Mr. Speaker, I think this has been a good day with a good set of debates on Bill C-55, which is an act to establish the wage earner protection program act and also to amend the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the Companies' Creditors Arrangement Act, and to make consequential amendments to other acts.
Amazingly, we actually have a consensus from all parties in the House of Commons that we need legislation in this area. This bodes well for the fact that we have people who go to work every day and expect to be paid for their day's wages. Very often their medical and dental premiums are covered as part of that package. They will have other benefits paid for and so on.
Lo and behold, I think all of us in this place represent large enough constituencies such that over and over again we have seen instances where this does not occur. In some cases it leads not only to devastating personal circumstances, but on a very large scale it can affect whole communities where those communities are tied largely to one employer.
I certainly have that circumstance in my riding, along with the unhappy circumstance that the employer ended in insolvency. There was a restructuring, which also ended in insolvency, and we are now into another restructuring exercise which we are hopeful will conclude successfully. This community, the community of Port Alice, with its specialty cellulose mill, has been through a lot over the last couple of years and that has demonstrated the shortcomings of the status quo in terms of how workers' earnings protections are handled.
Bill C-281, the private member's bill from the NDP member for Winnipeg Centre, promoted an initiative in this place for all parties to get their act together in terms of doing something about this matter, which resulted in Bill C-55.
If one were to take a look at Bill C-55, it would be hard not to agree with the thrust of Bill C-55 and not hard to disagree with some of its details, because this is an area that is quite complex. For example, any attempt to try to change the creditor priority can have a positive effect on one party and a negative effect on another party and sometimes can be counterproductive for both parties. In order for me to explain that, I will probably have to give an example, but it does point out why we need to hold hearings on the issue. It is a complex area of law.
The bill is important to many people and consistent with the fact that I have a large union-certified membership in my riding. I have taken an active interest in these kinds of issues in my 12 years representing that area.
I joined the shadow cabinet subcommittee, which we put together as the Conservative caucus, to develop and propose a wage earner protection fund in the case of a bankruptcy. On May 3, 2005 the Conservative shadow cabinet approved a comprehensive proposal that would be funded through the Employment Insurance Act. Consistent with this report, the Conservative caucus tabled a motion in the House of Commons which reads:
That, in the opinion of the House, immediate steps be taken to amend the Employment Insurance Act to provide for the establishment of a workers' protection fund that is funded and administered under the Employment Insurance Act to protect workers wages, medical and dental premiums, and severance payments to an amount of $5,000 per employee in the event of a business bankruptcy or insolvency.
This demonstrates our direction and intent at that point. On June 3, one month later, the government tabled a bill to establish a wage earner protection program. The government's bill would create a fund which would pay laid off employees up to $3,000 per employee in lost wages. The NDP proposed a similar program, of course, in Bill C-281 that gives super priority to workers in the event of a bankruptcy.
The difficulty we would have in the example that I have quoted, which was the Port Alice cellulose mill with something like what is proposed in Bill C-281, is the fact that the level of assets would be the determinant of how much an employee would receive and this would also be almost certain to result in a long wait for the employee to receive anything.
This is why the direction that Bill C-55 takes, in that specific area of the bill, is actually better because payment would be more quickly achieved. There is no time that is more appropriate for employees to receive their paycheques than when they were expecting them or very shortly thereafter.
The assets were being run down on a monthly basis and at the end of May, the 330 or so employees at the cellulose mill would have had a payout much less than $3,000 per employee. That is another way that Bill C-55 does have some improvements over the private member's bill first enunciated as Bill C-281.
However, we need to look at this in a broad way. I think all of the parties have their hearts in the right place in terms of trying to protect the workforce from employers that have, in some cases, actually gone out of their way to hide from them the fact that they have not been paying into things like their medical and dental premiums.
There was even the case, in the situation I was talking about, where a family support garnishee program had been shorted. In other words, the payments had not been forwarded. That employee was in trouble not just from a financial standpoint in not receiving wages and benefits but owed a payment through the courts that should have been automatic.
These are some of the wrinkles that can occur. We have to avoid an incentive to drive businesses having difficulties into early insolvency in order to keep the asset base up. That occurs as well.