Mr. Speaker, this is in relation to a question I put to the Minister of Human Resources Development about a week ago regarding EI benefits.
We have been down this road before in question period in the House. In fact it has been a national case, if you will. It is basically about abuse of EI recipients by the department itself.
I take exception to some of the questions and techniques used by the department to determine whether or not individual clam diggers are eligible for EI benefits. What I contend, and I stand by it, is that their right to privacy has been violated on the basis of 42 questions on a questionnaire they are forced to answer. These claimants are forced to answer these questions without any thought to legal counsel or help within the room to do so, which they are entitled to.
Then, when they are through answering those 42 questions, some of them very personal and having nothing to do with clam digging, they are forced to sign a statement attesting that everything they have said is true.
There is a place on that form for a witness signature. It is not interesting that a witness signature never appears on those forms?
The question is, why clam diggers? Why the lowly clam digger? Why do they have to be interrogated in this fashion?
The example I used, and members are familiar with this, is the billion dollar boondoggle in HRDC a couple of years ago. We raged about that in the House. The question would be how many chief executive officers in companies that were not entitled to benefits from or contributions by the Government of Canada were subjected to that type of interrogation. The answer would be none. Not one of them was interrogated in that way. If they were, they would have legal counsel with them, which they are entitled to, as the clam diggers are.
It is the same situation with the bureaucrats. Not one single bureaucrat was questioned by the department without legal counsel. How many of them lost their paycheques? Not one of them.
There is only one reason for this. It is that these people are poor and they are not quite as articulate as some of the smart, and I wanted to say smartass, bureaucrats. That is simply the case. They are an easy target for this type of interrogation and it has happened time and time again.
When I showed this 42 part questionnaire to the minister what she told me was “I agree with you, Mr. Thompson, that it is wrong and we should not be asking those types of personal questions”. Yet when it goes back to the bureaucrats, what do they do? They convince the minister that it is right, that there is nothing wrong with it and that they will continue to do it.
There is something about this country of ours. When we get up and want to rage about the indignities that are passed on and pushed on to the poor people of this country, nobody wants to talk about it. I guess it is not exciting. They simply are an easy target for a big government. That is exactly what the government has been doing. It has been consistent. Even some of the tax court judges on P.E.I. agree with my position.
It is wrong and it has to stop. I think it has to stop right here on the floor of the House of Commons by the minister standing up on her feet and saying that is enough.