Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to the motion today. I congratulate my colleague from the Bloc for bringing it forward. I know it is motivated by concern for Canadians who sometimes are in difficult circumstances because of seasonal work.
The motion would modify the employment insurance program to establish some kind of specific status for seasonal workers regardless of the EI economic region in which they live.
The EI program, as the member from the government just mentioned, has been broadened considerably in the last 10 years under the Liberals.
The first question I think Canadians will want to ask is: What is the purpose of the EI program? If the purpose of the EI program is to serve many masters, retraining, compassionate leave, parental leave, seasonal workers, a lot of different purposes, then we are on the right track. Why not add one more? We have already added a, b, c, d, and e, so what is the rationale for not adding three or four more in the program?
Another way to look at this program is the way the Forget commission looked at it when there was a comprehensive review of EI, called UI at that time, by a very distinguished commission. The commission said that unemployment insurance should be insurance. People pay a premium and if they have an unexpected and unforeseen job loss they have the means to pay their mortgage and feed their kids. The purpose of an insurance program is to insure people against an unforeseen loss.
Under the Liberals, the program has been broadened to cover all kinds of things, but it is not insurance. It is not insurance at all. If someone is involved in regional work or if someone decides to become a parent, then that is not an unforeseen circumstance. Yes, there should be programs to cover those circumstances, but do they properly belong under unemployment or employment insurance? That is a question that we sometimes forget when we are talking about this program. It is a valid question. What is the purpose of the program?
If the purpose of the program is insurance against unexpected job loss, which certainly happens all too often in our changing economy, then that is a program that we can define in that way. However what it has become is a slush fund for the government.
The member from the government just said that 88% of people who pay premiums into the insurance program are entitled to insurance. That means that more than one in ten people paying premiums into the program have no entitlement to any benefits, to any insurance. The member herself admitted that. What kind of an insurance program is that, where I have to pay premiums with no hope of receiving any benefits?
My colleague from the Bloc pointed this out. Why should regional workers have to pay premiums under a program that does not benefit them? That does not make a lot of sense does it?
Another thing the government is doing, which it knows full well, is taking far more in premiums into the program than is being paid out under the program. In fact the chief actuary of the program, a special actuary who designs the program to make sure it is properly run and that the money is being put in so that people who need benefits can be sure of getting them, said that the government was charging far too much in premiums than it needed to pay out the benefits.
What has the program become for the Liberal government? It has become an enormous cash cow. In fact, since the government took office it has taken into the program $45 billion more than is needs to run the program.
Can anyone imagine what Canadian workers and employers struggling under the tax load of the government could have done with $45 billion in their pockets? There are $45 billion in this last 10 years that workers and businesses could have had to work with, but no, it went into the pockets of the government, which is now crying poverty when it comes to important programs like health care.
This motion says we should add one more thing to the EI program. Should we do that? We do not know because this program has been expanded in so many ways that it is hard to know what the rules are. Is it an insurance program? We do not know. It certainly is not operating like an insurance program. Is it a program where certain defined premiums are paid out for defined benefits? The answer is no. The member himself admitted that there are people paying into the program that are not entitled to benefits. There are some fundamental questions here.
There is another fundamental question. What is a seasonal worker? Is a seasonal worker someone, as my colleague said, working in the ski industry? Is that person entitled to have an income once the ski season is over? Is someone who is building roads for oil companies in the north entitled to income when the road building season is over because of the spring thaw? What constitutes a seasonal worker? I asked my colleague that question and he gave some examples, but how does one define that? If a person decides to work in a seasonal occupation, under what circumstances is there an entitlement to income when not working?
My colleague from the Bloc says that there are some industries where this is necessary because there is no other work to be had once that particular product or activity is over for the season. How is that defined? We need to decide that before we move forward.
It seems to me that if we are going to start tinkering with the EI system piecemeal, it is not going to be a very sensible way to approach a very important program for Canadians. Canadians do not want to wake up in the morning to find out that their jobs have been terminated for whatever reason and they are bereft of the resources to look after their families. It is a good program to ensure oneself against that, but is it a program where a lot of these other things should be added on?
I remember some years ago when this program was funding a thing called TAGS, which was to retrain people in the fisheries who were no longer able to fish because the Liberals had mismanaged the fish so badly that there were none left. This TAGS program paid out billions of dollars and had a pathetic record of actually helping displaced fishers find a new occupation that could support themselves and their families. Is this the proper use of an insurance program? Those are valid questions.
I would invite my colleague to answer these questions before we adopt a program that has a very important function for Canadians and start loading it up with other uses and abuses--particularly by the government which abuses it--and put extra, unnecessary and, by the way, unlawful money into the federal coffers. The law governing this program says we should only have premiums that will allow us to ensure a certain level of benefits, but the government has violated that consistently year after year.
There are some good questions raised by this good motion. It is a motion that has compassion for people. It is a motion that wants to do the right thing with a program. However, unless some fundamental questions are answered about the purpose of this program, about the definition of who is going to be encompassed in changes to the program and questions about what the government is doing using this program as a slush fund at the expense of workers and employers, I do not think we should go any further.