Mr. Speaker, I think today marks an important milestone in an issue the Bloc Québécois has been working intensively on for several years, trying to get the federal government to agree to re-create a program for older worker assistance, and not merely a retraining program to enable people to find other jobs.
Today, there has been recognition by the minister of the Bloc Québécois's proposal, which must also include a component called “income support”. There are measures called passive measures which, basically, are very active, because their aim is to ensure that a person who is 57 or 58 years old, who no longer has a job, who tries to find another job, but is not successful, can receive income support that enables him or her to make it to the period of time when they will be able to receive adequate benefits from the Quebec pension plan or old age security.
A lot of questions related to this issue have been asked over the years during oral question period. Bills have been introduced. But for several years, our efforts have been blocked by the government's position. Today, we learn from the minister that the government will vote in favour of our motion. I hope this example will be followed up on as soon as possible to ensure that there be a real and concrete program which will allow these workers to have a decent income when they no longer have a job, when they prepare for retirement and when they are unable to find employment.
I find this more important now than exactly a year ago when we were in the middle of an election campaign. In my riding, unfortunately, there was the announcement that the Whirlpool plant, which employed 500 people, would close. Out of these 500 people, 100 or so were older and met the criteria of the Program for Older Worker Adjustment.
I met with these people in the days following the election. They were the first group to ask for a meeting in my office. I remember a few workers explaining their own situation to me. I met with them again over the past year and they had taken steps to find work, which was not exactly easy.
Today, in the context of globalization, there is a real flurry of competition. The clothing, textile, furniture and other sectors are deeply affected by the competition from China, India, Bangladesh and other emerging markets.
Globalization has brought about significant gains in productivity. There is more to it than just the negative. There are very positive aspects to globalization that help us capture market shares. There is the gain in productivity that we are making as a society. However, for now, the people who are being penalized by the negative side of globalization, or by the job losses in the less competitive sectors, have not benefited from this gain in productivity whatsoever. I hope they will.
I gave the example of the people from Whirlpool. People who worked for 25 or 30 years, who contributed to the EI plan the whole time, who were employed 365 days a year and were told at the end of the day, “After your severance package, there will be 45 weeks of EI and that is it”, truly feel like they have been had since the contributions they paid during 25 or 30 years of work provided other people with a satisfactory income. And they do not get to benefit from it in any acceptable way.
I think our motion deserves to be supported and it seems like it will be by all the members of this House. We hope a program will be implemented as soon as possible.
There is another example in my riding—Industries Troie, in Saint-Pamphile. There were 180 women working in this modern and very well managed textile industry. Unfortunately, with the new global competition, these women found themselves without a job overnight. Since that time, we are trying to give them a chance and they are trying themselves to find another job.
When one earns $8, $9 or $10 an hour, in our own municipality, it is acceptable in terms of the situation and the value of income. However, if we say to these people that, for the same wages, they will have to go and work 50 or 75 kilometres from their home, there is a problem, because their family is already settled in that area. Consequently, on the economic level, it is totally unacceptable.
Can you imagine what it would mean for older women who cannot find this type of work? It would be important, particularly for low income people, to have access to the supplement that we hope will be implemented through the Program for Older Worker Adjustment.
This program should be applied to all people 55 and over. It should also be flexible. Indeed, someone who takes part in it at 58 or 59 years old should be able to receive an amount that takes into account the fact that the period for receiving other sources of income is shorter.
It should also be flexible enough that a 58 or 59 year old worker who signs up for the program could receive an amount that would take into account the fact that there is a shorter time before he or she has access to other income sources. Furthermore, if one signs up earlier, one could profit from income that would be spaced over a number of years, in order to ensure that the negative impact on the family income would be lower. We must absolutely move forward with this.
For that matter, a pilot project was submitted by Quebec labour federations, that is the CSD, the CSN, the SCSQ and the FTQ. It is a joint project and has been submitted to the government. I am sure that the labour federations as well as their members, the workers, will be happy to hear that today, finally, with the help of the Bloc's motion now before the House, the government says it favours the creation of such a program.
I invite the government to draw inspiration from the program proposed by the labour federations because it is a reasonable program which does not contain extravagant demands. We expect that this program will cost approximately $55 million the first year, and $75 million in following years.
Of course, $55 million is a lot of money. However, if one takes into account the total revenue of the federal government, $55 million is not that much.
We are told that the economy is moving along fairly strongly, that employment is generally doing well and that the interest rates remain low. All this is no doubt due to globalization, the opening of markets. However, those who were negatively impacted, who are in the weakest sectors and now live off the textile industries are in tough situations. This is all due to the entry into the Canadian market of products from China and other emerging nations, further to the abolition of tariffs on December 31.
We therefore have to try and give companies every opportunity. We are trying to give workers every opportunity to retrain when they lose their job. However, we should have the decency to help those who cannot find another job and give them some benefits. It is not a handout. We must simply recognize that in our society we have made choices to improve the overall quality of life of Canadians.
Nevertheless, people will be left behind if we do not come up with a program like the Program for Older Worker Adjustment. This requires a special effort. Let us not forget those who work in factories now and who are 50, 52 or 55 years old. Very often they have been working there for 25 or 30 years.
When they began working in the plants, they did not necessarily have the level of education now required for the jobs they do. However, they certainly acquired expertise that cannot easily be transferred to other employers. During all the years those people worked, the government was happy to let them pay income tax and premiums and contribute to our collective wealth. Now, it should be their turn to receive from the government. That would only be fair. That is the thrust of the motion we moved.
This is what it says:
That, in the opinion of the House, due to the increasing number of factory closures associated with globalization, the government should establish a strategy to help older workers who lose their jobs, a strategy that should include income support measures.
Other types of businesses are not excluded. We say that the present trend is towards globalization. All traditional industries are affected by that new reality. We saw it with lumber, where the crisis had profound impacts. That resulted from globalization and foreign markets expansion.
In our motion, there is an additional element that the government has never recognized until now.
I will conclude with that. Besides the retraining and job search support measures implied by our motion which, I hope will receive unanimous support in the House, the federal government would also put in place a program to help the workers who cannot find a new job before reaching retirement age in spite of all their efforts. I hope that this motion constitutes the last step before the implementation of a program bringing satisfaction and justice to older workers.