Madam Speaker, I will say a few brief words on this topic in support of the motion. Why I say they will be a few brief words is that I think we talk too much about issues such as this one and we do not do enough about them. An issue such as this should not be one that we have to debate for hours, days, weeks, months or years as has been happening. It should be a cut and dried issue.
Canada is the type of country that leads to people being injured on the job because Canada is a country of very rich resources. Developing resources is always dangerous work, whether it is working in the mines, working in relation to hydro developments, working offshore or working in the fishery and I could go on and on. All of these professions cause one to be working in dangerous situations.
Even working in what we call ordinary everyday work can lead to someone slipping and falling and injuring oneself. Often people can be out of the workplace for quite some time. This means that the total amount of Canada pension down the road is diminished according to the number of years the person is out of work.
The person is still considered as an active person in the workplace, not someone who has quit or was fired or whose job ran out. The person not working in a specific position simply because he or she has been injured. The person will return to the position whenever he or she is fit and is cleared by the appropriate doctors to go back to work.
In the meantime the time off, which unfortunately sometimes can be considerable, is not factored in in relation to Canada pension. Why?
The only legitimate argument I hear is that the employer who is involved will have to hire someone else to replace the person who is off. That is understandable. It would be very unfair to ask the employer to pay Canada pension premiums for the new worker who is doing the job and pay Canada pension premiums for someone who is listed as a worker in that factory or whatever, but is unable to work or assist the employer because he or she is off on workers compensation.
The question I ask is, why should the employer have to pay? I do not think the employer should have to pay. There is no reason to double the burden of the employers who are hit by two great premiums in relation to Canada pension, and particularly in relation to employment insurance.
There are two other options if premiums must be paid. Certainly, one is the government and some will say, “Well, that is people again doubling up on it”. A proper mechanism could be put in place in consultation with the three parties involved, the employer, who I will say up front I do not think should be handed any extra burden, the government and the person who is directly involved. It would not be unreasonable with the amount of money we are talking about here to give somebody the option of having his or her time count toward possible Canada pension benefits down the road and benefiting from that provided they were willing to pay the double premium. It is basically an insurance for the future.
It is not unreasonable whatsoever. It is not a major additional burden on the individual who has been injured. What it does do is it certainly enhances the income of that person down the road when the days, months or years he or she is off on workers compensation are now counted as time toward the drawing of Canada pension benefits.
Somewhere in between there is an answer. Instead of arguing and fighting and saying yes, it is hard, why do all parties involved not sit down and find a solution? I am sure we can, and in an amount of time similar to the time we have spent discussing this here in the House, unless we bring in a pile of bureaucrats.
I solidly support this. I see a lot of people, particularly people who are working in positions that do not have great pay, who are doing very ordinary work and making a very ordinary wage and suddenly find themselves trying to live on the 80% that some provinces pay, or somewhere in that vicinity. It is difficult enough to be sick or hurt and trying to live on less money. However we cut it, it is less money. People might say that they do not have to pay any extra amount for benefits and so on, but a lot of the benefits we pay into come back to us one in way or another. If we are not paying in they are not going to come back.
It is bad enough to be in that position, but let us look at people who in 10 or 5 or maybe 2 years' time are finishing up work and looking toward their meagre Canada pensions and who find that pension reduced significantly, especially if it was in their latter years of work, because they were on workers' compensation. In reality, they were not out of work through any choice of their own, because of layoffs or because they quit or because they did not want to work. They were out of work because they were injured. In reality, they are really still on the lists of the unemployed as it affects the companies with which they would have worked.
I certainly think there is a solution here, one that could be found quickly if the will were there. Again, I and my party solidly support this suggestion provided that it is done without the extra onus on the employers, many of whom are small business people who are having it tough enough with government red tape, bureaucracy and regulations.
Maybe we could do two things here. Let us zero in on this matter and, realizing how easily something like this could be solved, maybe it will give government the incentive to look back and say to itself that maybe it could solve a lot of problems negatively affecting the people in our country if it would sit down and, with a bit of common sense, deal directly with these problems. It could change or cut out the foolish regulations in place that delay and procrastinate, or it could implement new fine-tuned regulations that can cut quickly through red tape and bureaucracy. Perhaps for a change we can get down to one-stop shopping.
An issue came up the other day. It dealt with a relatively small issue in fisheries. In order to deal with the topic, which we should be able to do with a snap of our fingers, seven different departments had to be consulted because there were seven different pieces of legislation dealing with a very minuscule topic.
For instance, in relation to the development of the offshore in Newfoundland and Labrador, and I am sure this is true in the development of other resources in other places, if we want to do some exploration, I understand, we must deal with either 13 or 14 boards, agencies and departments. From the time the first application is initiated until a permit is issued, we are looking at at least two years, if we are lucky. We can imagine the time and effort that companies have to put in for two years, whereas in Norway they deal with one organization. It is inconceivable the number of burdens that we put on our people.
Let us take a lesson from that. Let us start right here and let us get this one out of the way.