Mr. Speaker, first of all I would like to thank my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst for giving us the opportunity today to discuss once again the serious problem of seasonal workers.
My Bloc Quebecois colleague who just spoke closed his speech with a reference to dignity. It is true that our seasonal workers have been stripped of their dignity. That happened some years ago already.
It happened the day that the Prime Minister of Canada, that same man who came to the riding I represent, then called Beauséjour, seeking votes. When he got back to Ottawa after campaigning in our riding, the first thing he told all the Canadians in the country is that he had been to New Brunswick where he had seen unemployed people bending their elbows in taverns. He said:
“In New Brunswick, seasonal workers are in taverns collecting EI”.
You can easily imagine what Canadians think of seasonal workers now. These words came from the mouth of the man who went after these same people to get voted into this House and to now be the Prime Minister. This gives us some idea of what kind of man is leading this country today. The people of New Brunswick could readily find a number of terms to describe him.
However, we have our hands full doing away with this perception and making Canadians realize that seasonal workers are not lazy people. If only hon. members could go to these plants, they would see that men and women there sometimes put in 100 or so hours a week for minimum wage, on their feet from morning to night, sunup to sundown, trying to earn a little money to take home.
The same thing can be seen in all sectors not just in New Brunswick. It is the same in any area of seasonal employment. First of all, it is not the workers who are seasonal, it is the work that is, or their communities, with their high unemployment levels.
Instead of trying to develop our regions, instead of trying to create more jobs, this government has taken away the only program that helped these people. The reform was well thought out by this Liberal government. It focussed on one particular group, the workers in areas of seasonal employment. They are the ones targeted.
This has created a situation that is quite desperate in some areas. We have a discriminatory clause on the intensity rule. We have all talked about it but nobody is doing anything about it. I do not see the Liberal government doing anything about it.
We do not hear enough about the divisor. Most of the MPs in the House probably do not know what the word means because they have never been on EI. Well some of us have collected EI cheques because we have needed to. The divisor is a serious problem because some people receive only $30 week. Before the last cuts to the program, they were receiving maybe $200 or $250 a week. This is what the new EI has done to these people. We have to recognize that in order to fix it.
How about the pilot project we are under? Practically the whole country is under this project and not under the real act because of the small weeks. We are not talking about that either. That has to be permanently correctly.
How about the zones? We could solve maybe 80% of the problems in some areas if we had a minister who would rezone the way it should be done. Let us put the rural communities together and the urban communities together. In Albert county, Petitcodiac and Salisbury, we have two national parks in one zone and another one in another zone. One group of workers in these parks can qualify with 420 hours while the other group of workers need 669 hours.
Let us talk about the duration for these two communities. In one community, the workers can receive 26 weeks of EI while in the other community the workers receive 15 weeks, but they are all in the same riding. How can this happen? It happened under this government.
We have to talk about the duration problem. We have people going with no incomes for up to 12 to 15 weeks. Can anybody here live with no income for 15 weeks? Why do we think that a person who has seasonal job can? It is unbelievable.
Let us talk about the Canada jobs fund. The Canada jobs fund can be very good if it is used right. The government likes to talk about abuse in the EI system but it forgets to talk about its abuse of the fund. I have to say that I have seen it work very well in my riding if it is done right. All we have to do is get the politicians who make it not right out of the picture. Let us just do it right. Let us let the MP recommend the project.
In one instance I did not recommend a project in my riding because I knew there was something wrong with it. Let us think for a minute what happened to it. Within a year it had folded and we lost the money. I had not recommended that project but the minister went over my head and gave funds to that group knowing it was not going to work. There was no plan. Little political favours like that cost a lot money. Those programs will work if we want them to work.
Since the last round of cuts, my riding alone has lot $52 million a year. New Brunswick has lost over a billion dollars in four years. That is a lot of money. That will not solve our problem. Our problem is high unemployment. We have to create the jobs. We probably will never create enough jobs for everybody to work year-round. We have to recognize that we have seasonal industries.