Debates of May 2nd, 2003

Parliament of Canada Act

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Pursuant to Standing Order 45 the division stands deferred until Monday, May 5, at the ordinary hour of daily adjournment.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, discussions have taken place between the parties and I think you would find agreement, pursuant to Standing Order 45(7), to defer the recorded division until Tuesday, May 6, at 3 p.m.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is that agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The vote is deferred until Tuesday May 6, at 3 p.m.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

Madam Speaker, I wonder if you might seek consent to see the clock at 1:30 p.m. so we can begin private members' business.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

Is it agreed?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

Employment Insurance Act

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

moved that Bill C-406, an act to amend the Employment Insurance Act , be read a second time and referred to a committee.

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to rise today to elaborate on my bill to amend the Employment Insurance Act.

As you know when I was elected in 1997, I was extremely concerned about the employment insurance issue and the changes made by the Liberal government in 1996. I then travelled across Canada and visited 10 provinces. I went to the Yukon. I took part in over 52 public meetings in every single province of Canada.

After meeting with Canadian workers, I presented a report to the minister. I then moved a motion in the House of Commons. It was unanimously passed in the spring of 2000, just before the election. Today, at long last, here is this bill, the result of a lot of hard work and those many meetings with people.

The bill is aimed at restoring justice for unemployed workers and beneficiaries of the program who were the victims of the changes made to the program in 1996.

The United Nations even condemned the cuts made to the employment insurance program and reiterated a request that it be reformed immediately.

Unfortunately, this government had only one thing on its mind: money. There are less people collecting EI, but more money in the coffers, which allowed the Minister of Finance to build a wonderful reputation by bringing down budgets with no deficits on the backs of workers who had lost their jobs.

I would like to remind the House that these wonderful budgets he was proud of were balanced on the backs of Canadian workers and businesses, the only contributors to the fund.

Today, I would like to talk more about my bill, which I hope will receive the support of the House.

First, I am asking that the name of the employment insurance program be changed back to the “unemployment insurance program”, as it was known before. This program does not provide employment, it provides assistance during periods of unemployment, so the former name is more appropriate.

The number of hours required to qualify for benefits would be 350 hours, or 20 weeks of insurable employment of at least 15 hours per week, instead of the current 710 hours required.

Benefits will be 66% of the insurable earnings, based on the 10 highest paid weeks in the last year, or 52 weeks.

This would solve the problem known as “accumulating hours”. This is a problem people in the southwest of New Brunswick are currently facing in fish processing plants. There are studies being done on them because of this phenomenon. The member for Beauséjour—Petitcodiac claims to be their advocate and says he will sort the problem out, but the minister is refusing to allow hours to be accumulated. I am anxious to see how these members will vote on my bill and if they will support the concept of the 10 highest-paid weeks over the last year.

Right now, the program provides only 55% of one's salary, which is minimal when it comes to the actual cost of living. This is effectively pushing people under the poverty level. Take someone who earns $8 an hour, and would then receive 55% of that. How can this person live? This is even lower than social assistance benefits.

The benefits period will be one week for each week of employment, to a maximum of 52 weeks. This would eliminate the problem of small weeks, while including part-time workers.

The adjustment for additional weeks of benefits would be calculated as follows: two weeks for each percentage point in the regional unemployment rate above 4% to a maximum of 10% and three weeks for each percentage point in the regional unemployment rate above 10%.The two-week waiting period is completely eliminated.

Looking at the SARS problem in Toronto, when this happened the government immediately adopted a regulation to do away with the two-week waiting period. Why just do away with those two weeks in response to a perceived immediate need in that region? I agree with it, but what I am saying is that anyone who loses a job today is in the same situation. There is no more money coming in. The two-week waiting period should be done away with for all Canadians who lose their jobs.

The government has set a good example with what is going on in Toronto.

By eliminating the divisor rule and the recovery provisions, by eliminating the 910 hours required for new entrants and re-entrants, special benefits would be 350 hours.

If this bill is passed, self-employed and contract workers will be considered employees and be protected by the EI program.

They are no different from any other workers. When one looks at today's labour market and the new way of life today, one can see that these self-employed workers need to be included.

As for the two weeks of benefits accumulated for each year worked, in the case of special lay-offs, these benefits are available only to workers with 10 years in the work force and aged 45 or older. The maximum benefit period would be 26 weeks.

This is to help people aged 45 or older who lose their jobs and do not have much prospect of finding another. This would be more assistance for them. It would be a little more to help them adapt and find something else.

Retirement pensions, separation pay and vacation pay are eliminated from the definition of earnings.

It is not fair that a person who receives holiday pay or severance pay on losing his or her job is not entitled to EI benefits because this qualifies as income under EI. That defies common sense. This money could help people find jobs instead of collecting benefits indefinitely.

Employees are entitled to up to five weeks of training every year, provided it is geared to their job. There would be a maximum of 52 weeks, the idea being to get people back to work. This would encourage them to work. It would get them back and help them find work.

This is a useful bill. Instead of using the money in the EI fund to balance its budget in order to achieve zero deficits, the government should put money where the needs are.

Financial penalties would be eliminated. No interest or amount would be payable in the event of a violation of the act, penalty or overpayment.

As for the EI account, it would be replaced with a trust fund. This fund would be credited with the contributions paid. At present, there is $42 billion in the EI account. That is well beyond the $15 billion necessary to make the program cost-effective. By establishing a trust account, we will be ensuring that the money put into the account will go to the program, and only to the program.

The Employment Insurance Commission will be comprised of members appointed by the governor in council for terms not exceeding five years from lists of persons nominated by labour organizations and employer organizations determined by the minister. The commission shall administer the act and the employment insurance program, the trust fund, and the appeal system.

In short, this is a far-reaching bill, which is nevertheless necessary to address the major deficiencies in the EI program.

Since I was elected as a federal MP, I have been receiving phone call upon phone call from people who are having serious problems with the existing program.

More and more people have trouble qualifying, which should not happen, especially when people have just lost their job. In fact, two-thirds of those without a job do not qualify for the program.

The 2002 monitoring and assessment report tabled this week by the Minister of Human Resources Development paints a rosy picture of the situation of the unemployed and the EI program.

Yet at my office, I receive approximately 30 calls a day about employment insurance issues. In my view, these calls are more consistent with the reality than the great report card the minister has presented to us.

There are cases such as the one I saw this week when I went to my riding. These are people who worked in construction in Western Canada. They left their families behind for over three months.

I have here the employer's severance form that says that the reason for the layoff was shortage of work. The government took the trouble to call the employer to see whether this was true or not. It conducted an investigation. Maybe it wanted to cut their employment insurance benefits.

How greedy is the government that it would steal money from taxpayers and workers even though it has a document from the employer saying there is no work in his plant? They are now investigating.

It is simple; it is because of the quotas. That is the problem. The government is more interested in taking money from companies and workers to pay its debts than helping people.

This past week, I spoke with a woman who had called my office. When I called her back I asked her how she was. She said that the rope was next to her. It was not very nice to hear. That is the problem and that is what we call the employment insurance deficit.

We have only to look at people in Toronto who are losing their jobs, women who work only 20 hours a week and who do not qualify for employment insurance because they are short a few hours. If we made the changes to employment insurance that we need now, we would not be in such a panic.

The employment insurance program was there to help people who lost their job. It was not there to help the Minister of Finance pay down the debt. It was not there to help pay for social programs. It was there for one specific reason, to help people who lost their job.

The Liberal government should be ashamed of continually saying that, for example, people should stop using employment insurance as an income supplement, when it is using it to pay down the debt. How can Liberals stand up and be proud to say such things?

At the beginning of the last election campaign, the member for Bonaventure—Gaspé—Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Pabok made a heartfelt appeal to the minister. He asked her to change the employment insurance program. He campaigned on employment insurance. The member for Beauséjour—Petitcodiac, as well as the member for Madawaska—Restigouche, were elected because they campaigned on the employment insurance program. Today, there is no change.

Perhaps the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources Development will say: “We made some changes. We included 52 parental benefit weeks”. She might say that they will go up from 50% to 55%. The problem is not there.

There are now 800,000 people who do not qualify for employment insurance in Canada. There are 1.4 million children who are going hungry in Canada. If there are 800,000 adults who do not qualify for employment insurance, these are people who have families and children, so we can calculate that 1.4 million children are going hungry in Canada.

The Liberal government and the changes made in 1996 are to blame. Before that, in 1993, when the Liberals were in the opposition, they spoke out against the changes made by the Conservative Party and said that it was shying away from economic problems in Canada. Back then, they said that we had to deal with economic problems. Today, they turn around and come to us with the same changes that the Conservatives made.

This is 2003. Our wonderful country, Canada, has a program for employers and employees. Yet, it is not able to give this program to those to whom it belongs.

I was proud to hear this week that the FTQ and the CSN had finally gone to court. I pray to God that they win their case against the federal government to give the money back to the people to whom it belongs. I hope that that is how the court will rule, since the government is not able to fulfill its responsibilities. The Liberals are too greedy. It is the Liberal government that is living off employment insurance. They are the ones who are greedy when it comes to EI.

It is hungry children who have no food in the fridge who should be benefiting. They are the ones who should be benefiting from EI. The responsibility of the government is to ensure that there are jobs for people in the regions to go to. People need to have jobs to go to.

I sincerely hope that Parliament will vote in support of my bill, so that it can at least be referred to the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development where there will be a real review of it, and where we can finally make the changes that will benefit workers and our children.

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, I want to start off by thanking my colleague for Acadie—Bathurst. Year after year, since we were both elected in 1997, he has been a tremendous advocate for the unemployed and for the injustice that the government has forced on workers in Canada.

He probably does not know this, but his grandson, Jonathan, is in the lobby and was staring up at the TV. He was totally enthralled. When he watches this in the future he should be proud of what his grandfather has done for the people and children of Canada. On the contrary, every member on the governing side should sit in shame for what the government has done to the unemployed.

I specifically want to ask my colleague a question regarding the waiting period for journeymen apprentices in carpentry, welding, and mechanics. The government had a two week waiting period for people who still had their job, but were going to take an apprenticeship program to get their upgrading. There was a waiting period before they could claim benefits.

The government talked about reducing this period. It may have reduced it to about a week. However, does the member think there should be a waiting period for apprentice workers? For people who want to continue their education, why should they have a waiting period before they collect employment insurance?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague and, perhaps above all, say hello to my grandson, Jonathan, who is outside the House, although I was unaware of the fact.

The bill I introduced today is clear; it cancels the two-week waiting period. People should not be penalized, as is the case for those who have a trade.

Let us use the example of someone who is learning a trade, working for an employer and, finally, is required to take courses at a community college. While that person attends the community college to acquire journeyman papers, he suddenly loses two weeks of wages. This makes no sense whatsoever. Employment insurance is there to help people and allow them to have an income when they are not working.

Now, it has gone beyond that. People who want to upgrade their skills, something that will be good for the employer and for everyone else, is penalized because of the two-week waiting period. Many people no longer want to learn a trade because of the loss of income.

My bill specifies that this is for everybody. Even if someone loses his job, he should not be penalized. We are not talking about someone who has quit his job, left it voluntarily, but someone who has been told by his employer that there is no more work, that he should not show up the following week. Why should his family suffer? It is not the employee who is abusing the system, it is the employer. There is quite simply no more work.

This is why my bill is important. I think the government recognizes this, judging by what it did during the emergency in Toronto; in that instance, the government cancelled the two-week waiting period, because people do need to have money coming in. I have always held that when someone loses his job, it does not matter whether he is in New Brunswick, Manitoba, British Columbia or Ontario.

That is why it is important to cancel the two-week period by passing this bill, so that this program will really work for workers.

[Diane St-Jacques, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources Development]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased today to speak during second reading of Bill C-406 to amend the Employment Insurance Act.

First, I want to set the record straight. Some people live in difficult circumstances, but overall, employment insurance works well. According to Statistics Canada, the labour force participation rate is now 67.5%. This figure is for March 2003 and nears the high for the past twelve months.

For adult women, the participation rate is 60.6%. Furthermore, the government pays over $2 billion each year to the provinces and territories so that they can take the necessary steps to help Canadians find and keep employment.

Since 1997, we have invested over $1 billion in the youth employment strategy, which helps young people gain valuable work experience through programs such as Youth Service Canada, Youth Internship Canada and Summer Career Placements, which have created 96,000 jobs each year just since 1997. Our goal is to promote labour force participation.

That said, the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst knows just how important the employment insurance program has been, for the past 60 years, to Canada's safety net. The government wants this program to continue to help the workers who need it, and so it will to the best of its abilities.

The goal of the employment insurance program has evolved over the years to suit the changing needs of Canadian workers.

Employment insurance now provides temporary income support to Canadians who have no employment income for a particular period, due to job loss, illness, the birth of a child or because they must care for a seriously ill child or parent. Furthermore, employment insurance provides unemployed Canadians with guidance and training so they can reintegrate the labour market.

In 1996, following broad consultations of Canadians, the Canadian government replaced unemployment insurance with employment insurance so as to meet the new needs of the economy, the labour market and workers. Furthermore, the Canada Employment Insurance Commission committed to monitoring the impact of this system on individuals, communities and the economy.

Following up on the annual monitoring and assessment activities, the government has readjusted the program to respond better to needs. Since that time we have, as the member for Acadie—Bathurst has pointed out, improved parental benefits, adjusted the small weeks, eliminated the intensity rule, changed payback provisions, modified the rule on undeclared earnings, and provided a new six-week compassionate benefit for eligible workers who will be looking after a seriously ill parent, child or spouse once this comes into effect in January 2004.

As hon. members are already aware, the most recent annual report, the 6th annual Employment Insurance monitoring and assessment report, came out at the end of April.

It indicates that the EI program continues to work well and that the changes made allow it to serve clients and their families better.

I will provide some examples from 2001 and 2002. The program provided sufficient coverage. According to the figures, 88% of salaried workers would have been eligible for benefits had they lost their job.

More Canadians received assistance, 1.9 million people receiving a total of $11.5 billion in employment insurance benefits.

Active re-employment measures were also successful. Over that period, $2.1 billion was invested in employment benefits and support measures via such programs as employment assistance, and skills development, which enabled 570,000 individuals to improve their skills, and another 190,000 to get back into the work force quickly.

I would like to draw the attention of the House to that last figure. It is a clear indication that the best support we can give unemployed Canadians is not higher EI benefits, but employment. We are making some progress, because the employment rate rose 3.7% in 2002, the highest annual rise since 1987.

The employment insurance program clearly reflects the balanced approach adopted by this government, combining improved EI benefits and constantly decreasing premiums.

It is important to remember that the government must cover the costs of employment insurance under any circumstances, even when there is a deficit, as was the case during the recession at the beginning of the 1980s and the 1990s.

Bill C-406 proposes creating a separate unemployment insurance trust fund in addition to an independent commission to administer the act. This proposal would be incompatible with the government's limitless responsibility to pay employment insurance benefits. It would also go against the government's objective to consolidate its revenues and expenses, an objective recommended by the Auditor General in 1986.

I would remind the House that the process for setting EI premiums is currently being reviewed. This review will be guided by certain key principles: transparency is critical in setting the premiums; these premiums must be based on the advice of independent experts; revenue levels from premiums must correspond to the expected costs of programs; premiums should be set at levels that reduce the impact on economic cycles; and finally, the premiums should remain relatively stable.

The government has made every possible effort to reduce the cost of employment insurance for both workers and employers. In fact, we have reduced premiums every year since 1994. Employers have told us that these reductions have stimulated employment.

As for workers, they have the safety net of employment insurance without having to assume the financial burden. I do not think that Canadians would view any considerable increase in premiums very positively.

The employment insurance program is working well. We continue to monitor and assess it. We do not hesitate to make required changes when there are compelling reasons to do so.

I believe the approach proposed in this bill raises several questions. Why move backwards? Why give up on an accounting system that is open and transparent? Why spend billions of dollars more on a new system when we have one that meets the needs of workers?

This government is working toward the future, as our proposal for new EI benefits for compassionate care leave demonstrates. However, this bill seems to me to be a major step backwards.

[Jim Gouk, Canadian Alliance, Kootenay—Boundary—Okanagan, BC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak on this today. While I disagree with a lot of the premise of what the member has presented and proposed today, I still nonetheless want to recognize that he believes in this and that he is doing it for very altruistic purposes. It is not a personal benefit thing. It is something that he truly believes will be of benefit to workers.

Unfortunately, I do not think he is going about it the right way. In fact it starts with the very alarming premise that we should change the name of the program from employment insurance to unemployment insurance. Frankly, when it used to be called unemployment insurance, I never thought it should have been changed. I thought that was the stupidest thing the government did. It cost taxpayers, and ultimately workers, $5 million to change the name from unemployment insurance to employment insurance. Why? Because it is supposed to make people feel better. I thought that was pretty stupid. However it is equally unsound to spend another $5 million to change it back to a name that will make people feel worse, not that I think people felt a whole lot better having changed the name in the first place.

What the bill proposes is that we will get bigger benefits for a longer period of time. People will have to do less to receive them. It will eliminate severance pay and vacation pay before one can start collecting. On that specific point, the NDP member who presented the bill said that it was unfair that vacation and severance pay should be included and that people should be using it to help them find a job.

The reality is that when people end their jobs and get six weeks pay as a severance package and three weeks vacation pay, they are technically not unemployed until that runs out. Employers are saying that although they will not have the people working, they will still pay them as if they were working for the period of severance and vacation. I just wanted to make specific comment on that.

It also provides benefits for those who quit their jobs without just cause. The member has left a qualifier on it that there will be a waiting period, which he wants to eliminate in other places.

People are insured to have a job. If people personally choose to quit their jobs, it is not unlike people who insure their houses and then burn them down because they do not want their houses any more. First, aside from the concept of any criminal act of burning the house, one can imagine how any employer would feel if it was told it had to insure the house and if the person decided to burn it down, then employer would have to pay the person for the amount for which the individual insured the house. There would be an awful lot of people who would not worry about selling their houses. They would just light a match. Imagine the havoc that would cause.

Frankly it will create the same form of havoc inside the employment insurance program if people were to say that they have enough weeks now to quit their job, take a year long vacation while collecting these benefits and then find another job, work for the minimum period required and quit that job.

This bill promises more for less. Who can resist that? What a wonderful concept: sign on to this bill and people will more money, get it easier and get it for longer. However what will it cost society, employers and the workers themselves, the very people the hon. member wants to help, in terms of premiums?

I have looked, as I am sure he has, at the obscene surplus that is there right now. At least in theory it is there. In reality, it is gone. Just like Blackbeard used to run the high seas in days of past, looting and plundering at every opportunity, grabbing every dollar possible from every source, we have a government that taxes people. I think this comment has been attributed to the candidate who was the former finance minister and now running for leadership. Whether it is true, I have often heard it attributed that he said, “I have never met a tax I didn't like”.

The Liberals have said that they have lowered income tax and employment insurance taxes. However they raise so many other things in so many other ways that they are a net increaser of taxes, a net plunderer of the wealth, income and revenue of ordinary Canadians.

That is something we should probably look at because if something like this were to pass and even if the government, in a fit of remorse, repaid the incredible surplus it has, and I do not want to say an unparliamentary word as tempting as it might be, absconded from the fund and spent, this would erode that money down to a point where we no longer would have a sustainable margin or a rainy day fund, as it refers to it.

The current surplus nonetheless is on paper. This would mean ultimately that we would see not only no further premium reductions, which we should be seeing right now, but we would start to see increases in premiums in the future. We absolutely know that employment taxes kill jobs. The taxes that employers and employees have to pay are the things that kill jobs.

Employees say that they cannot afford to work below a certain net income, yet there are all these taxes that they have to pay on their income over and above income tax, which still goes into the pockets of the government.

Employers say that to have jobs for people, they have to get a certain return. They have to make a certain amount of money that covers not only wages, but all of the costs incurred by having people work for them. One of the those is the employment insurance premiums which they have to pay. This is something that will likely cause these things to be put up.

Our position is that families would be far better served if we in the House start working together, including the hon. member who brought this in who truly is concerned about workers, to develop policies that create real long term sustainable employment. After all, this is a safety net. This is for people who lose their jobs. Instead of figuring out how to treat them better when they lose their jobs, we should be working together to try to find ways not only so they do not lose their jobs, but so they do not continue to be, as in many cases, underemployed and where they can aspire to maybe a job with more responsibilities, more personal reward in terms of the type of work that they do and of course the pay that they take home.

The Canadian Alliance written policy on this is long established. EI premiums would be set by an independent EI commission based on recommendations from the Chief Actuary. The fund should be enough to cover the emergencies when people suddenly finding themselves out of work with a reserve that is sufficient to ensure that we can cover this in the event of a sudden downturn. A separate hard reserve, not unlike the trust the hon. member suggested, would be established to ensure the payment of benefits in periods of economic downturn.

Employer premiums would be experience rated, not unlike any other insurance plan that is out there, so employers that have a record of fewer layoffs than other employers in the same sector, not across the board, will pay lower premiums. In other words, employers that do not work the system within a given occupation will be rewarded for that. Employers that keep employees employed rather than this continual cycle of layoffs, which is again what I believe the hon. member ultimately wants to get at, will get a bonus in terms of lower premiums.

The frequency of maternity leave or sickness leave, however, will not affect those premiums. That is something which is beyond the control of employers and they will not be penalized for it.

Further, we continue to argue the concept that the best social policy for workers is a job, not a sum of money that they get because they do not have one. That is at best a crutch to prop up the system. The real answer is that we need to do something to create more jobs.

I believe it is irresponsible to place a great burden on the employment insurance account just because it has a paper surplus at this point in time. Premiums could be lowered for workers and employers rather than treating this non-existent surplus like some kind of lottery jackpot to be exploited. The hon. member offers basically a land of milk and honey to everyone without concern where these resources would come from and to afford the ideas that have been dreamt up.

Well meaning though it is, it would be far better if he would turn his attentions toward working with us to create real jobs, real employment, rather than how we will help and prop up people when policies of the government let them down and they lose the job they would far sooner have.

[Monique Guay, Bloc, Laurentides, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to announce from the outset that we support the principle of Bill C-406, which is to relax the employment insurance eligibility rules and to enhance both the benefits and the benefit period. A number of clarifications and changes will, however, need to be considered more closely and made in committee.

I will elaborate on a few points where we feel minor changes would be beneficial. I have touched on this earlier, in speaking with my hon. colleague from Acadie—Bathurst, who has looked at the Bloc's recommendations with an open mind.

First, I wish to say that the fact that 800,000 workers are not eligible for employment insurance is totally unacceptable. These are workers, all 800,000 of them, who contribute to the EI program and yet cannot benefit from it. When I take out an insurance policy, I do so to make sure that, should something happen to me, I have something to fall back on. With EI, workers pay into the fund but they end up being told that they are not eligible because they did not work enough hours to qualify, or they are penalized because the work they do is seasonal, or for some other reason.

This should not still be happening, especially when we see the billion dollar surpluses in the employment insurance fund. This is totally unacceptable. I would have liked to see, in this House, a more unified front from the opposition on an issue as important as this one. We have been fighting for years to ensure that everyone is treated fairly and equitably, and that is not how they are being treated.

A case in point is something very close to my heart, which I have been pushing for in this place for years now: preventative withdrawal from work for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding. The government has yet to do something, anything, on this issue. The amounts involved are not huge; all it would take is political will, but there is none here.

The point we are wondering about is the arm's length relationship. The Employment Insurance Act states that employment is not insurable if the employer and employee are related and do not have an arm's length relationship with each other. The Minister of HRDC, however, has discretionary power that enables him to consider employment of a relative as insurable employment if the claimant can demonstrate, given all the circumstances, that they would have entered into a substantially similar contract of employment if they had been dealing with each other at arm's length. Despite this discretionary power, the law's practical application remains harsh. The burden of proof is always on the claimant. My hon. friend's Bill C-406 puts the burden of proof regarding the arm's length relationship between employer and employee on the Employment Insurance Commission.

In its report, the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development recommended that the government amend the Employment Insurance Act to eliminate the presumption of guilt in cases of non-arm's length relationships between employers and employees.

My party's position is this: the Bloc Quebecois, like the Law Commission of Canada—since the commission made the same recommendation—proposes that the act be amended so that employment by a related person is not presumed to be uninsurable. Bill C-406 will not go that far and an amendment would be required to cover this.

In regions such as mine or that of my hon. colleague, there are often small family businesses. Particularly in Quebec, many small businesses are run by families. Both spouses may work for the same company, often alongside their sons, daughters or cousins. When one of them needs employment insurance for a period of time, or for any reason, this person is instantly refused; the onus of proof is on the person. This should not be. Just because two people are related does not mean that they are trying to beat the employment insurance system. Having to prove one's case can be very difficult.

I know people who have had to wait two years before their case was settled. Not too long ago, I learned of a very good strong case. But these people are being harassed, and this is unacceptable. Their case has been pending for three years. This does nothing to help the family or a situation where employment insurance is at issue, and this certainly does not help a company survive. These people paid into employment insurance like everyone else. This kind of thing must be addressed and changed.

Bill C-406 talks about creating a separate fund. The bill creates an unemployment insurance trust fund to replace the employment insurance account, which comes under the Treasury Board. Obviously, the goal is to increase the transparency of the employment insurance fund.

Furthermore, an independent commission would replace the current commission and serve as trustee of the fund. The members of this independent commission would be appointed by the governor in council from lists of persons nominated by labourorganizations and employer organizations selected by the minister.

A bill introduced in the past by the Bloc Quebecois called for the creation of an employment insurance fund separate from the current consolidated revenue fund.

Four objectives were pursued: contributors must control the fund and play a part in determining the premium rate; any surplus in excess of the $10 billion to $15 billion reserve must be returned to contributors in the form of greater flexibility in the act, or lower premiums; the money paid into the fund by contributors must not be used to finance other government programs, and thus not to pay down the debt; finally, the surplus accumulated since 1995 belongs to the contributors and must be credited to the new independent fund.

In this connection, Bill C-406 is a bit unclear as far as the creation of this fund is concerned. Few details are given on the trust aspect of the fund. What will the real implications of this be? What will be done with the surplus? How will it be credited?

Moreover, the mechanisms for appointment of the independent commission suggest that it will not be all that independent. The reference to labour and employer organizations selected by the minister makes us wonder whether there might not be a way to make the process even more democratic.

As for the rate of weekly benefits payable to a claimant, Bill C-406 says that it is 66% of their weekly insurable earnings, based on the average of the 10 weeks during the 12 months period preceding the week in which the interruption in earnings occurred. The 10 weeks taken into account must be the ones in which the claimant received the highest earnings.

The Standing Committee on Human Resources Development recommended in its report to only take into account the weeks with the highest earnings. It did not say anything about the rate of benefits. In the report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development, the Bloc Quebecois also specified it wanted the average rate of benefits to be increased from 55% to 60%.

Bill C-406 goes a little bit further than the report of the Standing Committee on Human Resources Development and the Bloc Quebecois, but the principle of more generous benefits remains the same. Therefore, I do believe that on this issue we are on the same wavelength. Adjustments are always possible.

Bill C-406 makes the maximum benefit period 52 weeks. We had asked for 45 to 50, so we are on the same page there.

I do not have time to go into them all, but I think we will certainly have the time in committee to find some areas of agreement. What is important is that we came back with an independent fund with the possibility of creating one that will belong to all working men and women. There are 800,000 Canadian workers who do not have access to EI at the present time, but who pay in to it and must be able to draw from it. That will be our goal in supporting the bill of my colleague for Acadie—Bathurst.

[Bev Desjarlais, NDP, Churchill, MB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to the bill today from my colleague, the member for Acadie—Bathurst, an act to amend the Employment Insurance Act.

I want to start by noting the comment made by my colleague from the Canadian Alliance. He made the comment that changing the name from unemployment insurance to employment insurance cost $5 million, and, as my colleague from Acadie--Bathurst has suggested, changing it again would maybe mean another $5 million.

From my perspective, if the name were the only issue and it would save $5 million, I am sure none of us would object. We would not change the name. We would keep the $5 million. We would make sure the workers and employers who paid into the plan would receive some benefit or, quite frankly, because the government uses the money for numerous other things, we would make sure it went into health care, into housing, which is needed throughout the country, and into infrastructure. There are certainly a lot of valuable uses for $5 million.

Therefore his comment that the name does not make a big difference is a point. However, as he was saying that, I was thinking that it really did not matter whether we called it unemployment insurance or employment insurance, it was kind of like calling it life insurance or death insurance. The reality is that if people receive that insurance because they are dead or they are unemployed they do not feel any better one way or the other. The name is really not the big issue here. Let us not get caught up in that.

However, I continued thinking about the name as he was speaking and I wondered what else we could call it. I thought about cash cow for the Liberal government or cash cow for finance ministers running for the leadership. One could call it a one-armed bandit because it takes in a lot more money than it gives out to the unemployed. There are lots of names out there if we ever decide to not get caught up with employment or unemployment.

My colleague brings up a number of issues related to the employment/unemployment insurance fund. I have dealt with most of the issues to which he has referred on an ongoing basis in my riding.

I want to take this opportunity to say that if it were not for the excellent work of the employees who work out of the northern employment insurance offices and the Brandon regional offices it would be a whole lot worse. They have been excellent to deal with. They have an excellent knowledge of the program. When we bring an issue to them they get back to us quickly. We have a good working relationship with them and we have been able to resolve a number of problems that have arisen as a result of employment insurance benefits being paid out.

Although those employees have been great to deal with, the bottom line is that we do have a number of problems. A lot of times the problems are directly related to the policies and rules that have been put in place by the department. The cards and the forms that have to be filled out are too darned convoluted.

I consider myself to be a relatively intelligent human being, as I consider are the staff of my offices, who are great individuals, but when we go through the process of trying to understand the cards and the forms, and everything it entails, it is not an easy system. I challenge anyone to try to fill out those cards with all the information that is required. It is hard for people who have lost their jobs and are trying to put food on the table for their family and get everything done. Sometimes there is some little clincher that they miss or they fill in the wrong box and then, because they have filled in the wrong box, God forbid, they have been fraudulent. This has happened. I am not joking. I say thank heaven for the excellent workers in those EI offices because we have been able to resolve some things.

Therefore, on top of being fraudulent, they have to pay back that employment insurance that they may have received, even though they really should have received it but EI says that they should not have. On top of that, EI fines them the equivalent amount of what they had to pay back. People must bear in mind that these are unemployed people making 55% of their salary, at the most, on employment insurance because it does not give the benefits that it used to give.

In the cases with which I have dealt it was rare, if ever, that anyone had been fraudulent. However they have been caught up in this whole convoluted process. There are a lot of issues related to that and I sometimes think it has been done deliberately.

The other thing is people in this position do not have recourse in the sense that they really do not have the right to go to court over any of this. People hope and pray that their member of Parliament or someone can advocate on their behalf, that they have a good regional office or that the people they are dealing with in their area can bring their issue forward, understand it and resolve it for them.

That does not happen in all cases throughout the country. There are people in certain regions who have ongoing problems because of the attitude some people take toward unemployed people.

Over the course of my lifetime I have been unemployed. As a high school student, and actually as an adult, I worked during the summers and then the employment was gone. I was a seasonal worker. I married and moved somewhere else and because I had worked the required period of time I was able to collect unemployment insurance.

Contrary to what my hon. colleague from the Alliance says, I did not relish the fact and say, “This is great. I do not have a job and I get to collect all this money on unemployment insurance”. I still wanted to get out there and work. This may shock the heck out of some people, but there was not always a job there, but I was lucky. I was able to find a job.

Over the course of my working life I also was on unemployment insurance because of maternity leave. As well, despite having a reasonably decent sick benefit plan in my workplace, in the course of one year I had the problem of having to have surgery and then had a sickness related to an injury. I used up all of my sick leave and I had to go on unemployment insurance.

I had been working all those years and paying into unemployment insurance and met all the criteria that used to be there and still had waiting periods. Quite frankly, why should people have to wait? They have paid the money into the insurance program.

This is probably one of the biggest bones of contention I have with my colleagues from the Alliance Party on the issue of pensions and insurance, mainly the Canada pension plan and employment insurance. I do not see it as a tax when I am paying it. I see it as an insurance. It is an insurance I pay as a worker. I do not begrudge paying employment insurance. Quite frankly, I consider the money I pay in employment insurance a very low cost insurance plan for a time when I might need it.

When I used that employment insurance plan it at least gave me a reasonable amount of money to survive on. Right now it does not do that. It has been cut so harshly by the Liberal government that it does not do the job any more.

When there is an insurance plan that 800,000 members of that insurance plan cannot ever collect from it when they meet the main criteria of the insurance plan, which is loss of employment, something is wrong. I go back to changing the name of the plan to a one armed bandit or a cash cow. Something is seriously wrong.

My house insurance covers a variety of different aspects. When things have happened, I have never had a problem collecting the money. The money has been there.

For unemployed people in this country it is a real problem not being able to collect.

I want to make a comment on behalf of workers. It has been mentioned a number of times in the last week or so in the House that workers in Toronto as a result of either being in a workplace that may have had SARS or in the hospitality industry which is not doing that well and workers have been laid off, because of the criteria behind employment insurance, those people cannot collect. Something is seriously wrong.

Another thing has been bothering me more and more over the last year or so and I do not want the government side to groan over this. Quite frankly I do not see myself as a pro-feminist kind of person but one thing that is becoming quite annoying to me and I am concerned about is that so many of the cuts and the changes the government has made have affected women in low income jobs and other areas far more greatly than anyone else. That bothers the heck out of me.

Obviously I could use much more time to speak to the problems associated with the employment insurance plan as it exists today. I support my colleague's recommendations. I hope the bill is passed by the House and goes to committee. If some fine tuning has to be done, as my Bloc colleague has mentioned, then let us do it.

Let us have an honest to goodness look at changing the plan so that it meets the needs of unemployed workers and of employers in this country.

[Ken Epp, Canadian Alliance, Elk Island, AB]

Madam Speaker, I will just take a few minutes to speak on the bill. When I rise during private members' business, I am always in the habit of congratulating the person for being drawn. In this particular case he was high enough on the list so that he actually has a bill that we can debate.

Interestingly, one of the bills that I have in the works also deals with unemployment insurance and I will call it by that name because that is what it is. It is not employment insurance. It does nothing to insure that one has employment. It would be better if it was called perhaps income insurance. That might be a better name, but employment insurance is definitely a misnomer. I for one objected vehemently when the government spent millions of dollars to change this name two or three years ago.

Undoubtedly employment is a more positive word than unemployment, which is what the objective should be. We should have government policies and do everything we can to drive our economic indicators so that we have the maximum number of jobs. The ultimate program is one that would create long term meaningful jobs with benefits available to the workers and their families.

I would like to commend the member for being able to have his bill debated and to talk about the employment insurance act as it now stands.

There is no doubt that the government has done the workers and particularly small businesses of the nation a tremendous disservice by taking billions of dollars out of their pockets and rolling it into general revenue where unfortunately the government wastes so much of it through boondoggles. The overrun on the gun registry is the biggest one that we have in front of us these days. What a shame it is when there are many people who are either overtaxed or, as the member contends, not benefiting from the insurance program for the unemployed.

As my colleague from Kootenay—Boundary—Okanagan said earlier, we cannot say theft or embezzlement, so we have to say some other things. However, it is money that is taken inappropriately for reasons for which it was not originally intended.

I also wish to commend the member for wanting to have a trust fund independently administered so that the government cannot get its clammy hands on the workers' money.

[The Acting Speaker (Ms. Bakopanos)]

The time provided for the consideration of private members' business has now expired and the order is dropped to the bottom of the order of precedence on the Order Paper.

It being 1:51 p.m., this House stands adjourned until Monday next at 11 a.m. pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).

(The House adjourned at 1:51 p.m.)