Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin my speech by asking a question, and I am sure the answer will be yes.
I would imagine that you are quite familiar with the works of Jean de La Fontaine. I see that you are nodding your approval. I am convinced that everyone in the House knows Jean de La Fontaine, a famous French poet who lived from 1621 to 1695. He is particularly well known all over the world for his Fables .
If Jean de La Fontaine were still living today, he would find that the ideal conditions, the winning conditions for writing a new fable, are all brought together in the employment insurance plan. Let me explain.
When Jean de La Fontaine personified an animal, he did it for two very specific reasons. First, it underlines human and social behaviours and helps us understand how they work. Second, it is a means by which to draw attention to the sensitivity and intelligence of animals that should at times be a source of inspiration for us. We would be better off. I can easily imagine a fable he could have entitled the nasty chickens and the nice geese”.
Mr. Speaker, just like me, you were once small, even though it does not show any more, and young. When I was a child there was a tradition which still exists. At Easter, my brothers would go out and buy cute little chicks. Spring being the time of renewal, of rebirth, we used to love to buy these animals.
I was six or seven years younger than my brothers. Who do you think had to feed the chickens every morning? Me, of course.
As time went by, the chickens got bigger. However, I had noticed that one was a bit smaller than the others. I wondered what was happening. I began to observe it. I realized that the smaller chicken was excluded by the others until one day it finally died. We know how it is when one chicken is weaker than the others. They begin pecking at it and hurt it until it dies. That is the first part of the fable.
Here is the second part. I was a little older at that time. My brothers took me fishing and hunting. One day, they showed me a flight of Canada geese. We know that these birds travel over fairly long distances. We also know how it is with Canada geese. When one of them becomes too weak or too tired, the strongest goose will go just under it and support it in flight. When that goose gets tired another one takes its place, and in the end the weak goose reaches its destination.
We saw that nasty chickens exclude whereas nice geese include. That is a very good illustration of how EI works at present.
It is pretty serious business to lose a job. People have responsibilities. They feel helpless. Then the nasty chickens come along to peck at them. Here we have someone who has lost a job. What is the first question we ask? “Eligible or not eligible?” Then we pick, pick, pick away at eligibility. We make sure that the rules are as strict as possible. If we find a person is eligible that bugs us, so we pick, pick, pick away again, adding the two week waiting period. Tactics of exclusion are constantly being used.
At one point benefits were 60% of earnings. We say that is too much, so we pick away some more and bring it down to 55%. Then we pick away again at the seasonal workers because they apply every year and reduce benefits by 1% per year. The institutional tactic of exclusion is obvious. I could go on, in fact I will.
Construction workers are also seasonal workers. They have to be looking for work, however. The department says that construction workers who go through their unions, their construction board where all the available jobs are posted, are not considered to have been looking for work. We are picking away again.
Then there are the young workers, women who are excluded from eligibility, parental leave. Earlier in my introduction I spoke of spring, which is a call to life. A man and a woman who decide to have a child are again virtually excluded. They are not eligible under the terms of employment insurance. If the expectant mother has to make use of preventive withdrawal from the workplace, here there is another exclusion. In this employment insurance system, it is exclusion from A to Z.
Then, there are the older workers. It is certainly difficult when a person is 55 and has been in one job for 35 years. Here again we exclude them. Assistance programs which could help them until retirement are taken away. As far as I know, there was a commitment to reinstate such a program. It has not yet appeared. Once again exclusion is the rule.
Basically the Bloc Quebecois and the opposition believe that we are doing what we are doing because of what we are. We are the nice geese.
If for some reason someone is going through hard times, such as the loss of a job, there must be some system somewhere to help him, to support him until he gets back on his feet.
All the amendments brought forward by my colleagues in the Bloc Quebecois and other colleagues in the opposition are along that line. We do not want the employment insurance system to be exclusive. We want it to be an inclusive plan.
We could go on for hours about various issues. We could add amendments. However now they are restricting debate partially in this case, but it will probably come to total closure very soon.
I am sure Jean de La Fontaine would have been delighted to write a fable about the nasty chickens and the nice geese. This does not only apply to employment insurance. We could also apply it to federalism and sovereignty.
There are nasty chickens that are leading us, the nice geese, to support sovereignty in Quebec. We want a nation that once it fully controls its own employment insurance fund will be able to include persons who are going through hard times so that they are not excluded from society but are helped and can later return to society with pride and dignity, thanks to the assistance they received from support programs, just like a nice goose would do.