Mr. Speaker, first, I want to thank my NDP and Conservative colleagues, who are supporting my bill on preventive withdrawal for working women. I want to respond to the government members. They are saying that people should trust this government because part III of the Canada Labour Code is going to be amended. Right now, I have zero confidence in this government.
We know where trust has led us with this government. It has led to the Gomery commission. How are we supposed to trust it when it talks about amending part III of the Canada Labour Code? Such amendments would ensure that pregnant workers could go on preventive withdrawal just like such workers in Quebec, instead of being in a different category.
With regard to preventive withdrawal, I heard earlier that part III of the Canada Labour Code states that, if there is a risk to a worker, supported by a medical certificate, she must be paid. They are talking here about a few days or a week. Let us not forget: a pregnancy lasts for nine months. As for modifying job functions, there is no cause for concern. An employer will not wait six months before acting because he has to pay the worker in the meantime. So he will find her a job that she can do right away, if he can, within the plant or place of work.
We must not forget, either, that we are not just talking about women working in banks. Some women are workers regulated by the Canada Labour Code, working with heavy trucks or all kinds of trucks for all kinds of transportation, be it canned food, lumber or whatever. Truck vibrations may mean that pregnant workers need to stop working right from the first day of pregnancy. So, in this particular case, there is a problem because reassignment is not possible.
Let us be clear on what preventive withdrawal means for a pregnant worker. If the employer cannot assign that worker to another position, she goes home without pay. The only pay she can get is the 25 weeks of salary that do not kick in until 15 weeks before her due date. From the first day the worker knows she is pregnant until she has her baby, she has no salary except for two or three months just before she delivers.
Do you think it is right that a worker has to take leave at her own expense to have children? This government says that we should be having a few more children and that it will help families have children. I do not think this is the right approach. I do not believe in having two people working in the same province or in the same region with two different systems. There should be one equal system for all women working in Quebec.
Let us look at the 600-hour requirement to qualify for EI. Have you ever thought that it takes half a year of work to become entitled to receive benefits for a certain period of time? We are not talking about 52 weeks nor any specific number. If a person has worked only half a year, she is entitled to just what EI allows, which is next to nothing. The government has cut back on EI so much that, today, only 46% of workers are able to qualify. It has slashed employment insurance and no one qualifies any more.
If this government were at all interested in the middle class—the people who are working—I think there would be social legislation to clearly demonstrate the government's desire to help them. I have been here a year and a half without hearing anything about that. The only thing I have heard anything about is cuts, and about giving nothing to the workers, although they are the economic motor of all business.
Yet there is nothing complicated about this. In order to regularize the situation between the two categories of women workers in Quebec, the only thing needed is political will, which would translate into the signing of an agreement with Quebec.
There is already an agreement with Quebec for all workers coming under the Canada Labour Code as far as work-related accidents are concerned. Anyone who has a work-related accident benefits from the agreement the federal government has entered into with the provincial government, and it pays for the work-related accident.
It would be just as easy to have a new agreement for pregnant workers. This would just require a bit of political courage, but that is not something to be found on the other side of this House.