Mr. Speaker, on this next to last day of sitting, I welcome the opportunity to go back to a question I asked in this House back in April. I said:
Mr. Speaker, on Thursday, 300 people gathered on the Acadian peninsula to ask the federal and provincial governments to assume their responsibility in the matter of the black hole created by the changes to unemployment insurance in 1996 by this government.
This black hole, or gapper as it is called, is the time between the end of the EI benefit period in January and May, when fishing resumes, when forestry workers can start working again and when construction employees can find work.
In my question, I also said this:
Yesterday, the Premier of New Brunswick told a group of 200 people that New Brunswick was not responsible for the black hole. What is the Minister of Human Resources Development going to do to resolve the problem of the black hole once and for all?
The minister's reply was:
Mr. Speaker, we are very sensitive to the plight of seasonal workers.
How can the Liberals be sensitive to the plight of seasonal workers, when they are the ones who, in 1996, put them in that black hole? It is the federal Liberal government which put workers and seasonal workers in a black hole, and the minister says:
Mr. Speaker, we are very sensitive to the plight of seasonal workers.
Yet it was the Liberals who put seasonal workers in the black hole.
This is disgusting. That is the word I will use. I had a private member's motion, which was introduced in the House of Commons and passed by 100% of those present. The Liberals voted in favour of my motion, indicating that they were going to review unemployment insurance. But they have not yet had the gumption to do so.
In March, at the Liberal Convention that was held here in Ottawa, the Prime Minister said “We lost the Atlantic provinces because of the changes to employment insurance. The law has to be changed if we are to win their support back”.
I can say to the Liberals across the way, however, that the people of the Atlantic provinces cannot be bought. The Liberals' changes to employment insurance are not going to buy them votes.
What they need to do, in all honesty, is to make changes to employment insurance. They are supposedly not happy with the changes that have been made, and upset about the situation of the seasonal workers. I would therefore ask them to do the honourable thing, and make real changes in employment insurance for the seasonal workers, whether in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, Newfoundland, Northern Ontario—in Timmins, Kapuskasing or Hearst—or in Windsor, in Edmonton, Alberta, or anywhere else.
As the chief government whip has told us, Cornwall got $500,000 from the transitional jobs fund in order for Wal-Mart to create jobs and so on. I thin that he believes in the cause. Yet we know that even the Liberal Party whip had voted in favour of changes to employment insurance. All the Liberals did.
Now, before the House adjourns, I would like to see the parliamentary secretary rise in this House and tell us “Yes, the Liberals are going to make changes to employment insurance, not to buy votes, but because the situation we have put seasonal workers in back in 1996 saddens us and we want to remedy the situation, and because it is unacceptable, from the humane point of view”.