Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to comment on the minister's speech and, in particular, on his statement that 97 per cent rather than 93 per cent of workers will be eligible for the plan.
The Bloc has never said it did not want people to be eligible for the plan. We have always said that unemployment insurance should be one of the tools for creating employment. The government has not offered any other, this reform is its only tool. I think some other tools are missing.
There may indeed be more people paying into the plan, but I would like to know from the minister whether he has had estimates made of the number of new contributors who will be able to benefit from the plan. For people in the regions, where work is seasonal, working 910 hours in a year means working 26 weeks at 35 hours a week.
Even if all the hours are counted, even if people sometimes work a 40 hour week, it will be very hard and will result in an exodus of young people. This will mean that many people will remain on welfare. What I have understood from the reform is that people will have a year to accumulate their 910 hours. The next year, it starts all over again, and we begin at zero. So, there are many people who today are getting unemployment insurance, because their job afforded them between 300 and 400 hours. Now they will have to do 910 hours before they are entitled to unemployment insurance benefits.
In my opinion, this will mean the following: people who work 12 or 13 weeks in the summer at 35 hours a week will end up with some 400 hours and then will have to leave the region to come up with the other 500 hours. They will have to look for jobs elsewhere.
Over three, four or five years this will reduce the population in the region. This is a negative aspect of the reform.
We are not saying unemployment insurance should not be reformed, we are saying that 910 hours is far too much for someone new to the system to accumulate right off in order to be entitled to benefits, it is inappropriate for our economy.
There is one other point I would like to raise. When the minister terms it an equitable reform, how can he say it is equitable for seasonal workers when their benefits will drop from 55 per cent to 50 per cent after about three years, when they will have used up the 100 weeks after which the reduction kicks in? The people affected, therefore, are in seasonal industries, a sector where, through no fault of their own, they have to be on unemployment insurance year after year. They are not guilty of anything, so why must they be penalized? These are people who work in industries with 12, 13, 14, 15 weeks of work a year. They cannot invent more work than that.
So they are being told their benefits will be cut down to 50 per cent. After three years, they will be down to 50 per cent, and for no other reason except to penalize them and push them into other sectors where they do not necessarily have any expertise. Where is the other side of the coin, the assurance that there will be changes in their regional economy?
Last year, everywhere we went with the Human Resources Committee the people in the regions said they were not opposed to change. They said they wanted assurance that there would be set transitional periods, possibilities of adjusting the economy, of bringing in aspects from new technology, all those things.
But today, instead of a carrot and stick approach, only the stick has been brought out, with no carrot anywhere in sight. There is no sign from anyone in this government, particularly not the Minister of Industry, whose vision of the economy is a century behind the times. There is no vision here of what the positive aspects will be.
I would therefore ask the minister to tell us what percentage of those now under the plan will be eligible under the new arrangements, and what percentage will never be eligible because it will be impossible for them to accumulate 910 hours at any time in their working lives. I feel that this is an important question, because making it so that more people contribute may be very attractive from a budget point of view, but from the human point of view it is equally important to see that people will have enough to live on.