Mr. Speaker, on November 23, 1998, I rose in this House to speak of the 4,000 workers on Prince Edward Island who were forced to wait six weeks to qualify for employment insurance or to receive benefits.
The response by the Minister of Human Resources Development sidestepped the question entirely. He said, and I quote:
What I keep saying is that this reform has been such an important one for Canadians that we as a government will monitor very closely its impact and we will make the right changes when they need to be made, as we did not too long ago with the small weeks to address the concerns of my Atlantic colleagues.
I never said anything about small weeks. I spoke about the 4,000 workers on Prince Edward Island who were forced to wait six weeks before receiving EI benefits. That shows how much the Minister of Human Resources Development is out of touch with the real problems people are facing.
In his response, he also spoke of the “gappers”. I did not say anything about “gappers”. I was speaking about people who have had to wait six weeks for an employment insurance cheque.
Today I got a letter from a lady who wrote “How is a person supposed to manage on a starvation income of $636 a month, when the rent is $400 and then there is the phone and the electricity, not to mention all the little payments that have to be made? Food has to be paid for somehow”. She continues “I often ask God to come and take me away. I wonder what point there is in living, why we are put on earth to live in such misery. Help us. Urgently”.
This is the kind of message I am hearing from all over. Our people are suffering. Canadians are suffering.
The minister referred to “7,000 people in a black hole. Today, there are only 2,000”. Only 2,000 suffering. There are only 2,000 with no money coming in from January to May, whose refrigerators are empty and who are sending letters like those I have received from people telling me they want to kill themselves after 27 years of working in plants. It is a disgrace that they are being treated like this by the Liberal government after 27 years of work.
The members opposite should be ashamed because, when they were in opposition, they spoke out against the Progressive Conservative Party's UI cuts. The hon. member for Saint-Maurice, the Liberal leader, said that the Progressive Conservatives were not attacking the real problem, which was the economy, preferring instead to go after unemployed Canadians.