Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to address the motion proposed by my colleague from the Bloc Quebecois.
I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate my colleague from Mercier for her leadership bid. I may disagree with her politics but certainly I admire her ambition and tenacity.
I did not get an opportunity to speak to this bill under its former name of Bill C-111 because the government rammed it through to committee before Christmas. I remind my colleagues of how the government rushed the House legislative agenda, ramming the bill through in its haste. Then what did the government do? It prorogued the House. That shows me what kind of manipulation the Liberals undertake to give the appearance of integrity of process.
The government gave us a new throne speech. It wanted to wipe the slate clean, to start anew, to make amends for all the mistakes made, especially during the referendum. Now we have a new session and the government has the opportunity to demonstrate it means what it says and will work to implement responses and responsible legislation.
Unfortunately instead of working with us, the government has chosen to ram this bill through the House of Commons once again. Only four days ago this monster bill was tabled and we will spend only 50 hours with witnesses at committee.
The bill is the single most important piece of social policy legislation the Liberals have yet introduced. They want to rush it through committee. I am well aware we have had this bill, in its old form, for months. The Canadian public were lead to believe that the bill died on the Order Paper at prorogation. The public took the Liberals at their procedural word and assumed that the bill died. In typical Liberal fashion they pulled their old tricks, and by invoking closure managed to bring the bill back, this time through the back door.
The Liberals want it all and will do anything to have their cake and eat it too. They want both a clean slate and to keep the bill. The only way for them to accomplish this is to use the crass closure measures on their peculiar motion to reintroduce bills at the same stage as they were at prorogation.
In short, they abused, stomped on, ignored, rigged, manipulated, fudged and grossly took for granted the established democratic practices of the House. Ironically, in a typical Liberal hypocritical fashion they reintroduced the bill in the same manner as the Progressive Conservatives after they prorogued. Liberal, Tory, same old story.
The Liberal government demonstrates not only its disinterest in job creation but also a lack of innovation in this bill. The bill will not create a single job. Let us face up to the fact that the government has given up its job agenda because it knows how much of a failure it has been.
Let us look at its broken promises. From January 1995 to January 1996 there was a net loss of jobs in the Canadian economy totalling 227,000. This is a lacklustre performance at best. This is not job creation. Due to the Liberal government policy a total of 227,000 jobs were killed last fiscal year. This is the true reality of the Liberal jobs agenda. They may not like to hear the truth over there but the fact is my source of information for this sad statistic is, ironically, Statistics Canada. It comes from their employment trends survey, January 1996.
We know the government will tell us that by ramming the bill through committee it will be able to implement more quickly the necessary changes needed to better serve Canadians in the area of unemployment insurance.
I can tell by the heckling over there that these are comments that hurt.
The government has consistently abused its power to limit debate in the House and as a mechanism to speedily move controversial legislation through the parliamentary process in a manner which minimizes opposition. The best way to help Canadians with UI would be to return to the principles of true insurance, a true insurance plan.
During debate prior to second reading I stated I believe every member of Parliament should have an adequate opportunity to speak to this bill in the House of Commons. To date they have not. There have been a great number of demonstrations around the
country on this bill, particularly in the maritimes, and we have had a total of only three hours of debate. Members must have the opportunity to both pose and respond to questions from their colleagues and opposition members. By drastically limiting debate on this bill the government is demonstrating its complete disdain for the parliamentary process.
Remember, the process is not about our scoring points or ramming through bills simply to brag to the media that we have accomplished something. The process means more than that. The process allows members to reflect with their colleagues here in Ottawa what their constituents are telling them in their ridings about the legislation in question, which is important.
That is the issue. This is especially significant when working with a bill which has such a profound impact on the lives and welfare of millions of Canadians. The Liberals have never allowed us to do that in the House. They do not even believe their own rhetoric. They are hypocrites who say one thing and do another.
The heritage minister stated: "I have already said personally and very directly that if the GST is not abolished I will resign. I do not know how clear you can get. I think you have to be accountable on the things you say you are going to do and you have to deliver on it". As a Liberal candidate, the Prime Minister stated in 1993: "We will scrap the GST". The have very clearly broken that promise, and yet the heritage minister has not resigned. It shows us how good her word is. Scrapping the GST means scrapping the GST.
On October 18, 1993 the Prime Minister stated: "The Liberal Party is committed to maintaining old age security", but last week in the budget the government killed it. Maintaining means maintaining, not killing. The Liberals said they would make unemployment insurance more like true insurance. Instead they have made it more like welfare. I warn all not to succumb to the misleading line the government has taken on unemployment insurance with its pompous intention to get input from the Canadian public.
First, it is clear the government has little interest in hearing the views of Canadians when it comes to legislation. For example, the former chairman of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development refused the request to have witnesses at committee to express their concerns over the new powers given to the government in Bill C-96. Instead, by some executive fiat he decided that each party would be limited to only one witness and that all witnesses would appear simultaneously as a panel. This is not exactly inclusive policy development.
The second reason we should be rather circumspect about the intention of the government to seriously review the bill has to do with a broken promise by the former parliamentary secretary of human resources development and the former chairman of the HRD committee.
During deliberations on future business of the committee, in response to my inquiries, they committed to all those present that neither of the UI bills would be referred to committee prior to second reading. The question was put to them clearly and without ambiguity. The response by them was that the bills would not be referred to committee prior to second reading.
It is clear the government did exactly what it had confirmed it would not. The intentions of the government most often are the exact opposite of what it would like the public to believe. It is this kind of hypocrisy, inconsistency and insincerity that the government has come to expect from the political hack dictating the government agenda.
The third reason for being circumspect to the government's rhetoric of inclusive policy development is quite simple. The government limited debate to three hours before referring the bill to committee. Even if we had defeated the government's motion to refer the bill to committee prior to second reading there would still have been ample opportunity for extensive witness consultation at committee which would have allowed members to speak to the bill.
I fail to comprehend why the government wishes to preclude members of Parliament from speaking to this bill. The only reason I can surmise is that the dissension in the backbenches of the Liberal Party is so great with the members, especially from Atlantic Canada, opposing this bill so vigorously that the government cannot afford to give them the opportunity to criticize it before the House.
Thanks to the motion put forward by the Bloc Quebecois those Liberal backbenchers will now be able to tell the House how their constituents feel about this misguided legislation.
Let me address some components of the minister's so-called reforms of UI. The former minister advised the House to read Hansard from the time at which UI was originally introduced. It is clear that such a request by him demonstrates that he had not done so himself. If he had, he would have been embarrassed that his EI program is diametrically opposed to what the original framers of this legislation intended back in 1940 or even in 1919 when the idea was first discussed in Canada.
I only hope the new Minister of Human Resources Development takes the advice of his colleague, who was so free with it, and that he takes the trouble to learn about the original intention of UI. Maybe then he would quickly ascertain what he should do with this legislation.
Ironically, when the Liberal government of Mackenzie King introduced unemployment insurance legislation in July 1940, he too tried to ram it through Parliament at the end of a session. It would appear this trick of ramming important legislation through the House is one with a long tradition.
Our side of the House is not motivated by the calendar or the clock. We have a responsibility to fulfil, a duty to the Canadian people. I believe no one in this assembly is more anxious than any other to perform that duty. There is no monopoly on the desire to accomplish a public good. If by giving the House full debate at second reading it takes a few additional days to pass a measure of legislation which affects millions of Canadians, then this is my challenge: why have the Liberals been so averse to giving extra time to debate this bill?
The employment insurance bill which we debate today has taken us very far away from what UI was intended to be when its framer originally designed it. Today EI is thought of by the Liberal government as an income supplement, not as insurance. Let me quote from the Liberal minister of labour in 1940, who in supporting the concept of individuals caring for their own unemployment situations quoted from the report penned by Mr. Justice Mathers, chief justice of Manitoba in 1919:
We recommend to your government the question of making some provision by a system of state social insurance for those who, through no fault of their own, are unable to work, whether the inability arises from a lack of opportunity, sickness, invalidity or old age. Such insurance would remove the spectre of fear which now haunts the wage earner and make him a more contented and better citizen.
I agree with the then minister of labour who was concerned that UI be used to get people from one job for short periods of time into another job. The minister of labour of the time was also concerned that UI never become a way of life for people and that measures should be taken to avoid people's ever coming to rely heavily if not completely on UI as a way of life or a continual subsistence.
To make his point he quoted from a report by the Civil War Workers of Great Britain:
-how much unemployment there will be and over what period it will last is impossible to forecast. But, whatever it be, there must be a great deal of unemployment which can only be dealt with in one of two ways: either by a considered scheme of insurance-or by state doles, hurriedly and indiscriminately issued when the moment of crisis arrives.
There can be no question which is the better way. State doles may lead straight to pauperization. A well devised scheme of insurance preserves the self respect of the workers and assists and encourages them to supplement it by provision made industrially through an association.
It is exactly this original intent which the minister has allowed to slip away. UI today is for too many people a way of life. For too many people UI is the dole to which the then minister of labour referred.
With the new changes to UI the Minister of Human Resources Development announced over $1 billion in training programs for areas of high unemployment. This is exactly the kind of dole that the government of Mackenzie King argued against. Look at what these programs have done for the areas for which they have been targeted: nothing but force people to perpetually rely on the state.
We need only look at the colossal failure of the TAGS program to know what these mega social engineering projects fail to create, long term sustainable jobs.
I will acknowledge that EI changes made some very small baby steps in the right direction such as rolling back payroll taxes and maximum insurable earnings and tightening eligibility requirements. However, the steps are so tiny and slow that the creeping of a glacier seems like the pace of a greyhound in comparison.
Let me address the issue of payroll taxes for a moment. The government states it will stimulate job creation by reducing taxes to both employers and employees. Would it not follow then that if a tax roll back of 5 cents creates some 25,000 jobs, a bigger roll back would create more jobs? If the government cared about job creation, in the budget last week would it not have rolled back payroll taxes? Instead it is continuing to gouge wage earners. It is running an annual UI surplus of over $5 billion which it is just sucking into its major deficit reduction plan.
As well, if the government believes that rolling back payroll taxes creates jobs, when it introduce the 7 per cent payroll tax on part time workers, will it not be choking off job creation?
The government only appears anxious to provide against the future ill effects of unemployment. There is a real question here as to whether part time employees should be asked to bear at this time a new charge against their wages in addition to those currently imposed.
These two fundamental logical contradictions demonstrate that either the government is not sincere about its jobs, jobs, jobs mantra or that it does not really understand what it is doing when it attempts to reform UI.
Mr. Speaker, I understand question period will starting in a few moments. How much time do I have left?