Mr. Speaker, on October 30, 2002, I asked a question in the House of Commons. My question started like this:
Mr. Speaker, the employment insurance fund has a surplus of $40 billion. The Auditor General says that this is $25 billion too much.
Under the law or the regulations, a cap of $15 billion is adequate for the employment insurance fund.
My question was for the Prime Minister and I asked him if he was “not tired of balancing the budget on the backs of workers who have lost their jobs?” Was he not tired of seeing all those workers who had lost their jobs and of taking their contributions to balance his budget or to get rid of the deficit? The Prime Minister answered as follows:
Mr. Speaker, the member should appreciate the fact that when we came to power, the premiums were supposed to be $3.30.
We cancelled the increase planned by the Tories and reduced the premiums for workers and employers. Workers now contribute $2.20. I presume this will continue to drop as the economy continues to perform well.
He went on to say:
There are 2.5 million more people working in Canada since we implemented sound economic policies for the country. I hope the hon. member will one day acknowledge this.
How can I acknowledge this when, just yesterday, we heard again in the media that 300,000 children have to rely on food banks every month? That is the Liberal legacy. They should not be proud of that.
In a few moments, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources Development, the member for Laval West, will rise, and I am eager to hear what she has to say about my question and these comments. Following the 2000 elections, the parliamentary committee made proposals to the government. We all agreed that changes to the employment insurance plan were required.
It is not the first time that I say in the House of Commons that I have never seen anyone protest in the street because premiums were too high. I have never seen an employer cry because premiums were too high. But I have seen people cry because they could not get employment insurance. People phone my office because we have a 20% unemployment rate.
My question is for the government. Was employment insurance not created to help the workers? In 1989, members of Parliament voted unanimously to end poverty in Canada. Only yesterday, we learned that 300,000 children go to the food bank every month. The federal government cannot be proud of what it has done to our economy. Where did the 2.5 million people who got jobs come from? Are they foreigners who have settled here?
People are still not working in my riding, where the unemployment rate is 20%. Where are the economic programs that were supposed to put the people back to work instead of helping big cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Laval and other such areas? It just does not cut in my riding. Some of our unemployed cannot even get EI benefits. Even the Auditor General has said that the surplus is $25 billion too high.
I would like to know what the federal government intends to do to solve this problem and help the unemployed, to whom the EI fund belongs?