Mr. Speaker, I asked a question of the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development in the House of Commons on the pilot project involving the five additional weeks to prevent what we call “the gap”. In the spring, seasonal workers are short on income.
I want to thank the Bloc Québécois for the press conference they held today. They brought people from the North Shore, the Coalition des sans-chemise, here to Ottawa. The purpose of the press conference was to call on the government to extend the pilot project, or better yet, make the project permanent.
The pilot project began in June 2004 and we are coming up to June 2006. That makes two years and I think the study is done. It is no longer time to study and keep studying; it is time to act.
At the end of two years of study, compared to what would have been the case without the pilot project, more than 98% of gappers were entitled to the full five weeks of extra benefits. We find this on page 83 of the 2005 Employment Insurance Monitoring and Assessment Report. “The preliminary results of the evaluation indicate that the pilot program potentially eliminated approximately 65% of all income gaps for seasonal claimants who had exhausted their EI benefits”. That is on page 83 of the report.
In the information document from the office of the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development that I received when I met with her, we read that “roughly 110,000 claimants truly benefited from the additional weeks of benefits”. Without the pilot project they would have exhausted their five weeks of benefits sooner.
In 2004-05, some 22,760 seasonal claimants were gappers in Canada.
I could continue to read the report. However, what I am trying to say to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development is that the time to study is over. We absolutely must help people who end up in the employment insurance gap. A study has been done.
You know, the Liberal government—I have quite often used this term not permitted in the House of Commons—took, without asking workers, $49 billion out of the employment insurance fund. Since 1996, this fund has been the Liberal's cash cow. Now, we hope that the Conservative government will not use employment insurance as the cash cow for balancing its budget and eliminating the deficit, to the detriment of workers. If we want to fix the employment insurance problem, there is only one way to do it, and that is through economic development. We must give individuals the opportunity to work.
I am asking the Minister of Human Resources and Social Development if she will make this decision. On behalf of her government, will she make the decision to add five weeks—and I would like even more—to the number of insurable weeks? We must recognize the seasonal workers of our country, recognize the people who work in the fishing industry. They are not the ones who decide on Friday that there will be no jobs on Monday.
I would like to hear from the parliamentary secretary, the government's representative who is here this evening, what her government will do about these five weeks that can help bridge the gap for seasonal workers in the Atlantic, North Shore, and Gaspé regions and any other areas where there is a need.