Mr. Speaker, I have followed the debates that have gone on since this morning with considerable interest, especially since the party in government invoked closure, with the aim of preventing us from speaking more and perhaps from looking more closely at the whole employment insurance system governing workers and work in Canada and Quebec.
Employment insurance, it must be understood, is a sort of mutual insurance, a kind of insurance frequently found in Quebec, although less and less so now, because what was mutual is being demutualized.
The federal government's approach and concept of the employment insurance plan was to guarantee real mutual insurance. Thus, workers fearful about one day losing their job decided to contribute an amount of money in order to create a fund for themselves that would help them, in darker days, to continue their day to day existence, meet their obligations, the first of which is to eat. That was the aim of employment insurance.
Unfortunately, this government is incapable of revealing its true objectives to the people of Canada. It is incapable of telling it like it is and incapable of saying that to eliminate the almost immeasurable accumulated debt of $680 billion, sales taxes or gasoline taxes, already fairly high, or income taxes had to be increased.
The government would rather get its hands on the surplus that was generated to benefit the taxpayers, not to let the government use it to pay back the debt, the deficits that have accumulated over the years. The government's only concern is to show that federalism is profitable and that everything is fine, that the government is rolling over in clover. That is not true. The government is using money it should never have been allowed to grab. The auditor general recently said so.
The previous speaker pointed out that since the government has been in office the premiums of the employees have dropped from $3 to around $2. This is a significant amount of money to pour back in the economy. However, for some five years now, we could have maintained the current EI system without charging a penny more to the workers, because with the surplus we would have been able to meet the needs of all the EI contributors.
Unfortunately, the government lacked the political will to increase the taxes in order to reduce the accumulated deficits. Instead, it chose to ignore the problem. Employment insurance rules have been changed; only 42% of people qualify for it. Yet, 100% of them pay premiums the minute they start working, but the government says nothing about this.
It is as if someone were to take out property insurance and the insurer were to say “If your property goes up in flames, you have four chances out of ten of getting paid, but you must pay 100% of your premiums and pray God that your property will not go up in flames”. This is somewhat the same thing.
The auditor general recently came here and supported the opposition's arguments. There is no basis, no calculation to scientifically establish the workers' contribution rate for employment insurance. It is pulled out of a hat. Things are not so bad. Since much of our debt is owed to foreigners, with the fluctuation of interest rates on the international market, contributions to employment insurance are reduced or maintained at the same level for a while, without any kind of ability to objectively and correctly assess the needs of the plan.
Certainly, if we constantly draw on the employment insurance fund to pay for the accumulated national debt of almost $600 billion, we will never be able to contribute enough to pay off such a debt. Was this the true objective of the employment insurance plan when it was created? Let us not forget that it results from a federal-provincial agreement, from a constitutional amendment made in 1943, I believe, that transferred the whole employment insurance sector from provincial to federal authorities.
People put their confidence in the federal government. We now see the results. In Quebec, we are now used to this, and we no longer have any illusions about these people. That is why members on this side of the House would rather take off with what little they have left now, because in a few years we will have nothing left.
As for the health system, the federal government used to contribute 50% of the costs in the provinces. Now it is barely paying 15%, but it sets the standards. This is like inviting someone to a restaurant and footing the bill while the person decides on the menu. It takes some nerve to act like this. Such is the story of the party opposite.
Let us talk about women's issues, including parental leave, as they relate to this bill. There are studies—and the Liberals know them as well as I do—which show that women are paid less than men. This is not from me. Women are certainly aware of that situation, because they went all the way to the Federal Court of Appeal to defend the principle of pay equity. The government was paying women less than men. It was told so by a number of courts and administrative tribunals. The government threatened until the last minute to take the issue to the Supreme Court of Canada, to challenge the principle that equal work should mean equal pay for women.
It is the same thing with employment insurance. The same old principles that have been governing the Liberals for eons are resurfacing. A pregnant worker is not entitled to benefits unless she has accumulated 600 hours of work. There is no exception to this rule. There are pregnant women who, because of the very nature of their work, because they are exposed to certain risks such as computers, radioactive rays and so on must, on the recommendation of their doctor, stop working before having accumulated 600 hours.
The bill does not provide exceptions for such cases. No, the rules are very strict. It is always black and white for the party in office. That is the law and that is it. They make it and they impose it.
The Liberals are really not exercising the wisdom of Solomon. The hon. member for Hochelaga—Maisonneuve is studying law in his spare time, but it is not a waste of time.
Even though he is doing it in his spare time, it is not a waste of time. He has become a legal expert who can be pretty convincing. He will tell members the same thing I am telling them now. We could have done away with EI contributions for several years, as the auditor general told us. The government would have been able to maintain the program. Now it is going to take $30 billion from those who work hard to earn a living and use that money to pay off the debt Canada has accumulated over the years to cover this government's wild spending.
We are talking here about $2.8 billion. I see you nodding in agreement, Mr. Speaker. The embassy in Tokyo cost $2.8 billion. Five thousand dollars does not even cover the value and the surface area of the embassy grounds. Such lavishness is just incredible. Yet, young women with young children who are unfortunate enough to lose their jobs are condemned to live in misery by this government. It has no qualms about letting these people starve. That is poverty.
When we talk about poverty, that is the kind of poverty we are talking about, and not the poverty of the billionaire friend of the government who made only $250 million instead of $500 billion on a government transaction involving a 40 year lease. He is not the one who is poor. The one who is poor is the woman who arrives at work one morning and is told that there is no job for her any more. It is the woman who is told by her physician that she must stop working because she is pregnant and unable to go on. That woman does a lot for society. I know my friends opposite are totally insensitive to this kind of misery.