Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion by the member for Madawaska—Restigouche.
Previously the minister said: “In light of the fact that we do not have all the information required, I am afraid we cannot support the member's motion even though we recognize his good intentions”.
Recognizing his good intentions might be stretching it a little. We are certainly all concerned and want the pilot programs continued in one fashion or another.
I believe there is more than meets the eye here in terms of the intentions of the member for Madawaska—Restigouche when putting forward this motion.
I am pleased that the member does recognize the value of the important changes this government has made in terms of the previous unemployment insurance legislation, in particular as related to what was called the short week issue.
I also point out a little recognition. This really happened under the guidance and the hard work of the member for Kenora—Rainy River in his previous capacity as parliamentary secretary.
We saw that there was a problem in terms of short weeks. We brought it forward and he, along with a number of us, developed the process to fix that short week problem. We acted on it and we have had the pilot program in place for almost two years as evidence of where to go from here.
Some of the earlier speeches concern me. The acting leader of the fifth party said “There has to be compassion” and tried to leave the impression that the EI changes brought about by this government lacked compassion. The hon. member is flatly wrong. In fact this motion highlights one of the better examples of how we have been flexible and innovative in reforming the old UI system.
It would be useful to examine how the small weeks became an issue in the first place.
Under the old system of UI weekly benefits depended on earnings in the most recent 12 to 20 insurable week periods; that is, the weeks with more than 15 hours or $150 in earnings. That was over the last year or 52 weeks. Depending on the work patterns under the old UI system an individual's benefit could equal up to 146% of insured earnings from work.
The intent of the original new EI legislation was to base benefits on earnings from work within a continuous period. This design ensured that benefit levels were more reflective of the normal flow of earnings from employment and there was incentive to work even small weeks as every hour at work would count toward eligibility, duration and benefit level. It was, however, seen as harshly impacting on individuals with gaps in their employment.
One of the most illustrative examples of this happens on a potato farm where an individual works in the spring for an extended period of time, with long hours, for about six weeks. They have a fairly slack period during the summer months and then again have heavy employment in the fall during harvest.
What clearly was happening was that an individual would be called back for a half day to grade potatoes for four hours. As a result of coming back for those four hours of work, the gap created a short week, which created a very serious reduction in the individual's benefit level. Certainly the individuals did not want to go to work with this serious impact. The employers found themselves with the problem of getting workers to come in for the very short period of time. That was not the intention of the EI act. The intention was that every hour would count.
As a result of the earlier gap issue, the legislation was amended to enable individuals to ignore up to 12 weeks of no earnings within a 26 week period when calculating their benefit levels. However, that improvement, ignoring weeks of no earnings, resulted in a disincentive to accept a small week. That is, in some instances it was better to have a week of no earnings versus a small week with low earnings because it would have an impact on future benefit returns. If a week with low earnings was included in earnings, the individual's average earnings and thus benefit level would fall and that worked against our stated purpose in terms of the employment insurance legislation of having every hour count. Therefore, fixing the gaps issue created the small weeks issue which we then brought in the fix for.
I am very pleased with the way we on this side of the House responded. When the problem came to light, the Minister of Human Resources Development asked a group of Atlantic MPs, of which I happen to be one, to talk to Canadians and to find solutions. We decided to pilot test a system whereby small weeks could be bundled together or where they could be excluded in the calculation of average weekly earnings in the determination of the EI benefit.
So far the results have been encouraging. About 130,000 claimants have benefited from these pilot programs, including a high proportion of women. Together their benefits have increased by about $19 per week.
These projects are well received and effective. However, they are slated to expire next month, which brings us to the following questions. Do we extend the pilot projects? If so, which project? Do we extend the exclusion pilot which is in place in western Canada or do we extend the bundling project which is in place in eastern Canada? The bottom line in both pilot projects is the same. The benefit levels for EI participants are the same under both projects. I can see how someone would want to make sure the program continues, especially when that program is delivering and being helpful, as has already been proven.
We need to wait for the facts. Once we have all the facts and we have sifted through the evidence we will all be in a better position to say whether or not these pilot projects have accomplished what they were intended to accomplish in the beginning.
That is why I come back to the question of whether there are so-called good intentions on the other side in terms of proposing this motion today. From my position I say that this program is needed and it needs to be continued. However, today may not be the day to make that decision. There were a lot of changes in terms of the EI legislation. There are other areas where there has been injury and there are other areas where there has been improvement. We need to monitor all of those aspects. We cannot just come to a quick, hasty fix. We have seen the kinds of Tory fixes in the past under the old UI legislation. When we came in we had to reconfigure, change and improve upon those quick fixes.
We need to take some time. We need to be very careful and cautious. We need to make sure the evidence is there in terms of what needs to be done, in terms of which program should be kept, how it should be done, and in terms of what other measures we should improve before we get into opening up the Employment Insurance Act.