Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to address Bill C-2 today and to give the bill my qualified support.
That is not to say that I support the government's draconian tactics of shutting down the debate using closure. Use of closure once again shows that the government has a disregard for the central role of debate in the House and in committees.
While I feel compelled to support the baby steps that the bill takes to reverse the massive damage that the same government did to our unemployment insurance system, I do so reluctantly. I do so because I know it is better for the people in Dartmouth to have a little improvement than none at all.
At the same time, I also feel compelled to point out the basic flaws in the current system which the bill fails to even contemplate.
Bill C-2 fails to deal with the fundamental contradictions of our national employment strategy. We have Canada employment centres in almost every community in Canada actively promoting self-employment as a way to deal with an increasingly transitional labour force.
At the same time these same Canada employment centres administer an insurance program for unemployed Canadians that is specifically designed to deny all self-employed workers the same benefits their neighbours enjoy if they find themselves unemployed. This is madness. Why should someone become more economically vulnerable because they followed the government's advice to move into self-employment? Why should they put their families at risk because the government has decided that the best way to manage our labour market is to cut people off EI benefits?
Ottawa has been saving billions of dollars through denying people the right to adequate employment protection in the event of unemployment. The calculation of the amount of money lost to my community alone has been at least $20 million per year simply because of the restrictions this government has put in place. It has limited the amount of payouts claimants can receive and has reduced the number of persons eligible for benefits.
I reluctantly support the bill because some of these restrictions are being removed and my community needs the money, but the bill does nothing to address the fundamental problems with our employment insurance system.
It does nothing, for example, to address the fact that artists are currently unable to qualify for employment insurance. Our government considers artists self-employed, a fact that many would dearly love to change, and they are therefore denied maternity benefits and sickness benefits under EI. They are also denied the ability to participate in the Canada pension plan.
Does the government honestly believe that artists or others who are self-employed never have children, never get sick or never develop a disability? It is a tribute to our artists that they have been willing to make such a sacrifice for their art, but surely it is not a necessary part of our public policy or, if it is, I want the government to stand in this place and say so.
We also have no serious industrial plan to allow for the smooth transition for workers who lose their jobs in a certain occupation to go into another related occupation. Instead, they are told to become entrepreneurs, ineligible for EI, and it is often an unsuitable match for both.
I think of the situation of the more than 100 workers who are being laid off at the Dartmouth marine slips. These workers have worked for years repairing ships. They have exhausted their reduced EI benefits and are now facing welfare. They want to work in the supply bases for the Sable gas fields. While they are receiving co-operation from the local HRDC office, it is clear that there is nothing in our employment insurance system which connects the dots that they see so clearly.
One dot is an industry closing. Another dot is a related industry opening in the same area. Why can we not just move these workers to the new industry and give their families some security?
However, this is not something our system allows for. Instead we have a government basking in over $30 billion of employment insurance surplus while still leaving thousands of workers, even after Bill C-2, with no benefits.
Even worse is the insistence by large corporations and the official opposition that the action they would like to see is not giving unemployed people adequate benefits for which they have already paid or not extending the program to others who need it. Instead they call for slashing the costs to companies for EI premiums while maintaining our currently restrictive system. More money for businesses and less for the unemployed is the business agenda of this social program.
I hope the government will start to use our employment insurance system to address the problems of working families. It is time that the government begins to address the obstacles facing the unemployed, artists, Canadians with disabilities, and thousands of Canadians who find themselves between jobs through no fault of their own and need the assistance from a fair and equitable employment insurance program.