Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup for sharing his time with me and for giving such a fine presentation that really explores the problems facing older workers.
I would also like to thank my colleague from Chambly—Borduas who introduced this motion and so keenly defended it.
This morning, the minister told this House that Canada is experiencing a growth in employment and, as a result, we do not need to help older workers. It is completely absurd to link the number of jobs to the fact that older workers cannot find work.
The minister acknowledged that losing jobs also has a domino effect in the community. This is true, and we know that people who become impoverished at 57 or 58, and who have lost everything, cannot contribute to their community, far from it. Money given to people who have worked all their lives thus helps the entire community and even helps younger people find new jobs.
This morning, the minister said that people would retire more universally if there were a program such as POWA. On the contrary, people want to work. If they suddenly stop working and receive assistance from a program such as POWA, it would be because no other solution is available to them. People do not want to live off POWA. They would prefer to have a real salary. The minister must realize this.
I got the impression that the minister had not gone to see what was happening in the field. She does not know the people these measures are designed for. She is mistaken when she thinks that assistance programs for learning new skills will apply to these individuals. It is very seldom possible to retrain them. She is even talking about new careers. Come on. Men and women who have worked 18, 20, 25, 27 or 28 years for the same company have become experts at their jobs and cannot be readily retrained. They have skills, which they learned on the job. In general, workers in the textile, furniture, lumber and soon the rug industry—since the problem of the rug industry is getting dangerously close to my riding—cannot easily learn another trade or start another career, contrary to what the minister may imagine. Why? Because they have very little education.
My colleague from Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup has just said that people are often illiterate. They have lots of knowledge and have acquired extraordinary expertise. They are professionals in their job. But they have a grade two, grade three, or grade four education. Some have a hard time reading. So they cannot easily begin another career at an advanced age. How can anyone think that it is possible, when it is not?
I will take the example of my father-in-law, a typical man, who spent his life working for Goodyear, in textiles, and who became an expert. This man did not have an education. He had maybe gone to school for two or three years, and then he had to work after the war because he came from a large family.
In Quebec, there are still large families. Some people still leave the country to go and work in factories, where they get their training. They become open-minded and capable people who can help others. My father-in-law even became a foreman. But at age 57 or 58, he could not find a job elsewhere. It was impossible. He did not have the knowledge required.
Someone who changes jobs every five or ten years is mobile, and so is his head. He can easily find employment in other fields. As the minister said, he can enter an assistance program and possibly start another career. But people who have done the same job their whole life long find this hard to imagine and are not able to easily find another way of working and living.
For these people, POWA is therefore absolutely necessary. It cannot be replaced.
My riding has many workers. Unlike the minister, I meet with them and talk with them.
I meet with these people, I talk to them, and I know how much they would like to work, how much they would like to find another job. But this is impossible, because these people specialize in just one area, so there is less work for them, or else none at all.
For example, CSBS, the former CT Brooks company in Magog, is currently restructuring. Every week, it is laying people off or rehiring. Why? Because we are facing huge competition from China, a phenomenon that could be described as dumping. The definition of dumping is giving things to a company free of charge. In China, the government is giving companies land, not charging them tax on equipment, lending them money at preferential rates and giving them tax breaks. This is dumping, because the selling price is less than the production cost.
But the government has never done anything about this. With the WTO, it could have put up barriers over the past 10 years, as the United States has done. There was also NAFTA, and because we are big exporters to the United States, we were hamstrung.
CSBS is a textile plant that is experiencing huge problems, and it is not alone. This morning, the local papers in my riding reported that Consoltex, a textile company in Cowansville, my own city, wants to cut its employees' wages, vacation and benefits, because it is in financial difficulty. Just imagine, if the employees refuse a wage cut that will leave them with starvation wages, the company will close. This will be one more closure that will leave textile experts out of work. The younger workers will be able to find new jobs, of course, but those who are 55 or older will have a tough time finding work.
All the national unions in Quebec and the local unions support us. I have met with them personally, and they are all in favour of assistance for people 55 and over, because they know that these people cannot find new jobs, that they cannot embark on a new career as easily as the minister may think.
We absolutely must help manufacturing companies that are having trouble surviving and we must realize that this is a humanitarian issue. We cannot ask the international community to help our older workers aged 55 and over. It is up to the government to help them. I am convinced that the assistance requested is not an inordinate amount for the government and that it represents peanuts when compared to the total budget.
However, it is very important because half of Quebec's industries have lost 100,000 jobs over the past 10 years. In my riding, thousands of jobs are being lost. These workers cannot be placed as readily as we would like or hope.
Furthermore, we have opened our borders which has created even more difficulties. These conditions did not exist 20 or 25 years ago. They are new conditions and we now need a plan to directly and immediately meet the needs of those aged 55 and over.
We can be certain that older workers will prefer to continue to work or to find another job rather than to receive assistance under POWA.
POWA is like first aid or a safety net that will prevent workers from suffering psychologically and from having their health adversely affected. Money not invested in POWA will be spent to maintain workers' psychological and physical health.
The government can spend in one area or the other. I prefer to have healthy men and women who are no longer employed than to spend money on health care to keep them going to the end of their days. In my opinion, POWA must be established immediately.