Mr. Speaker, I am always delighted to address the House on behalf of my constituents.
On May 8, 2000, I put a question to the Minister of Human Resources Development. I submitted to the minister that:
—the counties of Albert, Petitcodiac, Hillsborough and Salisbury, are part of an urban economic zone, when they are in fact rural communities with high rates of unemployment.
I asked the minister to tell the House when she was going to begin the consultation process. I also reminded the minister that workers needed an answer before next fall.
Under subsection 18(2) of the EI Regulations, employment insurance regions must be reviewed at least every five years. Finally, this week, consultations began.
I was very happy to see that Hopewell Cape, Alma, Riverside-Albert, Fundy, Salisbury and Petitcodiac had been included in the new rural zone. I will explain why this move was so important.
I will give the House the example of Alma, which has Fundy National Park, and Kent county, which has Kouchibouguac National Park. The employees at Fundy National Park, who were doing the same work as those at Kouchibouguac National Park, needed 655 hours to qualify for employment insurance with a duration of about 15 weeks, while workers at Kouchibouguac National Park needed only 420 hours for a maximum of 32 weeks. That created quite an injustice between the communities.
Unfortunately this spring people working in Albert county, Hillsborough, Petitcodiac and Salisbury, which were zoned in with urban regions, went four months without income because of the 1996 legislation which shortened the period.
I would like to thank the government for correcting some of this injustice. We have to thank it when it does something good and I did see something good happen this week.
However, two communities were excluded from the rural zone in my riding. That is going to cause these communities quite a lot of hardship. The two communities that have been excluded are Elgin and Hillsborough. We have statistics from 1996 which show that those communities were at 17.8% unemployment. I strongly recommend to the minister that these two communities be taken into consideration during the consultation. Both Elgin and Hillsborough have very high rates of employment.
For example, if it stays as proposed, workers from Hillsborough and Elgin will be working in Hopewell Cape. Working side by side in the same industry, one worker will need 420 hours to qualify for maybe a period of 32 weeks, while the other worker working next to him or her will need over 600 hours to qualify for maybe a period of 15 weeks.
I think the government is on the right track in solving the injustice created by the economic zones that we had before. It now has a chance to make it fully correct and just for everyone. I certainly hope that the minister will take my recommendations. I am sure the mayors and community leaders are going to be putting forth recommendations also that those communities be included in the rural zone where they should be.