Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to discuss Bill C-12, the legislation to bring into being Canada's new employment insurance system.
Of the many improvements brought about by Bill C-12, the most important is its impact on Canada's young people. Youth is a priority concern for the government's job and growth agenda and Bill C-12 neatly reflects that concern.
The employment insurance legislation not only provides more effective treatment for young workers in terms of benefits, but also provides positive, active measures to help young people get and
keep good jobs. For young people a great problem with the current UI system is that it often fails to recognize their actual working effort.
UI measures work in terms of weeks which is a very poor measure of time spent on the job, particularly for part time workers and multiple job holders.
Within the hours based system provided in Bill C-12, part time workers earnings are insured and four out of ten part time workers are under 25 years of age. Another inequity under UI has been the employer's tendency to limit part time employment to less than15 hours per week per person in order to avoid having to pay UI premiums. For many young people this has meant not only do they get less work, but that their earnings are not insured.
Employment insurance eliminates this 15-hour trap. All hours will now count toward eligibility. More young people who enter the labour market after leaving school and who must rely on a number of small jobs to earn a living will now have insurable work.
Further, an impact which particularly benefits young people is the fact that employment insurance also reduces the risk of workers developing a dependency on employment insurance. Far too many young people come into the labour market and end up on UI benefits before completing their education. Then they find themselves in another sort of trap where they work long enough to qualify for benefits then go without work for as long as the benefits last.
The new employment insurance system will discourage this behaviour pattern. It will in fact encourage young people to complete their education rather than dropping out to take short term, often low paying work that does not lead to career advancement.
Higher entrance requirements under employment insurance encourage young people to develop a stronger attachment to the labour market. We have heard loud protests from the opposition about the concept of higher entrance requirements. Far from being draconian, these very measures have been recommended to the government by many many groups.
For example, two recent reports were quite specific. The report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development recommended longer qualifying periods to encourage young workers to remain attached to the workforce longer and to improve their career prospects. The working group on seasonal work and unemployment insurance also recommended stiffer entrance requirements for young people.
In the process of designing this legislation, the government listened to the concerns of Canadians in all regions and all walks of life in more than two years of consultations. Town hall meetings, seminars and policy workshops were held. Phone lines were opened and the Internet was put to work. Through these and other channels including open line radio shows, Canadians told us what they wanted. It was social security reform.
The minister invited the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development to further examine ways to improve the legislation. More than 100 witnesses from across the country were heard and nearly 150 briefs were received, analysed, digested and studied very carefully by members of the committee. The purpose once again was to listen carefully to Canadians' views on fine tuning the employment insurance legislation to ensure that the system is fair, to be sure that the system is balanced and reflects the varying labour market conditions across the regions of Canada.
In this process the work incentive provisions of the bill have been strengthened. Changes have been made to make the system fairer to youth, fairer to women, fairer to the low income families and fairer to workers in seasonal industries.
There are other ways in which Bill C-12 will benefit young people. Contributions to EI for example will have minimal impact on young people. For instance a student working 14 hours a week at $7 per hour would pay less than $3 per week in premiums. The hours will now be insured which will help meet entrance requirements when entering the labour market full time. Premiums will be refunded to about 625,000 young people, 49 per cent of all of those who receive rebates. Of the total young people receiving rebates, 400,000 will be full time students.
Again let us look at the benefit side. Total benefits paid out under EI will be less and benefits paid out to young people by the year 2001-02 will decrease by 6 per cent. This is considerably less than the forecast overall decrease of 9 per cent.
We should not forget that EI is a two pronged program: income support for the unemployed coupled with employment benefits to help people get back to work and to get productive work. Targeted wage subsidies for example will help young people who qualify for employment insurance benefits to get needed work experience to qualify for more stable or permanent jobs.
The government has recognized the problems facing Canada's youth and has set in motion a process leading to a national youth strategy which will be announced this fall. The member for North York has been appointed chairman of the ministerial task force on youth which is now holding consultations to gather public input for such a strategy.
The task force is now holding town hall type meetings across the country hosted by local members of Parliament and senators. Such a meeting is to be held in my riding of Thunder Bay-Atikokan on May 23. In this way we can participate directly, solicit the views of our constituents and our young people and shape an effective
strategy to permit youth to fulfil their vital role in our future asa nation.
Bill C-12 and the government's initiatives for young people aim at giving young people hope, hope that they will be better equipped to take their rightful and productive place in the future of our country.