moved:
That, in the opinion of this House, the Government of Canada should make major changes in the employment insurance system, particularly by lowering contributions and improving benefits for seasonal workers and workers who have joined the labour market only recently.
Madam Speaker, I am very pleased that the House is considering this motion I have tabled today, which concerns a matter of national importance. It is important for all of Quebec, for all of Canada, since the entire employment insurance program is obviously completely unfair for all seasonal workers and all new entrants to the work force.
At the same time, I wish to condemn what I call the employment insurance fund scandal. Imagine today that, by the end of 1997, there will be a surplus of $13 billion in the employment insurance fund. Two years ago, we started with a deficit of $6 billion. We have since accumulated a $19 billion surplus, which will leave us with $13 billion as at December 31, 1997, and some $15 or $16 billion by the end of the fiscal year.
At the same time, the decision was made to increase the number of weeks required in order to be eligible for employment insurance, and to decrease the number of weeks of benefits people were entitled to receive.
It might be said that the government was not listening to the public when it did this, not listening to what had been said during consultations, but that it instead carried out evaluations that could have justified its point of view. Now we are faced with a fait accompli, faced with reality, and they ought to support a motion such as ours.
It may be said that opposition motions are always against the government. But I want to point to the position set out in my motion, which reads in part:
—should make major changes in the employment insurance system, particularly by lowering contributions and improving benefits for seasonal workers and workers who have joined the labour market only recently.
This is not, therefore, just the position of the Bloc Quebecois, although it is precisely the platform we defended during the election campaign.
Our party was the only one saying there could be both a reasonable reduction of benefits and a healthy surplus, but a reduction that would allow us to reinvest money in the economy by allowing employees and employers to use additional funds. We also said that part of the surplus in the employment insurance fund could have been used to improve the working conditions of seasonal workers.
The facts speak for themselves. In the early 1990s, 60% of people contributed to the employment insurance fund and eventually became eligible for benefits. This percentage is now below 40%, between 30% and 35% actually.
If we were in a private system, in similar circumstances people would have chosen another insurance company long ago. You can be sure that no private system could survive in such circumstances because contributors would have found another insurer.
That is an important aspect. The system is financed by the employees and their employers. The Government of Canada does not contribute a penny. The system is entirely financed by the employees and their employers. It would only be fair to allow them to control the money in the fund. No wonder they find it surprising that it has become some kind of insurance against the deficit instead of an employment insurance plan.
The federal government, through its finance minister, decided that there would be two main contributors to deficit reduction: the people who pay into the employment insurance fund, that is to say, the employees and their employers. Fancy that, every two weeks money comes in from the premiums paid by workers and employers. However, this money people think will provide them with an adequate income in between jobs is no longer used to this end. Instead, the Canadian government is using the employment insurance fund to reduce its deficit.
Everybody agrees that the deficit should be lower, but nobody thinks it should always be the same people who pay for it. The people who contribute to the employment insurance plan are those who make 39 000 $ or less. This means that most of the deficit reduction burden has been borne by workers and employers, and not by the most well-off in our society.
This even penalizes labour intensive businesses. This means that employers who pay little more than the minimum wage—for instance, seasonal businesses where workers make between $7 and $12 an hour—are penalized compared to those employing fewer workers, such as high tech companies.
Sure, we must promote the high tech sector, but there is no reason why we have to create a system that penalizes businesses with many employees. This leads to the situation we are witnessing today. In the forestry or fishery industries, people face a totally unacceptable situation, and more and more of them can no longer afford to live in the area where they reside.
This reform has created what I call the spring gap, something that is more and more prevalent, as we will see. I am willing to predict something, which will occur as surely as what we were predicting last year about employment insurance. At the end of next winter, when people have exhausted their entitlements, after the 10 or 12 week period, when they no longer qualify for employment insurance, we will have a very ugly situation, because many of these families will not be able to qualify for welfare since they own their own home.
As a government, we cannot act that way, and if we do, people will decide they no longer need government. If we decide that the market place must always win, that we are a strictly market economy, we might as well close down a number of regions. It amounts to the same thing, and I am under the impression that this is the choice the government made.
Two years ago, I went to Gander, Newfoundland, with the Committee on Human Resources Development. In the employment centre, on a display rack, I did not see a single program to diversify the local economy, I did not see a single program to allow people to find another job in their area. I saw a folder explaining how to move out west, because there were jobs out west.
When a government reaches such a point, there is definitely something very wrong, because it is not true that moving people around will make the country liveable.
The solution is in the principles that would ensure that people in each region can develop the resources in that region. Also, when they develop the resources in their region, they promote economic development in that region.
Let us remember that at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the situation was quite different from what it is today. The whole maritime region was self-reliant, self-sufficient in Canada. But in the 1960s, under the wonderful regime of Mr. Trudeau, the government made what I would call a deal. It said that manufacturing processing, the serious economic activity, would be done in Ontario. It would give transfer payments to the provinces east of Quebec, that it would be forthcoming, that it would be generous, that it would give them a handout. This is how the model was developed and how we ended up with the aberrations we have today.
However, what it did not expect, or what it said others would take care of after the Trudeau era, is that people finally realized that the tap could not be left on forever. At one point, it said it was no longer able to produce wealth and send it to the maritimes to keep people alive.
The solution that it found was not to diversify regional economies, but to turn off the tap. It decided to create such things as TAGS because it was faced with the real problem of dwindling fish stocks. So it developed a program, but did not implement it as planned. It did not respect the objective, which was to diversify the economy.
Today, the government has the gall to say that local communities chose to benefit from the system. Canada's central government has a fundamental problem because it thinks it knows best, as far as people in the regions are concerned. It ought instead to think about how important it is to look for solutions at the grassroots level, to see what they have to suggest and what it can do about it, so that regional economies can adjust and develop.
Therefore, the motion proposes that 50% of the surplus in the employment insurance fund be kept as a working margin, because there might be other recessions and we should not repeat the mistake we made in the past, when the unemployment insurance fund had a running deficit. We are willing to accept that 50% of the present surplus be used for that purpose, but we want the other 50% to be divided in two parts: one half would be applied to lowering contributions by 35 to 50 cents for each $100 of insurable earnings, and the other half to improving benefits for seasonal workers.
I think there is a lesson the Liberal government, and especially Liberal members from the maritimes, should have learned from the last election. There were even members on TV yesterday evening debating the issue. There was a member of the NDP who, after the election, said the same thing as she was saying before. And then there was a Liberal member, who had changed her tune since the election. I find this unacceptable.
It seems the situation we have before us is one the government will not be able to ignore. We have been back here for two months and a half, and every opposition party has asked questions on the employment insurance issue. Everybody has said that the system should be changed. This morning, we had an extra reason to ask for changes. We have figures showing a phenomenal increase in the number of independent, self-employed workers who represent a new feature of the labour market.
During the election campaign, the Bloc Quebecois suggested that these people should be able, on a voluntary basis, to be eligible to employment insurance. If the system is not changed, we will have a system that will be suited to the problems of ten years ago, but that will in no way be suited to the problems of today and the years to come.
As provided in the act, the government is required to report every year to the parliamentary committee to propose amendments to the act. Basically, if the government had taken its responsibilities and had recognized that there are indeed changes to be made and had decided to go ahead with them, there would be no need to debate this motion.
There is another demand on the table. Yesterday, the premier of Quebec stated that he would come to the federal-provincial meeting next December, provided that the issue of the employment insurance surplus was on the agenda. What he said was “to help improve the living conditions of seasonal workers”.
So, I think we should answer this appeal, the appeal made by the premiers and even by the human resources development committee, which did in fact pass a motion asking the finance minister to give priority during his prebudget consultations to the issues of employment and employment insurance.
The premier of Quebec, all of the premiers and the human resources development committee, that is a lot of people asking the government to use common sense and to listen to good sense.
I ask the government to endorse my motion as soon as possible and to come back to the House with a government bill that will meet the goals of the constituents in my riding and in all of eastern Canada, and I hope that all members will give proper consideration to this issue.
We are talking about managing the government surplus. The best way to manage this surplus properly is to be fair, so that everyone gets his or her share. Since employers and employees have generated most of the surplus, they should benefit most from its redistribution.
