Madam Speaker, I am happy to be recognized and appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-28.
It was my intention to ask the hon. member to expand somewhat on the NISA program and the $4 billion that he maintains could be put to better use or put into the pockets of farmers instead of being lost to the bureaucracy. Even though I represent an area of downtown Winnipeg, I would not want to see an agricultural assistance program being used to create bureaucratic jobs or to do anything other than to provide much needed income maintenance for beleaguered prairie farmers.
I appreciated the hon. member's comments. He was bang on. Perhaps in another speech he will be able to enlighten us more about the five pillars he made reference to.
I would like to speak at some length to the last point the Alliance member spoke about, the EI program.
The federal government is very proud of its announcement of $100 billion in tax cuts. As the member pointed out, it seems that any of the government's good news announcements are sequenced and timed to come into play over a period of three years or five years. The amount is not as huge an amount of money as people might expect when spread out over that timeframe. The erosion of that amount of money during that period of time due to inflation also has to be factored in. That $100 billion will not really mean as much five years from now as it did when it was announced. The government is trying to get the maximum political bang for its buck.
We should point out to people who are listening today where that $100 billion the government has put into tax cuts came from. I can say that $45 billion of it can be traced to the pockets of hardworking Canadians and their employers. As people should know, the EI fund is strictly made up of contributions from employees and employers. The federal government puts nothing into that fund. Canadians have clearly overpaid into the EI fund to the tune of $45 billion cumulatively over the last couple of years.
If there is a surplus in the EI fund, there are two ways of looking at it. One legitimate argument was put forward by the Alliance that premiums should be reduced. We are paying in too much in terms of what is being paid out in benefits. The flip side of that coin, the NDP's argument is that benefits should be increased or the eligibility requirement should be lowered so more people who pay in would be eligible. Either one of those arguments is legitimate.
What is not legitimate is to use that money for some purpose other than income maintenance for unemployed people. I would go further and say that to deduct something from a person's paycheque for a specific purpose and then to use that money for something completely different is out and out fraud. At the very least it is a breach of trust.
A trust relationship has been created with that individual. When that individual allowed the government to deduct money from his or her paycheque for a specific purpose, a trust relationship was formed. That person trusted that the government would hold that money until such time as he or she became unemployed and needed it. To do anything else with that money is a breach of trust. To use money paid into the unemployment insurance fund to build roads, or for health care, or to give tax cuts to somebody, is a breach of the fiduciary trust entered into with the Government of Canada as employees.
I cannot emphasize enough our continued disappointment, shock and horror at the flagrant misuse and abuse of what was supposed to be an insurance program for unemployed workers.
I appreciate that there are still MPs in the House of Commons who raised that as an aspect of their comments on the budget. To not do so would be to resign ourselves to the fact that the Liberals have managed to get away with something again. Some of us are not prepared to do that.
To put in context the size of the surplus, I am fond of reminding people that the EI program is running a surplus of $700 million a month, not per year, per month. Every month that ticks by, people are contributing $700 million more than is being paid out in income maintenance to unemployed workers. Talk about a cash cow. Talk about the gift that keeps on giving.
The Liberal government cannot believe how lucky it is. It seems to have gone under the radar on this one. Most Canadians are not upset about it. We are upset. Those of us who know about it in the House of Commons are upset. We are trying to alert Canadians to the fact that they are being gouged, but seemingly the public has not really got up in arms.
Unemployed people are up in arms, but unemployment is relatively low these days with 7% unemployed. That is not enough to form a mass movement of people to object to the abuse of the fund. Unfortunately when Canadians do find themselves in the unfortunate position of being unemployed, they will also learn that under the current EI rules, less than 40% of them will be eligible for any income maintenance whatsoever. The EI rules are structured in such a way that only 40% of unemployed people qualify. What kind of insurance fund is that?
What if people were obliged to pay into a house insurance fund with mandatory contributions and if their house burned down, they would have a 40% chance of collecting any benefit?