Sure. It wakes certain people up when they are told that. Of course it is upsetting. It is distressing for them to be reminded of one of their promises. The one that brought them to power was the promise to create jobs, but they have not created any. Of course, it is hard to accept.
I am really wondering about how we could make this government understand that a majority of Canadian citizens do not want this reform. How can we go about it? Everywhere we go, we are told this reform is inequitable, unfair and inefficient. Those are terms we often hear.
It is a reform which will make citizens poorer still. And who are those who are becoming poorer? Mostly young people, women and those who will be left out. People will be stuck in the same vicious cycle: a small project here, an odd job there, then UI benefits, welfare and so on. It will become impossible to get out of this vicious cycle.
This reform is ruining collective instruments we had elaborated here, based on a social consensus. People accepted to share some of the common wealth. Today, they do not care anymore about this great principle. They even use the UI fund surplus not to create jobs but precisely to reduce the deficit. This money would be better spent and more profitable if it were used to create jobs, all the more so since the government is no longer contributing to the fund. As a consequence, it now belongs to workers and employers.
We have no right to take money in this fund belonging to those who pay into it. If we do so, it should not be to erase a deficit but to try to improve things for workers.
I was in my riding last Saturday. I walked with union leaders, priests, seniors, young people, board of trade representatives, city councillors, business owners, men and women of common sense.
They were demonstrating with me to tell the government they did not want this UI reform.
So there was another demonstration. I did not see any activist behind it, although they say that all these demonstrations are organized by people who are paid to do so. I did not see that. It was organized by social services, humanitarian organizations and community groups, all ordinary people.
However, not one single Liberal Party representative was present at that demonstration. None. There were no Liberals to answer people's questions. What I saw were ordinary people, people who want to change their lives, people who think restructuring work and the labour market is important, but that it should not be done the way it is being done now, with this bill.
There was also a group which seized that opportunity to bring me a petition, a group of people from Ferland-et-Boilleau in the Chicoutimi riding, a town of approximately 680 people. More than three-fourths of them signed the petition. Unfortunately, I know we will have to vote on the bill this week and maybe there will not be time to have the petition certified by the clerk and tabled in the House. Therefore, I am speaking on their behalf. They said: "Please ask the government to abandon its unemployment insurance reform".
These small-town people are honest, hard-working and a good part of them do not have a steady job as we say. They do not have that opportunity over there. Why? Because most of them find their livelihood in logging and a few others in tourism. You will have understood that they are seasonal workers, and we know what the bill has in store for them. They know full well, they do understand that this reform will push several of them onto welfare. As welfare recipients, they will no longer depend on the federal government, but on provincial governments.
This is another way to shovel the deficit and an ever increasing debt into the provinces' backyards. Seasonal workers can be found just about anywhere in the country. I say it again, they are the ones who are going to be the most severely penalized by this reform. Why? Because they cannot find work year round, a permanent job is a thing of the past. It does not exist any more, and the present reform does not take this fact into account.
Sure, there are other kinds of seasonal workers: forestry workers, people working in the tourism industry, construction workers; we cannot say that the construction industry is very healthy in Canada right now. The housing sector is a bit like the fleet of taxis around here, it is going to ratchet.
This means that the value of houses is decreasing because people can no longer afford to keep them in good repair, which has a domino effect on municipalities since they have to lower the assessment. We cannot say that the construction industry is healthy. Work in this sector is truly seasonal.
Since you are indicating that my time is running out, I will stop. On Saturday, I was asked to do something else; people told me to make sure that the government would not adopt this reform. I could not make such a promise. When I make a promise, I try to keep it.
There are a few hours left before we are called to vote on this reform; members opposite should be thinking about what has been happening in the last year and a half or two years since we have been talking about this reform, and realize people are going to be forced onto welfare because of it. They should change their mind.
For the sake of all these people, of all the workers who do not waste their time drinking beer-