Madam Speaker, here we are again discussing Bill C-12, a bill which in committee was subjected to time allocation, or at least limited debate. I would not be very surprised if we came up with another time allocation motion some time today to speed this bill along.
The name has changed. I suppose that was thrown in as a sort of an appeasement to the Reform Party. We kept saying unemployment insurance should be more like employment insurance. It should be more like insurance.
The Liberals said "maybe we will just change the name and that will give the illusion that we have actually made an insurance policy out of this, that the emphasis now will be on employment rather than on unemployment".
Insurance means insurance whether it is called unemployment or employment insurance. That is perhaps the reason the bill should go back to the drawing board. Maybe we can get it right. In its present form it does not really resemble insurance in any way.
Let us talk about insurance in the manner with which most Canadians are familiar. If you operate a motor vehicle, for instance, provincial law requires automobile insurance be purchased and maintained. If you have accidents regularly or if your car is stolen and you have to utilize insurance, you will find your rates will be increased according to the compensation paid by the insurance company.
If it were a true insurance policy, why would it include training programs and make work programs that really are not make work programs at all? Anybody who benefits from the make work programs as they stand now are the bureaucracies.
As far as training, we have heard from our colleagues in the Bloc they are most anxious to take over the manpower training provincially. If the government were to seek this, it would find the provinces agree that job training would be an area in which all provinces would be interested.
When I asked the minister of HRD last December about changes to the delivery of the training programs, he said we really should be transferring resources to the people, to the private sector, to communities.
If the minister agrees with that philosophy, if the provinces are willing to take on the training, if the private sector is willing to get involved, what is the stumbling block? The opposition certainly is not holding the government up on this. Why does it not go ahead and transfer these properties to the provinces where they would readily be accepted?
How does the minister reconcile the department's continued involvement in training programs when the Prime Minister announced that labour training programs would be the sole responsibility of the provinces? This is very difficult for me to understand.
A group of people in the fast food industry in my constituency wrote to me. They were very concerned about some of the provisions in this bill. One constituent basically said his costs will increase significantly if Bill C-12 becomes law. It is well on its way to becoming law.
This operator employs around 90 people, many of whom are students, part time workers. They are still going to school. Part of the idea is that they earn enough money to defray part of their university tuition. He said: "My customers are very price sensitive. I will have no choice but to cut back on employee hours and reduce the number of new hires in my business". He went on to say that implementing this payroll tax runs counter to the government's job creation objectives and is inconsistent with its position that payroll taxes kill jobs. As a matter of fact the government's position is that by reducing the premiums by five cents per $100 of wages earned that thousands of jobs would be created.
In light of the fact that the fund is predicted to increase to an $8 billion surplus this year, why will the government not reduce the premiums by $1 per $100 and create millions of jobs? I am using the government's map here. If one reduction of five cents per $100 will create so many jobs, why not create 20 times as many jobs? Why not go that route?
The Minister of Finance and other members of the government have admitted that the real killer of jobs is high taxes. Taxation is the killer of jobs. This gentleman who runs a fast food business in my constituency agrees with that statement but he cannot understand why the minister, the committee and the government does not see fit to reduce payroll taxes even more, bearing in mind that there will a huge surplus in this fund.
What possible reason could the government have to maintain such a high surplus? It says that times are not going to stay as good as they are. Perhaps the government is just creating a cushion for the downturn in the economy and the resulting jobs that may be lost. I do not know about that. Perhaps some creative bookkeeping is going on there. It seems to me that there never is a time when there is a surplus that one can actually put one's finger on. These surpluses seem to flow back and forth, and mostly forth into general revenue.
We are confronted today with over 200 amendments. If we debate those amendments one at a time, it is certainly going to take a lot of time. However, it will be time well spent. We should be able to debate this bill so that we actually dissect it. Eventually we will wind up putting it back together in a form that will be acceptable to Canadians, not only to the people who have to use UI from time to time but to those people who are employing the workforce of Canada.