Yes, it is terrible. Better yet, they should deliver on their threat, because our people want to work.
In any event, back to the Christmas wreathes, because this is an interesting case. This is what happens to our industries. We cannot get at the fish in the winter because of the ice, there are no Christmas wreathes in the summer, blueberries do not grow under the snow, and there is no peat on top of it. These are the kinds of industries in which the government invests.
There are secondary and tertiary industries, but that is too complicated for the government. They want to leave that for their friends in other countries: the Japanese and the folks in Boston get a crack at the secondary and tertiary sectors.
Back to the Christmas wreathes. The government told these people: “You do not have enough hours. Go and make Christmas wreathes”. Off went 130 or 150 people to work for someone in New Brunswick. All of a sudden, the government decided this was not insurable employment, once again, three years later. Three years later, it decided that 130 to 140 of these people were not eligible. What the government has done is completely unacceptable.
Furthermore, these people went to the employment insurance offices and explained how they were making the wreathes. For the information of wealthy Canadians who do not have to make Christmas wreathes, this is not something that you go into the woods to do. You do not strip the boughs off the tree in the woods and make the wreath with a supervisor standing beside you. For those who do not know about these things, you go into the woods, you cut branches, and then you have to strip them. Somebody then makes the wreathes. People went back home, opened their garage doors, set up tables and began turning out wreathes.
When they reported back to the employment insurance office, they explained all this. They were insurable. But, as I am telling you, the government needed money to pay down the national debt. It was not enough to cut employment insurance. They said they would digging into the pockets of the poor.
Reform Party members are asking for a decrease in premiums because companies are having a rough time. They never say that Canadians are suffering because of employment insurance cuts.
These people went to EI offices, and they were told they were eligible. In the Acadian peninsula today, for one company alone, 150 families owe between $10,000 to $15,000, and on top of that, they are seen as cheats. What the government has done to these people is totally unacceptable. That is what it did.
That is not all. They are now saying that we must encourage small and medium-sized businesses. If I had a small business today, I would naturally start by hiring my children. It would be normal because it would be my company and my investment. What did the government do? Relatives are not eligible for EI. So why encourage the development of small and medium sized businesses when their owners face such total discrimination in Canada? I thought we could expect fair and equal treatment in Canada.
There is also this black hole, this vacuum created because the government promised to make changes and to take care of them but did not follow through with the 910 hours now required, which people cannot accumulate.
To conclude, as I said over and over in my remarks, changes must be made immediately to the employment insurance plan. Seasonal workers are expecting the federal government to show some degree of compassion by passing immediately the motion put forward by the hon. member for Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, thereby ensuring that Canadian workers can look for work with dignity.
I want this motion to be a real motion that we could debate, instead of hiding like the hon. member for Moncton. During the election campaign, she promised the unemployed she would fight to improve the employment insurance system, but she now refuses to support the motion before us.