Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-206. My colleague from Medicine Hat has already spoken to the bill. He is the critic for us in this area, but I also want to add my voice.
Bill C-206 is an act to amend the Employment Insurance Act for persons who leave employment to be caregivers for family members. First I want to first congratulate the member for Sackville—Musquodoboit Valley—Eastern Shore for bringing forward this issue. I believe that every member of the House appreciates the hardship and adversity families face when one of their relatives is diagnosed with a terminal illness. Such families are confronted with very hard choices over how to care for that relative while at the same time providing for themselves and other family members. Those who choose to care for their own relatives are very courageous and deserve support from the state. This was recognized by both Kirby and Romanow in their reports.
Members of the Canadian Alliance strongly believe that the family is the essential building block of society. We therefore find merit in the idea of government assistance to Canadians who choose to leave a paying job to care for a terminally ill family member at home. I must say that this is already done by many people. They may not be leaving a paying job, but this kind of care is done regularly across the country even at this time.
Certainly the proposed legislation would reduce the financial stress for people who find themselves in that situation. In addition, such a program could provide substantial savings for public health care budgets. However, the primary issue is a recognition that the social and emotional benefits of loved ones caring for each other far outweigh placing an individual in institutionalized care.
By tying such assistance to the employment insurance program, however, the bill flies in the face of a Canadian Alliance conviction that the EI system has gone astray from its original objective to be a safety net for laid off workers. When the program was designed, the premiums were supposed to match the payouts. However, since its inception all kinds of new features have been tacked on and the Auditor General has raised objections that the intent of the Employment Insurance Act is no longer respected, particularly in regard to premiums equalling benefits. We in this party believe that EI should be brought back to a true insurance program for job loss.
I understand the desire on the part of some members to attach this initiative to the employment insurance program. The overcharging of employers and employees for this program resulted in a $40 billion surplus at the end of the last fiscal year. This is $25 billion over what is required as a cushion by the chief actuary of Human Resources Development Canada, who says that $15 billion would be adequate to withstand any economic downturn.
Of course we as parliamentarians know that this is a surplus only on paper, because EI funds flow directly into general revenue. The $25 billion extra in surplus has already been spent, mainly to pay off the debt, according to Dale Orr of the economic forecasting firm Global Insight. Even if the EI surplus were just sitting there, the Canadian Alliance believes the solution is not to tack on more spending initiatives to the program. Rather, the federal government should stop overcharging employees and employers and substantially lower premiums to reflect the benefits paid out.
Funding compassionate leave through the EI system has other drawbacks. I think it is important to point them out, because this may be well intended but may not have been thought out by the people proposing the legislation. It arbitrarily screens out those who are ineligible for EI: the self-employed. I do not believe that Canadians would support the disqualification of farmers, small business owners, contractors, consultants and truckers from such a worthy social program. They would be left out in the cold. Also, as the trend in business is toward hiring workers as independent contractors rather than employees, the pool of the excluded would likely increase dramatically over time. The same situation applies to parental leave, frankly, which we in the Canadian Alliance believe should be a separate program and not part of the EI system.
In addition, due to the demographics of an aging population, there is a very real possibility that attaching compassionate leave to EI may in time overburden the system, requiring premium hikes down the road.
In conclusion, I believe the intent behind Bill C-206 is on the mark and I applaud my colleague for his work on this issue. However, the fatal flaw of the legislation before the House today is that it uses the employment insurance system as its funding instrument. This initiative needs to be further studied and debated. In my view, the compassionate leave would be better financed through some joint provincial-federal agreement. I therefore cannot support the bill itself. I certainly believe in the intent, but the bill itself, in attaching it to EI, is not acceptable to the Canadian Alliance.