Mr. Speaker, there is an insurance scam in this country. It is a sham for most workers. This insurance scam is actually a theft. It is highway robbery. It is a tax grab.
Normally when a person buys insurance, whether it is house insurance or drug insurance, there is an amount the person pays out to make sure there is a sense of security. If there is a theft in the house, if the house burns down, or if something happens, there is insurance to assist. Anybody who buys insurance expects that to happen.
However, that does not happen in the case of the Canadian scam we have, which is called the employment insurance scam. Do Canadians know what it is? It is a burden to the workers.
Yes, the Government of Canada will take the money. The Conservative government takes it now and before that the Liberal government did. Governments take the money for so-called insurance from the workers, but if the workers need it when they are in trouble, unemployed, sick, laid off or on maternity leave, most workers will not qualify. Actually, two out of three workers will not qualify.
Most people, then, ask why they are paying into this so-called insurance fund. In the mid-1990s, the Liberal government set it up so that the government would draw the money into general revenue. Then it would be given for corporate tax cuts and to deal with other matters. That is the workers' money. It is supposed to be theirs. It is their insurance. It is a cost for them with absolutely no return whatsoever to most of them. That is really very unfair.
I will give an examples of workers who need assistance. I recently came into contact with a family, a husband, a wife and a daughter, and unfortunately the daughter has a rare illness that requires her to be in the hospital quite often. The mother told me that she had contributed to employment insurance most of her life but for some reason she did not qualify. She said that her husband earns a good living, but they were really stretched. “This is supposed to be insurance,” she said. When her daughter is sick, she needs to take time off to take care of her. That is supposed to be compassionate leave. She really should qualify, yet she does not.
There are other examples. Workers either do not work enough hours or do not have lengthy enough employment and therefore do not qualify. Many of these workers end up being forced onto welfare. They then feel that they are in a downward spiral of poverty. When we are receiving employment insurance, we do not feel that it is a handout. Why? Because it is our own money. If people have to go onto welfare, they feel they are depending on the state. It makes them lose confidence in themselves.
This bill in front of us actually legitimizes the $54 billion surplus. With one stroke of a pen, it now will disappear.
Let us imagine what we could do with this money. We could, if we had a proper employment insurance program, generate all the funds from employment insurance premiums and that could then increase the percentage of unemployed Canadians covered by the program from the current level up to a target of 80%. This would mean that most people who contribute would be able to receive the insurance for which they paid. When it was first set up, that was how the system was supposed to work.
We could reflect the realities of seasonal workers by using the best 12 weeks of employment to determine the EI benefit levels. We could phase in a decrease in the qualifier to 360 hours. We could support an expanded caregiver program where caregivers would receive up to one year of employment insurance while caring for sick or elderly family members.
We have an aging population. Many ordinary Canadians want to stay home and take care of their parents. They want to take some time off from work. They want to receive employment insurance, which they have paid into throughout their working lives, so that they can take care of their parents or other loved ones and yet we are saying no to compassionate care because of this EI theft.
For Ontarians it is particularly unfair. On average an Ontarian worker may receive only $5,110 versus on average, $9,070 in the rest of Canada. If EI were structured properly, each year Ontario workers would receive an extra $1.7 billion but instead, the $1.7 billion is being taken out of their contributions and given away.
Also the amount of $2 billion which is being put into the reserve fund of the new arm's length agency is nowhere near enough. The Auditor General said that at least $15 billion is needed. In fact, the Canadian Institute of Actuaries also said that $15 billion is need and that the way the reserve fund is structured now, if more money is needed, it would have to be borrowed and interest would have to be paid. Again the taxpayers would end up footing the bill. That is grossly unfair.
We also have trouble with who is going to be on the board of directors. We are worried about the details of the plan. We believe that the $54 billion should be given back to the workers.
If ordinary Canadians understood what is actually happening to their insurance money, they would be outraged. Insurance coverage should mean that if a person contributes, he or she should get it back. This extra penalty on workers is unfair, unjust and unethical. We have an opportunity to comprehensively reform the entire system. We should be fixing the system and providing benefits for workers who lose their jobs or become incapable of working through no fault of their own.
EI payments should never be seen as a hand out, just as house insurance or life insurance is never seen as a hand out. The policies were paid for completely with the hard-earned dollars of working Canadians.
That is why New Democrats are completely opposed to the budget implementation bill.