Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues did earlier, I would like to say a few words about this bill, not about each of its clauses, because it is a rather thick, not to say dense, document and I would need more than one day to go over everything.
The fact that some 220 amendments to what the government thinks is a perfect or almost perfect bill have been moved goes to show that it is in fact far from perfect and needs a few alterations at least to make it better.
We only need to look at the title to see all the problems the government had to deal with to make this bill look more attractive. The government wants to replace an insurance against unemployment by an insurance that almost goes against employment, but of course, it cannot put it this way. I had a professor, at university, who used to teach us about insurance and explain the principle behind insurance, as was developed by the British, as follows. He would say it in English and we would be very impressed since, at the time, although we did not speak English fluently, we paid a lot of attention to whatever was said in English or to English principles.
The professor used to say: "The principle behind insurance is as follows: "To divide amongst the many the losses of the few"". He would then explain in French, for those who like me at the time did not understand a word of English, that it meant to divide amongst the majority of the people concerned the losses of a number of them. So, the object of the unemployment insurance program we used to know was to divide among the majority of the people who were lucky enough to have a job the losses incurred by the few who had the misfortune to lose their jobs and end up on unemployment. That is the fundamental principle behind ou unemployment insurance system.
Now, we see that the government wants to change the name, probably to suggest that we want to divide among as many people as possible or among the majority the losses incurred by those who would find a job. I hope that is not what it means. You do not get insurance against a job, although that could make some kind of sense, because the government kept talking about jobs, jobs, jobs, and people could say: "What if I suddenly find a job, maybe it could hurt me. It might be better to keep receiving UI benefits or to find something else", since the jobs currently available are not enough to make a decent living.
I am kidding when I say that, because it would be ridiculous for the government to seek passage for a bill that would protect us against the risk of finding a job. What the government tells us, and I think this is how we must interpret it, is that this bill seeks to assure people that they will keep or find a job on the labour force.
Now we must ask ourselves this: Does the bill, as drafted, reach this goal? I cannot demonstrate that every section of the bill does not meet this goal, but I would like to give some examples of real cases in our ridings, particularly in mine.
I will give the example of women or men, but as it happens it is more frequently women, who want to re-enter the labour force after
having raised their children or for some other reason, after having been outside the labour force for some years. What happens to these women? Those who are lucky enough to find a job will have to pay UI premiums as soon as they start working. But to be entitled to benefits, even if their job is a short term one and if they work only for a few weeks or months, they will have to have worked at least 910 hours. What does that mean, in practical terms? We have to compare because for people who are already working and lose their job, the number of hours is not as high. I believe it is something like 700 hours.
What does that mean in practice for these women? After having raised their family, they cannot rest on their laurels because they want to get back to work. Let us say a woman finds a job where she works 3 hours a day, from 9 to noon, 5 days a week, which amounts to 15 hours. If this person is very hard working and really wants to make more money, she also works on Saturday. So she works 6 days a week, 3 hours a day, for a total of 18 hours. At a rate of 18 hours a week, this person will have accumulated at the end of the year-and I am counting only 50 weeks because this person really deserves 2 weeks holidays-900 hours of work. It would only be 750 hours if she worked 15 hours a week. Since the law requires a minimum of 910 hours to be eligible for employment insurance, this person, after having worked 900 hours during the year, will not be deemed eligible for employment insurance if she loses her job.
So this person pulls herself together and tries again the following year. She starts working in January at a rate of 15 hours a week because there is no other job to be had, and her boss needs her for only 15 hours, or 18 hours, a week. She starts working again, and will accumulate 750 hours if she works 15 hours a week or 900 hours if she works 6 days a week. At the end of the second year, she will have accumulated 900 hours again. If she loses her job at the end of the second year, she will not be eligible for employment insurance again. But she will have paid premiums from the beginning.
From the very first hour of work, this worker has paid premiums for unemployment insurance, or employment insurance as we must call it now. At $2.95 for each $100 earned, her contribution will total $186 at the end of the year. After two years, it is two times $186. After 5 years at $186 a year, those contributions amount to close to $1,000. However, that worker would still not be eligible for employment insurance. If that is what the government calls helping people to get back to work, I think that it will have to realize that it is not the right way of helping people.
We could take the example of day care workers. In remote areas, families where the father and the mother work have difficulty finding people to take care of their children. These people do not want to declare their earnings because, of course, they do not make enough and they would be penalized. How does unemployment insurance help those people? It cannot help them because there is no way for them to become eligible for unemployment insurance.
I would also have liked to give the example of training courses denied to people who are already too resourceful. When they find themselves unemployed and they want to improve their skills to redirect their career, they are told that they are too resourceful or too highly educated to have access to the courses and that they must continue to get unemployment insurance benefits and look for a job without additional training. This is ridiculous.
I would have liked to talk about self-employed workers but, since my time is running out, I will leave that to my colleagues. Maybe I will have an opportunity to do so myself later on if the government allows us to debate this bill all day today and again next Monday and Tuesday. We will have the opportunity to deal with these points and to say how this legislation does nothing to help people who are unemployed or who want to find steady employment.
Mr. Speaker, I see that you are listening to me with great interest and respect, as you always do, and I thank you for that. Once you leave the Chair, you will no doubt help me convince your colleagues of the validity of my remarks.