Madam Speaker, I am pleased to take part in the adjournment debate. On October 10, I asked the Minister of Human Resources Development a question concerning the procedure for setting the criteria to determine the amount of the surplus in the employment insurance fund.
The answer the minister gave at the time was somewhat incomplete, and I would like him or his representative to clarify this answer for me.
I would like to remind the hon. members that the auditor general finally came to the same conclusions as the people who rallied against employment insurance reform in my riding, in Rivière-du-Loup, l'Isle-Verte or Saint-Antonin. While the terminology may be different, he said essentially the same thing.
These people asked, and so did the auditor general, how the employment insurance surplus is managed. We finance the EI fund by paying premiums, but we have no control over it. We do not know exactly how this works, what the criteria are and how large the surplus will be allowed to get.
The government is keeping our money in a separate account. The auditor asked the very same question. He suggested that there be a separate employment insurance account so that we will know if the premiums paid by employers and employees to secure an income for themselves between jobs is actually used for that purpose or for some other purpose, such as making up the government's deficit.
We all agree on the need to reduce the deficit, but we must realize that people are putting money into the EI fund not to reduce the deficit but to ensure workers have a decent income while they undergo training for a new job. There is nothing about that in the existing policy, and the auditor general backed this position in his report.
The greatest concern for the public—and the auditor general echoed this concern after realizing in his analysis that this was not being done—is to determine how the reserve fund amount is set. The employment insurance surplus is approximately $12 billion. We started off with a $6 billion deficit two years ago and will end up with a $12 billion or $13 billion surplus by December 31, 1997. This means that over a two-year period, the government will have taken between $18 billion and $19 billion from employers and employees to manage a fund, and we do not even know how the amount of the reserve will be determined.
Will the surplus have to be $6 billion, $8 billion, $10 billion or $12 billion? Will it be $20 billion, $22 billion or $25 billion in a year? There are no set criteria and this is very surprising, because the immigration board is supposed to do this on the advice of the governor in council. One can see a pattern developing.
On the one hand, the Minister of Finance will, of course, want to reduce the deficit. This means recovering as much money as possible, eventually by reducing the number of weeks during which people can draw benefits, while increasing the number of weeks required to become eligible. On the other hand, the Minister of Human Resources Development must ask himself whether there will be an adequate level of income for those who collect employment insurance benefits.
Will the program provide seasonal workers with a sufficient income by the end of the year? Will there be enough money for training? All these questions remain unanswered for the time being. We do not really know how the amount in the reserve will be determined. We do not know how the government will make rational choices.
Since we are in the pre-budget consultation period, this should be a priority. The government must tell us what will be an acceptable surplus for the coming year.