status quo, that we cannot simply argue on a rhetorical basis for what used to be.
I found particularly interesting, for example, this comment from the editorialist for La Presse , Mr. Alain Dubuc: Program reform is simply a must for everyone's sake. Lucien Bouchard is making himself the advocate for status quo''. And I would like to draw point out this line:Out of demagoguery or sheer narrow-mindedness, the Bloc Quebecois nationalists are turning into advocates for inflexibility and inertia''. How true! It is true that the members across the way are advocating inflexibility and inertia and using demagogical arguments.
This is not a time for that kind of narrowness of spirit, that unwillingness to change, that attempt to exploit people's deep concerns for immediate partisan advantage.
We have to talk about how to put a good employment strategy in place in this country, something that takes into account various elements. There is no single answer. There is no panacea for the creation of employment. It is something that is affecting every country and it is going to take a full, concerted, comprehensive approach.
When I attended the job summit last week in Detroit where the seven major industrial countries were brought together, we talked about the fact that in those seven countries alone there were over 30 million people unemployed and the number is growing.
In Europe there has not been any job creation or any growth at all for the past year or two. In the United States there is job creation but it is low level jobs, part time jobs, insecure jobs at a wage that is not reasonable to live on.
The Canadian answer is to find a balance somewhere between the two. We must make sure there is growth and job creation, that we stimulate the economy, that we provide a boost in the private sector to give a new sense of momentum to the broad base of job creation that the private sector must provide. At the same time we must recognize that there are fundamental changes going on in the labour market, that it is not simply good enough to have a job at a minimum wage if that minimum wage is below the poverty line. It is not good enough to say to workers that they can have a 20-hour part time job if there are no benefits attached.
Those are the kinds of questions we are wrestling with. Unfortunately members, particularly those in the Bloc Quebecois, do not want to face those issues. Their representative on the parliamentary committee refuses to deal with the fact that there must be some change. Instead they go out, organize a demonstration and say to keep things the way they are. If we stay with the status quo then the jobs will not be there, the income will not be there, and the opportunity will not be there.
When this government is asked where is our vision, our vision is to undertake one of the largest, most comprehensive attacks on the question of unemployment ever seen in this country. We have initiated on a number of fronts a broad based employment strategy.
We have already heard some of the measures that have been brought forward today. There is the infrastructure program which by estimates could create 60,000 to 70,000 jobs. This is a way of providing a catalyst to get a spark into the economy. Now that we are beginning to grow at a level of 3 per cent a year there has to be a little bit of an electric shock treatment to get people hiring again. The infrastructure program should not be measured simply in the numbers of jobs directly created but also what it does to send a signal that begins to say to Canadians that we can start doing things again.
I must say when I listen to members of the Reform Party or the member for Mercier say it is a waste of money it seems to me those members do not really quite understand what it is all about. It is not a waste of money if you invest in better roads, better transportation and better infrastructure because that creates productivity. It creates the ability to generate more wealth.
If you allow your infrastructure to deteriorate, if you have too many potholes in the roads, if you cannot move information along an electronic highway or if you cannot begin to rebuild your schools and universities, then you will not grow.
We may argue about spending the money. It may be asked who is going to invest in a new road system. Is an oil company going to invest in new roads? Is the bank going to invest in a new training college? Are they likely? That is the responsibility of the public sector. It is the responsibility of government. That is why we have taken on that responsibility.
I hear members opposite say that it is a waste of money. That simply indicates to me they are not serious about the issue. They are not really looking at a growth strategy or an employment strategy. They are caught up as the apostles of rigidity or demagoguery, as the editorialist in La Presse said.
We introduced a number of measures in the budget. The infrastructure program was one. There is significant support for small businesses because the records show that is where jobs will come from. They will become the engine of job creation if we give them the right incentive or the right signal.
I find incredible the ignorance of members opposite who have criticized our efforts to relieve small business of the payroll burden in order to create jobs.
I find the Bloc Quebecois' position incredible. They are against efforts to reduce UI premium rates which will have a positive impact on small business.
Here is a good example to illustrate my point. Take a small business with 100 workers. As a result of this initiative or plan to reduce UI premium rates, this business will save $30,000. That is enough to hire another worker, one more employee.
How can we argue against a measure clearly designed to say to small businesses that by bringing down their cost structure, by giving them better cash flow and by reducing some of the burden placed upon them they will be given the incentive to go out and hire people?
I met a week or so ago with representatives of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business which represents hundreds of thousands of small businesses across the country. They said that was one of the best things any government had done because it began to say to them that we would rely upon them. They said that their membership would now take up the challenge because we have taken the initiative to show we care.
Yet we hear members on the opposition side saying that it does not matter or it does not count. I happen to believe it is very important to give the right incentive and the right stimulus to small business as part of an employment strategy to free up creative juices and to give the cash flow that is necessary. Members opposite-and I know they would not do it deliberately-distort the impact of that. They make all kinds of claims that changes in the UI system will have an enormous effect upon the poor.
I think it was Mrs. Trépanier, Quebec's Minister of Income Security, who said that it had a slight impact.
Our own figures show that it will be no more than an additional $100 million in terms of people coming off the rolls. People do not recognize that simply because we increase the level of weeks of work does not mean to say that people will stop working. A lot of companies and a lot of organizations presently cut their work time to suit the 10-week period. There may even be more work to do, but they cut it and put people on the unemployment insurance rolls as a way of helping their own balance sheets.
A member of Parliament in our caucus who was chairman of a major school board in Ontario said it was a common practice for school boards to hire people on nine-month contracts and then let them go for three months in the summer so that they can pick up UI. That is not a practice we condone. That is one reason we are saying if we begin to relate the weeks of benefit to the weeks of work we begin to provide the proper relationship. We begin to say that one works to earn benefits; one does not get benefits by not working.
It is no wonder the editorialist in La Presse says: ``Il y a les apôtres de la rigidité et de la paralysie''. C'est une bonne raison pour cette déclaration. They are not thinking. They do not have an employment strategy. They do not have any strategy that encourages people to go back to work.
That is a lot more important than collecting UI. UI is a crucial program to help people make transitions from work to work. It is not long term dependency. That has been part of the problem. Over the years we took a good program and started changing it to the point where it became a program not to make that transition but to try to solve all other problems.
We are saying let us have a proper program dealing with long term unemployment. That is one of the reasons we are conducting a major review. That is one reason we invited the participation of members opposite even though they now refuse to participate.
Let us have a special program for long term unemployed people. They should not be kept on UI in perpetuity but they should have programs of training, job creation, income supplements or whatever the proper mix will be, so that we find ways of getting someone who can no longer stay in the labour market back in. We should focus or target that need exclusively. We should have programs designed for that need, not try to tinker with old programs that no longer fit the bill.
This is why we are conducting the review. Opposition members say there is no vision, but that is the vision. Where is their vision? There is nothing in their motion or in anything they have said. Our vision is to get people back to work.
Let us talk about young people. Let us talk about what is happening to the close to half a million young people between 18 and 24 years of age who are without work. It is probably one of the most tragic circumstances we have. How do we come to grips with the difficult problem of enabling people to make that changeover from formal education back to work? In many cases formal education does not even work any more for them. Many young people no longer fit into the school structure; they drop out. There is a 30 per cent dropout rate. It is a tragedy.
If we do not have sufficient levels of education and training we know there will be no jobs. We are not back in the age where skills are unimportant. We are in an age where if one does not have that basic element one will not work.
That is why we place a lot of emphasis on this point. We have included in the red book-and I will be introducing them very shortly in the House-initiatives for a major program of apprenticeship-internship. It will take tens of thousands of young people to give them experience in the workplace. It will be a combination of education and good, solid experience in employment so they can acquire the necessary skills. That is the commitment we made. That is a vision. That is a proposal. It is part of our program. We are negotiating with the provinces now to make sure they are on side.
The secretary of state spoke this morning about proposals for a major youth corps to give community employment experience for young people right across Canada. When they cannot obtain their first employment we get them into a setting where they learn skills, produce their first resumé and learn how to do something useful and important. It will give them some hope.
We are looking at major changes in student aid and student loans programs to give another incentive to young people to get back into the training and educational stream. Along with the discussions we are having with the provinces we are putting in place a serious, broadly based youth employment strategy. I am very pleased to announce today that as part of the strategy we are
substantially increasing the amount going into summer employment by 20 per cent so we can say to young people: "Go back to school and we will help you get a job to get there".
That does not come easy. We have reallocated money. We have brought together another $20 million which will mean that over 60,000 young people this summer will have an opportunity for employment sponsored in a wide variety of circumstances. When the opposition says we have no plans or actions, I say we just announced another one today as part of a broadly based scheme.
It is interesting that not once did we have a question from members of the Bloc or members of the Reform Party about summer employment and what we are going to do with summer students. They were so deeply concerned about our young people they never got around to asking questions about that. They have only been here for a couple of months but they never quite got around to the question of what will be happening to young people this coming summer.
Members of Parliament in my own caucus asked me about it every week. They had the good sense and understanding of what was happening to young people, and that is one reason the government responded to its own caucus.
The question of employment will take a real effort by many Canadians. I hope the committee will report this week on what it heard from a broad base of consultation in the first phase. We are also negotiating seriously with all the provinces to talk about how we change training programs and how we change social security to get people back into the workplace.
We are meeting with a wide variety of advisory groups. In the past two weeks I have met with 15 different groups across the country.
Today, comprehensive consultations are being held in Montreal with several social groups to discuss changes relating to the social security net.
We are talking to Canadians to involve them and to say that change is necessary but we can do it together. We can do it as a country united in the fundamental objective of getting people back to work and of restoring the dignity of work.
The only people absent from the debate, the only people who seem to be withholding their participation, are members of the opposition. They do not seem to think it is important enough to look seriously at how we can change our social assistance system by giving incentives to go back to work. They do not think it is important enough to be looking at what is happening to young people in our society. They do not think it is important enough to look at long term unemployment and how to get a much better mix of programming to deal with the problem. All they want to ensure is that there is somebody to go to the barricades, organize a demonstration and say: "Stay with what you have". Fortunately that is not the message of Canadians.
We are listening to the people who are not in the extreme groups on the left or the right. It is interesting that one group of people on the far right is saying that we should trash every program we can find and the group on the left is saying that we should keep every program we have. Fortunately a large group of Canadians in the middle say that change is necessary but it should be done responsibly and carefully so that we can get the country back to work again.
I ask members opposite to help create a climate in which there can be jobs for Canadians. They should help to put together the building blocks of an employment strategy that recognizes the creation of employment in the private sector, that relieves the burden of payroll taxes, that has a specific target for the long term unemployed, that looks seriously at a child care system, that enables women to participate fully with a sense of security and that works in dealing with our young people.
If we can put those elements together, if we can put the right package together over the next several months, we will create a new vision for the country. We will have given Canadians a new sense of identity. It will not be tied up with some kind of false debate about the Constitution, who controls this or who is responsible for that. The fundamental point is that we will have restored for Canadians a sense of hope and opportunity that they, their families and their kids can go back to work. That is the real meaning of what the country is about, and we intend to do it.