Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst for bringing this bill forward for discussion today.
Bill C-406 contains several elements intended to amend the Employment Insurance Act. These proposed amendments would expand the eligibility criteria; increase the benefits; eliminate the waiting period; increase the length of the benefit period, especially for claimants who live in high unemployment regions; eliminate any interest charges on penalties imposed for violating the act; and other changes are proposed as well.
My comments are not and should not be taken in any way to defend the status quo in terms of the act. There are changes that should be pursued, and certainly we would encourage those to be pursued, but I would emphasize that the member, and those who support this proposal, would like to appear to be supportive of the unemployed worker. I do not believe they are.
We should know with certainty what the effects of our spending on social programs, such as health care, aboriginal welfare and unemployment insurance, are having. Too often in the past this country has endured the perverse effects of poorly designed social programs on a fiscal level but those who truly suffer, when we throw money at a problem, at a social malaise, without thought, are the recipients of that money themselves.
One only has to take a look at the perpetual welfare dependency of many aboriginal communities across the country since the introduction and expansion of these programs in the 1960s: the concurrent alcoholism, the drug dependency, the abuse and the suicide rate particularly among teenagers. Aboriginal elders consistently claim that the single most damaging social policy for first nations people in communities was the introduction of welfare.
Let us set aside for a moment the escalating financial costs for the aboriginal welfare programs which have exploded to about $2 billion annually. Let us forget about the good things that we could do with those resources were they available to us. We should go to these communities and examine the real costs, the human costs, the abused children, the beaten women, the fetal alcohol syndrome, then talk to the elders and understand where these problems originated.
After one does that, I urge any member of the House to tell me that he or she does not wish that we could go back and change things in terms of the way those programs were designed. Anyone with an ounce of genuine compassion would immediately recognize that the improper design of a social program can create far greater problems than it would ever solve.
The member has not outlined any costs for his proposals. He asks us to demonstrate how much we care by being genuine with other people's money but he has not in any way addressed what the long term consequences of these changes he proposes might be.
We must have the courage here to ask what the effects will be and whether there are real measurable outcomes that will benefit Canadian people and contributors themselves in the future.
I would like to quote a noted Canadian, the premier of New Brunswick, Frank McKenna, who said:
Canada is the only country that I know in the world that offers such generous programs that there is absolutely no incentive in return to divert yourself towards education or training...the truth is that the generosity of Canada has in many ways been the principal impediment to our growth.
If we follow the member's suggestions there will be a variety of outcomes he apparently has not even considered: the distortion of employment patterns; the enticements to create short term, low skilled jobs in declining industries; the temptation for young people to forgo education and training opportunities, why sacrifice income and leisure for training; the discouraging of full year, highly productive jobs in growth industries; the potential for long term dependence; the increased use by employers of short term lay off strategies; the tendency to avoid work once EI does kick in; and the fact that unemployment insurance may be a factor in Canada's rising level of unemployment and our lower level of output.
The member fails to even recognize the need to consider the impact of these proposed changes on families and children. There is nothing more important than children. Each decision we make in this Chamber will have an impact in some way on the future of Canadian children.
The decisions we make around the design of social programs, such as social assistance and EI, are particularly significant in their impact on Canadian families.
The OECD economic working group has been sharply critical of the government's decisions on these issues. In the Economic Survey of Canada 2003, released a couple of weeks ago, it stated:
Features of the employment insurance (EI) programme also contribute to the high unemployment rate. EI has moved well beyond providing income support during unexpected spells of unemployment and has become a major vehicle for delivering family, social and regional assistance.
The criticism of the abolition of worker experience rating contained in the previous survey remains valid. Other aspects of the system also need to be improved. The qualification period is short by international standards, while variations in eligibility rules between high and low unemployment regions discourage internal labour mobility, leading to persistent differences across the country and thus higher structural unemployment.
The member's proposed changes would see the qualification period, already criticized for being too short, reduced even further. The member has also failed to recognize that his changes would further exacerbate Canada's high structural unemployment and would very likely hurt the very region from which he comes.
Furthermore, the OECD recommends that EI should:
--include stronger training and job search requirements and greater use of initial case management and diversion programmes, as the countries that have been most successful in cutting unemployment are those that have improved both incentives and enforcement.
Those who advocate for changes, such as the member proposes in his bill, are promoting higher benefit costs. The government does not pay these costs. rather, the employed workers and the working poor, in particular, will be expected to pay for these changes.
We must remember that this is not a government fund. It is a pooled insurance fund. The money comes from the workers' paycheques and the costs reduce the workers' take home pay.
We must also remember that this has an impact on the families of this country, especially those who work full time in lower wage positions.
We must not make the same mistakes as the former finance minister here, who is responsible for allowing the overpayments to balloon to over $45 billion. That is not the sign of a good money manager.
This is the same finance minister who inherited a robust economy, which was none of his doing. He balanced the books, supposedly, but he did it by cutting health care and education transfers to the provinces and then blaming them for the problems that resulted. He signed the cheques for the out of control billion dollar gun registry, while at the same cutting things like agricultural research and infrastructure.
Again, we must not forget that he overcharged working Canadians and small business people by $45 billion on their employment insurance premiums and that he used the money as a slush fund for Liberal patronage projects.
We must remember that this is not our money. This is the working money for working Canadians. It is not a slush fund for the former finance minister to play with. It is not a slush fund for MPs to throw around like confetti. It belongs to Canadian families. When it is left in the hands of working parents it supports Canada's children.
When the design of a social program discourages employees in their search for work, when it discourages them in the pursuit of their training, when it discourages employers from hiring and when it discourages young people from choosing further education we have a problem. We must make no mistake about it, we have these problems in Canada right now.
In fact, today the Vancouver Sun reported on a study done by Statistics Canada which supports the charge that the “EI system is too generous and discourages the unemployed from actively seeking work”.
Most of the proposals in the bill, but not all, will simply make matters worse. They are cloaked in the guise of compassion. They are nothing of the kind. They are more of the shortsighted, misguided, vote buying tactics that have been practised by successive federal governments throughout the last quarter of a century.
The perverse outcome of which has been elevated structural unemployment in this country. Most tragic to our young people is the loss to Canadian children of the role models they need: the role model of a parent dedicated to working, committed to education and always mindful and in pursuit of the glorious potential that Canada has to offer each of its citizens; appreciative of a hand up but never looking for a handout.