Mr. Speaker, it is with great pleasure that I take part in this debate today on Bill C-96, an act to establish the Department of Human Resources Development.
Over the next ten minutes, I intend to look at the issue of employment centres restructuring, from the particular point of view of Quebec, where, from now on, we will have 78 suboffices coming under 28 offices called regional management centres.
I will also address this issue as it relates to a case of particular concern to me, namely the CEC of Trois-Rivières, because we were stunned and outraged to learn, on June 22, 1995, that the department planned to establish the regional management centre in Shawinigan rather than in Trois-Rivières.
This announcement immediately gave rise to a general outcry. Yours truly was the first one to denounce such plans, soon to be followed by the mayor of Trois-Rivières, the Chamber of Commerce and 70 organizations of the greater Trois-Rivières area, including 40 municipalities, all of which passed resolutions denouncing the federal government's plans in this respect.
This eventually resulted in a petition being circulated over the summer by the EIC employees' union, with the full support of the Federation of Senior Citizens, because this bill is a direct attack on senior citizens, and of the local branches of the Fédération des caisses populaires Desjardins, which helped circulate the petition. As a result, upwards of 25,000 citizens have signed the petition and expressed in writing their opposition to these plans the federal government has regarding our region.
As you can see, in addition to being very unpopular in the Trois-Rivières region, this decision actually contradicts the department's own criteria for determining the most sensible location for these offices.
In fact, the criteria were based first of all on the total population; second, on the number of people on unemployment insurance; third, on the number of people receiving income security benefits; fourth, on the number of senior citizens concerned; and finally, on
the number of businesses and employers affected by the activities of the employment centres. The department, preferring to ignore its own criteria, concluded for obvious reasons that it was better to locate the regional centre in Shawinigan instead of Trois-Rivières, although there is twice as much economic activity in the Trois-Rivières region as in Shawinigan.
The same ratio applies to the total population, the number of senior citizens and the number of businesses. This is one more example that shows why it makes no sense to locate in Shawinigan instead of Trois-Rivières. The practical implications are all explained in a document we happened to receive not long ago. This is an internal management document entitled: "Preliminary Report on Centralization of Claims Processing".
This document was released less than a month ago on October 23, 1995, and prepared by a committee of 11 department officials, including several senior officials. The report more or less describes the future role of the sub-offices, including Trois-Rivières. The sub-offices will receive benefit claims, transmit the claims and collect the facts from the client. According to a note in the document, this will only consist in taking down information provided by the client.
So they will take this information down in Trois-Rivières and routinely send it on to Shawinigan, where more than half of the files will come from Trois-Rivières and the surrounding region. Trois-Rivières in this case includes Cap-de-la-Madeleine and Trois-Rivières West. And what about Bécancour, which will have to deal with Drummondville? It does not make sense. There is no administrative or historic link between the residents of Bécancour and Drummondville, which is another absurd aspect of this plan.
We, that is my colleagues for Champlain and Richelieu and myself, wrote to the minister to make the appropriate representations. People in our regions, especially the unemployed, will have a hard time as a result of this plan. Six weeks later on November 10-as soon as possible, as usual-we received a written reply from the minister who, by the way, was too busy to meet three members of Parliament. He referred us to an assistant deputy minister in Montreal, Mr. Gladu. We will let somebody else go and meet him.
In his letter, the minister explained why Shawinigan had been chosen instead of Trois-Rivières, and I quote: "The government decided to centralize Human Resources Development Canada's internal services for the Mauricie region at the Shawinigan centre because it felt it would be useful to bring together a certain number of services and departments, including Revenue Canada and Human Resources Development Canada".
Which means it was a matter of accommodation, office space would appear to be available at the Taxation Data Centre in Shawinigan. The reason is therefore simply a physical one, despite the decision's unpopularity and unreasonableness. It is a matter of premises that has led to preparations to move it to Shawinigan-South and yet, in the present building, there are premises available. Even more will be coming available soon, because the network will disappear in the restructuring, and this will free up a whole floor and another one, two floors leased until 1999 which will be available and could accommodate all the personnel required for a regional management centre in Trois-Rivières.
So this reason does not hold. What is more, the minister says that the future centre in Shawinigan, in addition to offering the same programs and services as in Trois-Rivières, will manage internal services relating to the administration and processing of unemployment insurance claims. This tells us about the particular role of the Shawinigan centre rather than the one in Trois-Rivières.
Here again, according to this document, not only will the actual files of people from Trois-Rivières be in Shawinigan, but departmental investigations will be done from Shawinigan, appeals to the board of referees will be made there and complaints about unemployment insurance will be lodged there. According to the same document, three claims out of four will be reviewed, as they call it, and will be given special follow-up because of some complexity or other. Therefore three claims out of four arriving in Trois-Rivières will be transferred to Shawinigan and given special treatment.
And yet, here is what the minister says in his missive. He tells us that he has no intention of making any changes to the way the department is serving the people of Trois-Rivières. Well, at this time, the physical files of UI claimants are in Trois-Rivières; departmental investigations are conducted in Trois-Rivières; appeals to the UI arbitration board are heard in Trois-Rivières; and relatively complex files are processed in Trois-Rivières. Therefore, we cannot trust the minister when he tells us that the services provided to the people of Trois-Rivières will not be affected in any way. This cannot be true in my opinion.
How can we trust the minister? What guarantee does he give in this letter that there will be no changes? There is no guarantee. The more we look at this, the more we realize that the decision to move and almost dismantle the Trois-Rivières manpower centre-whose staff, according to our information, will be reduced from around 100 one or two years ago to 12-is purely political.
This is a purely political decision. If the hon. member for Saint-Maurice and Prime Minister wants to show his constituents that electing him was not a mistake, that they did the right thing for the riding of Saint-Maurice by electing him, he may have the right to take measures, but he has no right to do so at the expense of the people of Trois-Rivières and the surrounding region and to look down on them. He has no right to do that, and I take this opportunity to tell you, Mr. Speaker, and to tell this House that we will not give up. We do not accept this decision and we never will.