Mr. Speaker, last Sunday the hon. member for Portneuf, who was accompanying the Liberal candidate in the new riding of Charlevoix—Montmorency, declared, as reported in the March 22 edition of Le Soleil , that “the greater Quebec City region wants us to take action before the election” regarding the situation of unemployed workers who are suffering because of the unjust employment insurance program established by the Liberal government.
We must wait no longer. We must help the seasonally unemployed workers of the Charlevoix and Haute-Côte-Nord region who, for the most part, are receiving no benefits at this time and who are having problems putting food on the table. While the federal government keeps piling up surpluses, workers in the seasonal industries are going hungry.
For a long time, the Bloc Quebecois has been proposing the creation of an independent employment insurance fund. Nevertheless, the Liberal government is pretending to seek solutions that we have already found.
Let the government do its work rather than mocking the workers by refusing to meet with them to settle their problems once and for all. I hope that the Liberals will unanimously support the motion by the hon. member for Charlevoix that would give seasonal workers a special status, no matter which economic region they live in.