Mr. Speaker, I would like to advise you that I will be sharing my time with my colleague, the member for Waterloo—Wellington.
I am pleased to rise today to speak to the motion before us. I believe it is important to set the record straight with regard to the Bloc's motion and the employment insurance program.
Lately it has become obvious that the Bloc is living in the past. Instead of moving forward and looking for ways to help people escape unemployment and go back to work, the Bloc is still recommending ways for people to draw employment insurance as long as possible.
The Bloc is still recommending ways to foster greater dependence on employment insurance while being critical of the new employment insurance plan designed to help people get back to work.
We have no interest in going back. Our government and our reforms are about moving forward and helping Canadians meet the challenges of the 21st century. The old EI system was in need of total overhaul. The system was 25 years old and needed to be changed to adapt to today's labour market. It was totally focused on passive income support. It did nothing to help unemployed Canadians move toward work.
The new economy requires Canadians to constantly upgrade their skills and knowledge in order to be competitive in the world of work. The new employment insurance system is precisely about finding a balance between giving people the temporary support they need when they lose a job and helping people with the tools they need to get back to work.
We needed to reform employment insurance, to modernize the system, to make it fairer and more equitable, to break an ongoing cycle of dependence on employment insurance, to give unemployed Canadians access to programs that would help them get back to work and try to create jobs in areas of high unemployment.
We are convinced that, contrary to what Bloc members are saying, Canadians would rather work than receive employment insurance benefits. We believe they want to retrain to acquire the necessary skills to find employment in the new economy. We believe Canadians are more optimistic regarding their future than what the Bloc will ever say in this matter.
Canadians' optimism, coupled with our budget policies, helps foster an economic climate favourable to job creation. Since 1993, over 1.2 million new jobs have been created in Canada. Last year alone a further 450,000 Canadians found jobs in Canada. The unemployment rate is at its lowest in nearly eight years. In every province the number of people on welfare is down, including in Quebec where it is the lowest it has ever been in the past five years.
Our review of the old unemployment insurance plan revealed a need for change in various areas. The old plan was based on weeks worked rather than hours. It was unfair. Whether you worked 15 hours or 60 hours a week did not make any difference. Your benefits were calculated according to the number of weeks you had worked. If you worked fewer than 15 hours a week, you were just not eligible for unemployment insurance. For thousands of workers, particularly women, this meant being trapped in a ghetto of 14 hour a week jobs because employers avoided paying EI premiums by giving them less than 15 hours of work every week.
When these workers lost their jobs, they did not have access to income support or any other form of support to find another job. Now, for the first time, all part time workers are covered under the plan. Unemployment insurance was a passive income support system. However, a passive approach does not make people's lives better. It only maintains them in their current situation longer.
It may be a good thing for the opposition, but not for the many workers looking for help to find a new job, a better job, and not only for a cheque every two weeks. Our government chose to establish a plan designed to help workers prepare their future with optimism. That is why we came up with a series of active employment measures: to help people get back to work.
That is why we have taken part of the savings generated by the employment insurance reform and reinvested them in measures that help people rejoin the workforce instead of maintaining them on employment insurance.
That is why we are transferring $2.7 billion to the Quebec government, so that active employment measures designed to help people go back to work can be developed locally to meet local needs.
It is because of this employment insurance reform that we were in a position to negotiate with the Quebec government a historic agreement on the development of the labour market. That agreement led to the solving of a difficult issue with the Quebec government, one that pleases everyone and shows that Canadian federalism is being modernized and is adjusting.
In order to help people get back to work, we invested $300 million in the transitional jobs fund. The purpose of that fund is to promote employment, specifically in very high unemployment regions.
We anticipate that this investment, made over a three year period, will ultimately result in the creation of 30,000 new jobs.
We also felt that unemployment insurance encouraged dependence. The passive approach lured many Canadians into an ongoing cycle of short term jobs and unemployment insurance. Worst of all, studies showed us that easy access to employment insurance often encouraged young people to leave school and start on a cycle of short term work and employment insurance. Part of our changes had to be based on trying to break this cycle of dependence and to help people find and take available work.
Have employment insurance reforms succeeded in helping Canadians? The Bloc should ask the woman in Sidney, Nova Scotia, who is working 14 hours per week in a departmental store. Under the former system, that woman would not have qualified, but now, after 30 weeks of work, she is eligible for benefits.
The Bloc should also ask the young father from Trois-Rivières, who is working at three different jobs for 14 hours per week. Under the old system, none of these jobs would have qualified him, but that person can now collect benefits after 11 weeks of work.
We could also put the same question to the young woman from the Cornwall area who, through our positive employment measures, received financial assistance to help her plan and set up her own business, after losing her job at the local office of a large insurance company. Her business, Excellent Secretarial Services, is doing very well indeed.
I think it is important to correct a misleading and incorrect statement the Bloc Quebecois keeps making about the negative impact of our employment insurance reforms on women.
I would like the Bloc members to tell us why they are against our employment insurance reforms, which eliminated the 14 hour trap for women. Around 270,000 women are now eligible for employment insurance for the first time.
Close to 70% of those who are getting the new family income supplement are women who now qualify for this supplement.
We are more ambitious than the Bloc members. What we want is for workers, whether they are young people, women or experienced, to really be able to remain in the labour force. And should they lose their jobs, they will get from our system the tools and the means they need to get back to work, unlike the Bloc members who are simply trying to ensure the people stay on employment insurance benefits as long as possible. It is their only goal.