Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for being a foil to this speech because he has just come into the most exciting part of the speech, linking EI premiums and what the government has done by removing, for the member's information, $100 billion in EI premiums from the taxpayer, from hardworking people. Our party has said for years that the government should be lowering those premiums because in effect they are using the EI premiums as a tax on business.
In the hon. member's riding in the province of Quebec I am sure many of his business colleagues are telling him that the EI premiums are too high, that the government has been taxing them through EI premiums, pocketing the money and spending it as it sees fit. It is not on the basis of need and not on the basis of putting people back to work, but saying to the public “We can live with EI. EI is an important program”. What the government is not telling the public is that it is using $100 billion of that money as a form of tax. Under those circumstances it hurts the business people who would love to have money to reinvest in their businesses.
Many small and medium size businesses, and most small businesses have fewer than five employees, have said to many of us that if they had more money, they could hire more people. If they had more money they could reinvest in their business and be more competitive, but the government is taking all that money from them through payroll taxes and EI is one of those payroll taxes.
My point on my hon. colleague's excellent question is that the EI premiums are too high. That is the bottom line. They are far too high. Rather than being a help to the unemployed the EI premiums are a hindrance to the unemployed and the underemployed.
As we have done for some seven years, we beg and implore that the government lower the EI premium to make it far more reasonable. If the government wants to know by how much it can ask us because we have been asking for a substantial reduction for a very long time.
Another point I want to make concerns people such as single mothers and people on welfare who would like to return to the workforce. They are actually penalized for trying to return to the workforce. We should reward those people who want to get the skills. Through the EI program, and in working with the provinces on welfare, we should make sure that money will be there to help them get a leg up. We should support them when they say they want to learn the skills to get back into the workforce but that they need daycare for their children. That is something we could do. We could help them by providing the resources so that in the long term they will get the skills necessary to return to the workforce.
Currently those people who try to return to the workforce, who are perhaps single moms, who are on welfare, who are in difficult circumstances find it very difficult to return. The system penalizes those who try to help themselves. Unfortunately many of them say it is not worth their while to get off welfare, that it is worth their while to stay on it, but they do not want to. The government should look at reasonable ways to reform the EI system rather than tinker around the edges.
The government has made a point of criticizing us on the issue of seasonal workers. It believes that raising the EI amounts that can be earned is somehow beneficial in some cases or that lowering the bar on how much one has to work is somehow beneficial. I wonder how often the government asks those seasonal workers, be they in the maritimes or elsewhere, whether they want to be seasonal workers or whether they want to work full time. I have never met a seasonal worker who did not want to work full time. I would venture to say that virtually all of the people the government spoke to would say that they want to work full time, that they want to work all year long.
Why does the government not use the taxpayers' money wisely to provide people with the skills necessary to be employed all year long, and not just 10 weeks or 12 weeks a year but all year long? In my riding of Esquimalt—Juan de Fuca many people in the fishery have been displaced. Instead of providing moneys to enable these people to be employed and to learn other skills, much money has gone into wasted programs that have not enabled them to be employed.
In my area, as there could be on the east coast, there are great opportunities in aquaculture if they are done properly. If we look at how the Norwegians and the Chileans do aquaculture and not how the Indonesians have done it, it would provide people who have been displaced by the changes in commercial fishing with jobs in areas similar to what they did before.
I am confident that as a country we can get back in aquaculture what we had before. We can take the initiative so it is a vibrant, sustainable and environmentally safe practice and that many people in the fishery rather than hanging on by their fingernails will be employed all year long in a different type of fishing industry.
Those are the innovations we need to explore. We do not see very much of that coming from the government and I would say mostly from the Prime Minister's office. I know some of the backbench MPs have tried to give the ministers at the front good suggestions and we have as well but they have not listened. That speaks to the fact that we do not live in a democracy. The single greatest problem, the reason our EI system and so many other things have not been fixed is that we do not live in a democracy. We live in a four year dictatorship. The public has a chance to vote only once every four or five years.