Madam Speaker, with regard to the cost of this program, $55 million in the first year and $75 million in subsequent years, and the need to specifically focus on older workers, I have two or three comments.
First, I agree and recognize that there is an issue for older workers who lose their jobs. They have difficulty in re-entering the workforce. When I read the motion, I see that it refers specifically to factory closures associated with globalization. I would argue that our concern is actually broader than this, in that we are concerned with all older workers who have lost their jobs, whether it is in factories or in small businesses or other enterprises in communities.
My riding in central Ontario, which is quite rural and has a very high percentage of older people, also has a relatively high unemployment rate. Many of the unemployed older people in my riding would not be such as a result of globalization or factory closings, but as a result of other more local factors. That is my first point. I think we need to look at the needs of older workers in a broader context rather than focusing specifically on factory closures.
In terms of the relatively small number of dollars involved here, I must apologize, in that I am a rookie member and have been here less than a year and, as such, $55 million still sounds like a big number to me, although I recognize that in this place $50 million or $100 million gets tossed around pretty easily. My point has been in terms of the costing. I think investigation bears this out: if there are several components to the cost structure, including percentage of wages, number of weeks a person must work, number of weeks of benefits to be paid, local unemployment rate and age of workers, in that model if we only change one factor it is relatively easy to determine what the cost of that would be.
My concern has been about simultaneously changing three or four variables in that equation. The actual impact of that will probably be different than merely adding up what the individual costs would be. In fact, I would argue that the total cost would inevitably be more than the individual costs. My point about costs is that if we are going to change a lot of things I think we need to have accurate information on what the total cost would be.