Mr. Speaker, except for today's question period, this is really the first opportunity I have had to rise in the House in this 37th parliament.
First, I want to thank the constituents of Rimouski—Neigette-et-la-Mitis for their tremendous support during the last federal election. I am proud of the confidence they have shown me and I can assure them that I will continue to make their interests my first and foremost priority.
To you, Mr. Speaker, I also want to extend my congratulations on your election as Speaker of the House. I was very impressed by all the comments I have read about you in the papers. Best of luck in your new duties.
Let us now turn to today's debate. Last Friday, February 2, the government introduced Bill C-2, an act to amend the Employment Insurance Act and the Employment Insurance (Fishing) Regulations.
Those of us who have followed the recent election campaign of the Liberals, mainly in the maritimes, the lower St. Lawrence, the Gaspésie area, the North Shore and Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean, expected the government to show a little more respect for the people and not to have so much amnesia.
If that had been the case, the government would have introduced a very different bill from the one now before the House. When I saw the Secretary of State for Amateur Sport, I told him “Now we will look for results. We have kept abreast of the promises you made”. He answered“ Do not worry, we will keep our promises”.
We are off to a really bad start. The bill we have before us for study is, unfortunately, identical, but for a few commas here and there, to one introduced just before the House was prorogued, Bill C-44.
I would like to make some things perfectly clear concerning Bill C-44. Just before the last general election was called, the Liberal government wanted to head off to the hustings with the advantage of Bill, C-44, which brought in a few changes to the conditions for eligibility for employment insurance.
It therefore sought the unanimous support of all House leaders in place at that time to help accelerate the process of getting Bill C-44 passed.
All opposition parties refused to give this consent to the leader of the government. The Canadian Alliance had its reasons and the Bloc Quebecois had its own, as did all parties in opposition.
We were mainly opposed to the outright theft of the surplus in the employment insurance fund. We had the support of Action Chômage and various lobby groups in the province of Quebec. They were not prepared to trade a few meagre improvements for the theft of billions from the fund's surplus. We therefore opposed rapid passage of the bill.
When the government says that the Bloc Quebecois voted against the bill, it is engaging in misinformation, disinformation and even demagoguery, since a vote on this bill was never held in the House. It is true that the Bloc Quebecois refused to be an accomplice to the theft of the employment insurance fund, because we learned at a very early age that he who holds the loot bag is just as guilty as the one who fills it. So, we refused to be the accomplices of this government by agreeing to quickly pass this legislation.
Then came the general election. What happened? Every day, there were all kinds of polls. Among other things, we heard that the Progressive Conservative Party and the New Democratic Party would disappear, that they would fall into oblivion, that they might manage to save a few seats, but that they would no longer be official parties in the House.
We also heard an increasing number of experts, analysts, parliamentary correspondents, journalists and professors of political science say that we seemed headed for a minority Liberal government, something which became a source of concern for the Liberal Party's top strategists. These people said to themselves “We need a good cause. We should make a good sales pitch so that Canadians will like our party and give us a majority government. Then we can do whatever we want”. It was to be promises during the campaigns and then arrogance, contempt and, above all, no recollection of the commitments made.
In order to make sure the Prime Minister would get the Guinness record he wanted so badly, that is to get a third straight majority mandate, top Liberal strategists said “What would be good for the Liberals would be to make people from the maritimes and Quebec believe that if they elect us we will change the employment insurance program”.
Several ministers got down to work and travelled throughout Quebec and the maritimes, especially in the regions most affected by unemployment, and promised that the employment insurance plan would be changed.
It is amazing how easily people let themselves be fooled once again. The government has broken its electoral commitments. The new Bill C-2 is the exact copy of Bill C-44, introduced before the election.
The government has done exactly what it did when it promised to scrap the GST, to use the Prime Minister's words.
We should examine what some members of the government said. It is a very revealing exercise. On January 17, 2001, La Presse reported comments by the Secretary of State for Amateur Sport, who never misses an opportunity to make promises concerning the employment insurance system. Unfortunately, he is not as good at it as when he makes promises about sports. He has a better command of his own portfolio than that of the human resources minister, who does not seem to understand the commitments he has made on her behalf.
Here is what La Presse wrote on January 17 “ If well reasoned and justified arguments are brought forward, we are open to change”. He further clarified “The public works minister and myself are open to this kind of dialogue. We are open to discussions”.
Some openness. The government's mind is completely closed. We are caught in the same situation we were in with Bill C-44. The dilemma is absolutely unbearable: we are penalized if we vote for it and penalized if we vote against it. The government puts us in a very uncomfortable position.
The Secretary of State for Amateur Sport said that if we had good and justifiable arguments, his government would be open to change. We have been here since 1994. We were elected in 1993 and began sitting in parliament in 1994. What have we been doing since 1994? Day after day, all the critics for the Bloc on that very important issue, be it the hon. member for Mercier or the hon. member for Kamouraska—Témiscouata—Rivière-du-Loup—Les Basques, asked questions about the issue first to Mr. Axworthy, then to Douglas Young and to the current Minister of International Trade. As for the present minister, we confronted her day after day, but to question her about a scandal so outrageous that we did not have time to ask questions about the employment insurance plan.
However we did question her three predecessors about their employment insurance reforms. We reminded them of the position they had taken when they were in the opposition and were opposed to the changes proposed by Mr. Valcourt but that was like talking to a wall. They all had the same answer, always the same answer: “The hon. member did not read the documentation. He or she does not understand and will not understand anything about the reform”.
This is what we were told day after day. All those ministers showed how they betrayed Canadians.
They have never been able to explain the real idea behind the reform. The government wanted to get more money into its coffers because it needed billions of dollars to pay for its scandals, for its expenses and to grease its friends' palms; that is why it had to reform the EI on the backs of workers and employers, that is on the backs of those contributing to the EI fund.
Time and again at committee stage, we put forward justified and justifiable arguments showing the need to change that plan which is against the young and discriminates against them. It is so discriminatory to young people that I cannot see how it could be constitutional.
Earlier, I heard the member opposite—I do not remember the name of his riding, but it is close to Nunavut or Abitibi—say that young people do not leave our regions because they do not have jobs. Of course, they do. Over the past five years, in my region, we have seen 700 young people aged between 15 and 29 leave.
Do you know what it means when young people aged between 15 to 29 leave? It means that the population is declining, that we no longer have the resources we need to develop, that the government could not care less what happens to the regions. Yet, it is prepared to spend millions of dollars to get elected, as we have seen in the Gaspé, while letting people wallow in unemployment.
They are asked to work 910 hours. It is impossible for a young person to work 910 hours. They really have to leave the region and go to a large centre to find other jobs in order to manage, and to work the famous 910 hours. Then, they never come back to the region, or almost never.
I myself heard the Prime Minister, the member for Saint-Maurice, make his promise during the campaign. He had forgotten, and his organizers made him get back up on the stage. I saw him with my own eyes and heard him with my own ears say “Oh yes, that is true. I had forgotten to promise that we will rework the plan”. What did he say? He said that they would, in February, give money to the unemployed retroactively. “Housing costs are not paid retroactively”, commented my leader.
How can the Prime Minister, who knows what really goes on in his government, say that there will be retroactive measures? We tried for retroactive measures for those who lost their job between July 17 and September, so they would be included in the same plan as the temporary measures proposed by the government. The government refused to allow a retroactive arrangement for these people. However, they will have to face the gap, as my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst said. The spring gap is coming. The Prime Minister will not notice, any more than will the minister.
What was the Secretary of State for Amateur Sport saying during the election campaign? He said “Once a Liberal majority is elected”—ah, now the cat is out of the bag. They wanted a Liberal majority so they could continue being arrogant with people—“we will reinstate the process and make sure that the changes are effective and meet the needs, for the most part, of the people of the Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean and Canadians as a whole. I have made a commitment to change the law and we will see to it”.
The Secretary of State for Amateur Sport, who is also a boxer, has become a featherweight in this government since he has been unable to include one single amendment in this bill. Not one.
Moreover, we may soon be gagged both in the House and in committee because the government will find that too many people are complaining about its arrogance. It makes no sense at all.
The Prime Minister added “We realized that it was not a good decision, and that we should not have done it”. That is what he admitted, in the Canadian Press, on November 4, 2000, in the middle of the election campaign, on the subject of the cuts to the employment insurance plan his government had imposed. He recognized that it made no sense but now that he is back in power with a majority government, it suddenly makes sense to him to keep on being arrogant.
I could keep on quoting clips collected during the electoral campaign, but it would remind Canadian and Quebec people too many bad memories.
I am sure they bitterly regret now what they did on November 27, because in other cases they did the right thing. In my riding, 60% of the people supported me when I told them I would come to Ottawa with a strong voice to represent them and to defend their interests about unemployment insurance and the Young Offenders Act. The government is up to its old tricks.
As for parental leave, the government has no idea of what makes sense.
My colleague from Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup—Témiscouata—Les Basques, our critic on this issue, explained very well this morning that we will unfortunately be faced with having to vote against the bill, not because we are against tiny improvements, at least they are improvements.
There are some improvements. There is the elimination of the intensity rule, the elimination of discrimination concerning the rule of tax clawback for frequent users, the change in the definition of new entrants or re-entrants to the labour force for special benefits, which applies mainly to pregnant women, the indexing of yearly insurable earnings and the reduction of the premium rate to $2.25, which is not enough but is still better than nothing.
What is terrible is the stealing of the fund. Never would I have thought that the Liberal government would do such despicable things. Once again, it has fooled the people on all counts.
Canada made some progress when minority governments were in office. It is very sad that there is not one this time. Imagine how different the bill would have been if the leader of the government had to deal with the four opposition parties to give us a bill that fulfilled the Liberal Party's promises.