Mr. Speaker, I would like to talk about the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act, the famous Bill C-55, adopted in this House almost a year ago, in November 2005. That bill created a salary protection program for workers in case of bankruptcy.
A long time ago, the Bloc Québécois made a commitment to the unions to propose amendments to the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act to ensure that the salaries of employees and pension funds would be the first debts to be paid in the case of the bankruptcy of a business.
The current situation is unsatisfactory. Under the legislation now in effect in our country, an employee who has worked all his or her life for the same company could be left with nothing if the company went bankrupt. In the face of that fact, the Bloc Québécois decided to press the government to correct the flaws in the current legislation and to ensure better protection for workers’ salaries.
A year and a half ago, the government of the day tabled a bill in this House, Bill C-55. That bill conformed to the principles of social justice that employees must be paid for the hours they have worked. Workers have nothing but their salary as a source of income. Workers’ pension funds are sacred. No one works all his or her life to end up as impoverished as someone who did not worked so hard for so long.
As I mentioned previously, Bill C-55 created the wage earner protection program, WEPP. Bill C-55 consisted of two components. The first component, dealt with protection of wages, WEPP. The second component dealt with the revision of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act. While the WEPP component was not perfect, there were still real benefits related to that program. For example, workers whose company went bankrupt could apply for employment insurance and be eligible for an allowance of up to $3,000 of unpaid wages when the employer declared bankruptcy. The payments made under the program were taxable and took into account other applicable contributions. In this way, regardless of the value of the employer’s assets, workers could obtain the greater part, if not all, of their unpaid wages.
The Department of Industry estimated that $3,000 per worker would be enough to cover 97% of all unpaid wage claims. The government also estimated that this would cost the Treasury $32 million a year or, in very bad years, $50 million. Meanwhile, the government is running $13 billion surpluses.
I think that the Bloc Québécois disagreed with some aspects of the bill but voted in favour of it because it seemed to be a great improvement on the current situation.
The purpose of this adjournment debate is to ask the minister what he is doing. I asked him this question last June in the House and he said that there were some problems with Bill C-55 and it could not be implemented right away. He said, though, that he would take care of everything and would soon have more to tell us. Unfortunately, nothing came of this because it is now October and still there is no news about this bill.
Basically, I want to know two things. First, what parts and clauses of the bill are causing problems? I would also like to know when the minister expects to introduce it again in the House, return to it or just enact it.
I would also like to suggest to the minister that if it is the bankruptcy part that is causing a problem, he just needs to enact the wage earner protection program.