Mr. Speaker, I am grateful for the question from my colleague from Frontenac—Mégantic. In fact, his is a clear example of the unacceptable disparity.
Prior to the employment insurance reform, a person entering the labour market for the first time worked 15 hours a week for 20 weeks for a total of 300 hours of work and could then receive benefits. Now the requirement is 910 hours. The difference between the two is 610 hours. That means that the number of hours required for eligibility has been increased by 600%.
You gave a specific example. The young person you were speaking about will have made contributions but will never be entitled to them. At the end of the year, the counter returns to zero, and so hours worked in the first year do not count in the second year. This is one example of an area in which the Government of Canada ought to show some humanity and ought to remedy the situation, ought to ensure that we have in this House, as soon as possible, a bill to change the unacceptable aspects of employment insurance reform. We are not saying that the reform should be done away with completely, just that errors need to be corrected.
In his address, the hon. member made me think of my meeting yesterday with some women who are involved in community kitchens, who prepare meals together because they have very limited means. That was the reason they set the kitchens up. Now they are faced with a situation where the regional health authority, which sets the budgets, is being forced to make cuts, thus obliging them to regroup and adopt a less efficient way of operating. When it comes down to the bottom line, the fundamental cause of this situation is that each of the organizations, each of the regional health authorities in Quebec, gets its budget from the Government of Quebec. Part of that Quebec budget comes from federal transfer payments.
It is not easy for someone on welfare, someone trying to get off welfare, to see all these long term effects happening, and to realize that they originate far away from them. I think, however, that it is important to know this, and it is important to be able to judge what actions the government will be taking in future years, whether a very significant portion of the $42 billion that have been cut in transfer to the provinces since the early 1990s will be reinstated.