Mr. Speaker, the hon. member's motion talks about the disastrous effects of reform of the employment insurance system. What disastrous effects?
As I reviewed last week's Hansard and listened to the speakers opposite today, it is obvious the hon. members opposite have been trying to raise people's fears, trying to manufacture disaster where none exists. Instead of assisting people to use the programs available they are agitating complaints.
I will speak in a moment of a few of the programs available under the system. The first speaker opposite spoke of the EI scandal, so-called, alleging that the government is taking over funds of workers. That is not the case at all. When the government first came to power there was a major deficit in terms of the unemployment insurance fund. We have set up the system so that we are sure there is an investment there in the future, that there is a fund we can go to in the future that will protect workers in the future. That is good management to ensure there is a system available to workers in the future so that employment insurance premiums do not have to be raised should we get into a downturn in the economy.
Employment insurance reform is helping Canadians get back into the workforce. We are accomplishing this through a number of direct initiatives. This is a reasonable reform package. This is a compassionate reform package that is clearly in the best interests of all Canadian workers.
Unlike the old passive UI system, the system the Bloc would have us return to, employment insurance is a proactive approach to supporting and encouraging Canadians to stay in the labour market as long as possible. That is why employment insurance combines income support with effective active re-employment measures.
Employment insurance rewards people who work. It invests in people who are prepared to invest in themselves. Taken together, employment insurance measures are fair and balanced.
Let us consider some of those programs. Let us consider the five active re-employment measures for a moment, the first being targeted wage subsidies. The Government of Canada contributes part of a person's wage and that enables employers to hire claimants or former claimants who receive valuable on the job experience. In 1996-97 this measure helped some 9,000 individuals.
For those with an entrepreneurial spirit we provide self-employment assistance. This measure, and I believe it is one of the better programs under the system, provides claimants with financial support and planning assistance to help them get a viable business off the ground. In 1996-97 this measure assisted over 13,000 entrepreneurs in starting their own business.
The government believes in proactive collaboration so we have job creation partnerships where we work with the provinces and the territories, the private sector, labour and community groups. Together we develop projects that do two things, generate new job opportunities for unemployed Canadians and enhance the local economy. In 1996-97 job creation partnerships assisted over 18,000 workers.
We are also piloting targeted earnings supplements that top up a claimant's wages for a short time. This active re-employment measure encourages the person to take work that pays less than their previous job. It is an effective way of helping them make a transition back into the workforce and find permanent work.
The fifth active re-employment measure is called skills, loans and grants. It offers training to upgrade people skills by helping with fees for study courses and living expenses. Training is now a provincial responsibility. So this measure is delivered by the provinces through labour market development agreements with the Government of Canada. Those five programs help people get work and have active re-employment measures to help them get back into the labour force. Employment insurance reform is generating savings of $800 million that the government will reinvest annually in these measures.
I can assure the hon. member that the effects will not be disastrous. They will be highly beneficial to Canadian workers and to the Canadian economy and to Quebeckers and the Quebec economy.
For 1998-99 Quebec will receive $5.3 million for active measures that will go toward helping workers in the hon. member's province. No one can accuse this government of short changing Quebeckers. But by golly members opposite, in terms of their fearmongering and their separatist rabble-rousing with their misleading information, are killing the economy. They are causing the loss of jobs. Instead of recognizing the programs available and talking about them in Quebec and showing people how they can utilize them to get back into the force, they are out there with their separatist leanings which are killing the very economy we are trying to improve.
The hon. member's motion says that employment insurance does not have the capacity to adapt to the new realities of the labour market. With all due respect, the member is wrong again. He should try telling that to a woman in Chicoutimi or in the riding of the member for Acadie—Bathurst who works 14 hours in a department store before becoming unemployed. Under the old UI system that the member for Acadie—Bathurst supports as well she was just plain out of luck because none of her work was insurable. Under the new hours based system, after 30 weeks of work she will qualify for employment insurance benefits. What is more, under the hours based system women working part time are now eligible for maternity benefits.
They say it is not adaptable to the labour market. Try telling that to the 270,000 women now covered by employment insurance for the first time in their lives. And yes, mothers who left the workforce to stay home and raise their children and who now want to return to work are eligible for active re-employment measures. That is being adaptable and that is looking to the future.
The hon. member says employment insurance reforms are tough on youth. No, they are not. They are designed to discourage young people from throwing their lives away by leaving school before they have completed their education.
Do hon. members opposite want to encourage young Quebeckers and young New Brunswickers to throw away their lives by dropping out of school and ending up on the treadmill of short term work followed by employment insurance income? I should think not, but their speeches lead me to believe otherwise. That is certainly not what the Government of Canada wants.
That is why we have the youth employment strategy to break that cycle. That is why we brought in the Canadian opportunities strategy to further provide young men and women with the opportunity to pursue their education and thus improve their chances of finding employment.
The objective, in case the hon. members do not get it, is not to see how many young people we can put on to employment insurance but how many we can find meaningful employment and long term work for.
What about seasonal workers? Employment insurance is there for seasonal workers. Again, the basic premise of employment insurance is to encourage workers to continue to work as long as possible. We wanted to discourage people from falling into the old habit of using employment insurance as an income supplement. That is what created dependency on unemployment insurance. It is too early to get the complete picture but it appears that workers are finding extra weeks of employment needed to qualify for benefits.
When we saw there was a flaw in the system in terms of the short weeks, we on this side instead of ranting and raving about it put in place pilot projects to ensure that those short weeks would not hurt workers and that the program would be there for those in the seasonal industries.
Unlike members opposite, we on this side are moving forward to ensure that the system is in place for the workers in the future, that there is investment so that we have the kind of program and social safety net the workforce so direly believes in.