Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be able to speak to my colleague's bill, a private member's bill, brought forward not from the government or a government department, but from a member of the House. As such, I have great respect for members who take advantage and work within this very important opportunity that we as members of parliament have.
I find myself very impressed by the fact that this bill was drafted and entered into the system in 1997. That was before the true magnitude of the concern regarding how government was misusing the EI surplus became a strong issue. This member was very far-sighted. She looked ahead and saw a real issue before a number of other people did and I congratulate her for that.
What she is attempting to do in this bill is, first, to get government hands off the EI money and, second, to separate this money to make it more accountable and transparent in the way it is handled by crediting moneys collected under the Employment Insurance Act to an employment insurance account.
The first point concerns the employment insurance commission setting premium rates and generally having a more independent role in the management of this fund. The government member who just spoke said that this should not be handled by a commission accountable to workers and employees, but by the government which is accountable to all Canadians. Sitting in opposition, I see a woeful lack of accountability on the part of this government to Canadians, so I would oppose his arguments.
One of the concerns that workers and employees have is that the commission is not really accountable to them. It is a body that is not chosen from workers and employees. It has a very strong government influence. The strong hand of government is very evident in the workings of the commission. Far from this commission being accountable to workers and employees, in my opinion it needs to be strengthened in that direction.
If the member wishes to pursue this issue in another bill, since this one is not votable, I would suggest that strengthening the accountability of the commission to the people whose money is involved and who this program is supposed to serve would be important.
I would remind government members that this is supposed to be unemployment insurance. If it is really insurance, surely the insured, the people who pay the premiums and have to live or die with the benefits, should have a say about how their program program that they pay for and which they rely on in times of unemployment should be structured.
For the cabinet to use this program for its own political purposes is not appropriate. It is definitely not appropriate for the government to use the premiums of this insurance program for its own purposes, its own slush fund or pot of money to do with it as it will. That is the second part of the member's bill. It attempts to separate the moneys paid into the employment insurance account from the general revenue of the government. I think even the member would acknowledge that this provision in her bill is not as strong as she would like to see it. I would certainly like to see a stronger provision.
Although it talks about moneys being credited to the employment insurance account, it does not specify explicitly that this account would be separate from the general revenue fund and that government could not spend money from the fund on other purposes. Clarification and strengthening of that provision in light of the government's insistence and anxiety to use these moneys for other purposes would be necessary.
The government speaker talked about the fact that there had been reductions to EI premiums. I would point out that these are minuscule reductions. We have had debates on this before in the House. I do not need to belabour the point.
The chief actuary of the fund says that premiums could be reduced by fully a third and still leave a very prudent, even a very generous surplus in the fund against a time when for some reason there may be more withdrawals from the fund than there presently are. The fund's own actuary is saying that the reductions the government has made are minuscule, that they do not really get the fund to a reasonable level. Of course the government is using the enormous overpayment from Canadian workers for other purposes, and particularly to make itself look good on the deficit side. It is a kind of borrowing from an insurance fund of Canadians for other purposes. That is not the way this fund should be run.
The member also talked about skills training. Most members in the House if not all would agree that with our changing technology and our changing economic circumstances and the information boom in recent years, training and retraining are very important components of workplace effectiveness. These are things that Canadian workers need. There has not been an adequate debate about the extent to which the insurance fund, the insurance against unemployment, should be a legitimate funder of those programs.
I would be interested if the member proposing this bill is so inclined, to hear how she feels the fund should be used in this regard. How would workers and employers themselves feel about not only paying for some of this training and retraining but then having those programs overseen by government?
I am sure the member has had people come to her office, as have I, workers who have taken training or retraining programs under the EI system which are administered and run by government. They are very disappointed in many cases. Some programs give virtually no skills at all. Even though workers diligently perform everything that has been asked of them, they go back into the workforce and find that they have not received any substantial training or benefit, or the training has been for jobs that do not exist. If there is going to be a retraining effort for workers, it should be directed much more by what they themselves feel they need and what the labour force is looking for.
This is a very worthwhile effort on the part of the member. It is a bill which we all know is needed and which is moving in the right direction. I applaud the member and support her efforts wholeheartedly.