Madam Speaker, this is an excellent question and also an excellent opportunity provided to me by the hon. member for Lévis.
I jotted down some notes. In the Gaspé Peninsula, the working population currently stands at about 43 per cent. This means that only four persons in ten are working or actively looking for work. This is a very serious situation. It means that out of 10 people who are of labour force age only 4.3 actually work.
This gives you an idea of why there is so much discontent right now. What can these people turn to? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Moreover, let me repeat that, given the financial implications of the speech from the throne, we can anticipate a 10 per cent cut.
Since the Gaspé area, including the Magdalen Islands, gets something like $170 million under the unemployment insurance program, a 10 per cent cut means $17 million less in the region's economy. This is in addition to the reform made to the costs of fishing permits, which was implemented by the former minister and which the new minister intends to maintain. The minister hopes to get some $50 million from the fishermen's pockets with that.
The Gaspé Peninsula accounts for about 10 per cent of Canada's fish harvesting. Ten per cent of $50 million is another five million. In other words, we are in deep s-, up to our necks, and this is the moment the government chooses to take $22 million out of our region.
You can see why people in the Gaspé Peninsula and on the Magdalen Islands are upset. Seals are not the only ones looking for food; people are hungry too. They want to work, but they get no offers.
So, what do they do? They show their discontent. Wherever we meet them, they tell us: "We want to work". But what is there for them? Nothing. It must be understood that these people have been told to wait and wait, that they are alone to face the big federal machine. At present, they have forum to get their message across to the government.
It is easy to say that the minister will organize public hearings, but the closest one that was proposed, and that was a video conference, was in Rimouski. It takes half a day to drive from the Gaspé Peninsula to Rimouski. This is a lack of respect toward people who are supposed to live off UI benefits, who are being bled dry, and who will lose another 10 per cent which, as I said earlier, amounts to $22 million.
Time is running out and so are people's hopes. Those who live in the Gaspé Peninsula are proud people, like those who live in your region, but the government must understand that the fate of these regions is in its hands. If the minister really wants to go forward with that reform, he should at least be man enough to say: "I am putting a stop to that. I am imposing a moratorium". Until the unemployment rate goes down, the minister should shelve his reform. This is the message that people from the Gaspé region asked me to convey to the minister.