Debates of June 2nd, 2008

Budget Implementation Act, 2008

[Louise Thibault, Independent, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague, always true to form, passionate, full of emotion, just as we should be when we are defending the common good of those whom we represent. I say it often, and I will continue to do so: I truly appreciate the comments and the ardour that my colleague puts into his speeches.

My question is very simple. For all of those who are listening to us and will follow the events right up until the vote tonight, could he explain the fate of the $54 billion, to become $2 billion if this reserve is created? What will happen to the $52 billion that belongs to both the workers and businesses that contributed to the current fund?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the sad part here is that in 1986, after the auditor general said that this money should go into the general fund, all of a sudden the government had found a cash cow. This is the government's cash cow. Each time the government announced profits, a surplus, or even a balanced budget, it was at the expense of workers.

The question was asked of the Liberals when they were in power and of the Conservatives. They only responded that we should wake up, because they had taken the money. They admitted having spent it and that the money was gone. This evening, they will legalize this theft. That is what they will do.

Then, we will hear that if the workers need money they will have to borrow it and pay interest on that loan, because there will be interest on the $54 billion that belongs to them. That is the sad part, and we will find out the ending tonight.

The other sad part is that, instead of borrowing money, the government will reduce EI even more, which will mean less for the workers.

These are the two things that can happen after tonight. This marks a sad day in Canada's history. This is $54 billion gone into the coffers of the government, which used them for sponsorships, as we know, or other things that were not good for Canadians.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my colleague for the very fair analysis that complements my own. We have been working together since 2004 to prepare the 28 recommendations that were referred to earlier.

The first eight recommendations aimed specifically to create an independent fund that is independently administered and to ensure that the money that had been diverted was very gradually returned to the fund.

All members are facing this reality in their respective ridings. We are all meeting workers who are struggling with this problem. We are talking with them. They voted for us and entrusted us with this mandate. I am referring specifically to the hon. member for Louis-Hébert, the hon. member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles, the hon. member for Lévis—Bellechasse and the hon. member for Roberval—Lac-Saint-Jean. I know they have worked directly with unemployed workers. They promised those workers a POWA, an income support program for older workers, and a solution to the problems of access to EI.

Can my colleague, who has been a member of this House longer than I have, explain to me how it is that these decisions are being reached, decisions that negate the commitments made to workers and other people directly involved? Is there an explanation for this?

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Mr. Speaker, the only explanation I can give is that in order to do those things, you must be either a Conservative or a Liberal.

I remember the members for Bourassa and LaSalle—Émard who, in 2005, promised to change employment insurance if they were elected, but they did not. Now it is the same thing for the others.

I went to Forestville myself—I believe that the member for Chambly—Borduas was there, at least some of the members of his political party were there—where 2,500 people, workers and business owners, demonstrated in the streets. Everyone said that the changes made no sense.

Today, the Liberals have not once stood in the House of Commons to discuss the employment insurance fund. As for us, we will ensure that workers know that the Liberals are no more interested in making changes to employment insurance than they are interested in repaying the workers.

So, the only answer I can give is to say that in order to act this way, you would have to be a Liberal or a Conservative. The Liberals and the Conservative have been making promises for 100 years without keeping them, and that will be the case again tonight.

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to the EI provisions in the budget implementation bill. My riding is part of steel town, Hamilton, the city that was built on a vibrant manufacturing sector where industrial workers earned family sustaining wages. Unfortunately, today those decent paying jobs are disappearing. They are being replaced by minimum wage, service sector jobs with no job security, few if any benefits and certainly no defined benefit pension plans. In that regard, Hamilton is a microcosm of what is happening in the country as a whole. We have lost 350,000 manufacturing sector jobs in the last five years alone and we are still hemorrhaging 300 additional jobs each and every day.

As the manufacturing sector is confronted with the tsunami of job losses, we as elected members have a responsibility to mitigate its impact on the hard-working Canadians who are losing their jobs through no fault of their own.

That of course was the original reason for creating EI, or unemployment insurance as it was originally known. It was established so workers who lost their jobs would not automatically fall into poverty. EI is the single most important income support program for Canadian workers.

In 2004-05 almost two million workers received some $13 billion in benefits. Just under two-thirds of that amount was in the form of regular benefits for temporarily unemployed workers actively seeking work, while most of the remainder was for parental and maternity benefits, which allow a new parent to take up to a year's supported leave from the workforce.

It is a myth that the EI program is mainly accessed by frequent users in high unemployment regions. While the program is indeed of vital importance to seasonal workers and other workers in high unemployment areas, only about one-third of regular claims in 2004-05 were filed by so-called frequent claimants.

In today's labour market, many workers can and do experience periods of interrupted earnings and require temporary income support. But even workers who never, or very rarely, make a claim have the knowledge that support would be there if needed. In short, the EI program was designed to help reduce poverty and insecurity. In the process, it stabilizes community economies.

It is true that the stabilization effects were significantly weakened by the cuts of the mid-1990s. When the Liberals were in power, the then finance minister took almost $50 billion of workers' money out of the employment insurance program and used it to cut taxes for his friends in corporate Canada. By the end of their 13 long years in office, the system had been gutted so badly that only 38% of unemployed workers were receiving benefits, down from more than 75% in the early 1990s before the Liberals took office.

Women were particularly disadvantaged because they make up the bulk of the part time workforce. Only three in ten women who lose their jobs are now eligible for EI.

Similarly, long years of service in the workforce no longer count for anything when it comes to collecting EI benefits. Workers on leave for training, the key to staying employed and employable in a modern economy, are also no longer covered. Why? Because after the Liberals took close to $50 billion out of the employment insurance program, there was little left to meet the program's original mandate, except it was not their money to take.

Employment insurance is funded solely by worker and employer contributions. The government simply administers the fund, so why are benefits being denied to those who have faithfully paid their premiums? Why do Ontarians get on average $5,000 less in EI than people in other parts of the country? Why is it virtually impossible to access retraining benefits when disaster strikes? New Democrats have been raising these questions in the House of Commons since the former Liberal government first started this unscrupulous raiding of the EI fund.

With the change in government in 2006, voters could be forgiven if they thought that a Conservative government might lead to some positive change. After all, before the election, it was the Prime Minister, then serving as the leader of the opposition, who joined us in harshly criticizing the raiding of the EI surplus, but that was then and this is now. Once elected, the Conservative government simply continued to rob workers of what is rightfully theirs.

It is totally unacceptable and frankly incomprehensible that last year when there was a $51 billion surplus in the EI fund, 68% of women and 62% of men who pay into the system were not eligible for benefits. It is time to say enough is enough. Workers' rights have been pushed to the side for far too long.

That brings us to the bill that is before the House today, Bill C-50, the implementation bill for the 2008 budget. What does it do? Instead of doing right by hard-working Canadians and returning all of the employee and employer contributions to the EI fund, it does the unthinkable. It legalizes the theft of $54 billion. That is the biggest theft in Canadian history and it is being perpetrated in the House of Commons and in the Senate. That is wrong and it is completely unacceptable. That money belongs to workers and their families. It is time to give it back. Workers deserve enhanced benefits, not enhanced bureaucracy, but more bureaucracy is all that the workers are getting from the government.

The Conservatives are setting up a new Canada employment insurance financing board that is mandated to use surpluses to reduce premiums instead of using them to improve access to benefits and the quality of benefits for Canadian workers.

Moreover, the reserve fund is limited to just $2 billion. Even then the bill says that the finance minister may give that sum to the board, not that he has to. How can we ensure there will be enough money in the reserve permanently?

The EI fund is supposed to protect workers in the case of economic downturns. It needs to be recession proof, but the Auditor General has estimated that $10 billion to $15 billion would be the amount required to balance the employment insurance account in the event of a recession.

I could go on forever, but I realize that I am running out of time, so let me reiterate my main concerns.

I have concerns about the legalized theft of the $54 billion surplus. I am concerned that the surpluses will not be used to improve access to or the quality of benefits for Canadians, which may even be a step toward the covert abolition of the employment insurance program altogether.

I am concerned about the reallocation of the most recent employment insurance surplus. I am concerned about the government's evasion of its obligations to workers since it will not have to answer for a crown corporation in the House. I am concerned about the uncertain funding for the reserve fund. I am concerned about the possible inadequacy of the reserve fund. I am concerned that the establishment of the board in no way improves Canadians' access to benefits or the quality of those benefits.

I am concerned about a potential suspension of benefits. I am concerned about the government's focus on establishing the board rather than attending to the employment insurance program's real problems.

These concerns are shared by thousands of hard-working Canadians in my riding of Hamilton Mountain and, indeed, right across our country. Yet today, the government is ramming it through the House just like it rammed it through committee.

There were no meaningful consultations. There were no cross-country hearings nor indepth study. The finance committee closed down debate on the bill. The Conservatives imposed a five minute limit to each speaker, and the Liberals supported that motion, five minutes to steal $54 billion. Workers deserve better. The EI surplus comes from their pockets. Unemployed workers desperately need these funds.

I urge all members of the House to do the right thing now, especially my Liberal colleagues. They should put the needs of working families in their ridings ahead of their own electoral needs. I know the Liberals do not want an election this spring and to vote against the government would trigger one, but this is not about their future; it is about the future of workers in our country. This is the time to stand up and be counted.

I am proud to stand with my NDP colleagues in voting against the bill. We know which side we are on.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, first, I thank my colleague from Hamilton Mountain for standing up so strongly and clearly for the interests of the working people in her riding. Everything she has mentioned that applies to them applies to all workers in all our ridings.

One thing should jump out, and I will ask the hon. member to expand on it a bit so everybody truly understands. She spoke of the 68% of women who did not qualify. The underlying message is this is of the people who pay EI premiums. It would be insulting and awful enough if it were true, that 68% of all the population did not qualify, but it is worse.

Of the 100% of people who pay, that is how many do not qualify. Would the member expand on that in any way she can to get that message across, that this is about as clear a legal rip-off as we are ever going to see, made worse by the budget bill in front of us?

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Hamilton Centre makes the important point of the debate. The money we are talking about, the theft we are talking about, of $54 billion is money that has been paid into the EI fund by workers and employers specifically to cushion the blow when they lose their jobs.

The fact that over 65% of men and women are not eligible to access this money is the crime that is really being perpetrated in the House. It goes beyond just the statistics.

In our hometown of Hamilton, which the member for Hamilton Centre and I obviously share, people are trying to access training dollars through EI. I do not know if members have been speaking to people in their riding, but accessing training dollars is almost impossible.

The burden that the paper process put on workers to demonstrate the skills they have used in successful careers for years are no longer needed in their community takes an inordinate amount of time just to satisfy the burden of proof. By that time, they are almost running out of their EI benefits, and training programs often take a year or two. They no longer have the EI benefits to assist them in the retraining to again accept jobs in our communities.

The EI program no doubt needs fixing today, but the government's solution of legalizing the theft is not a solution for the hard-working people in ridings like Hamilton Mountain, Hamilton Centre and right across the country.

[The Deputy Speaker, NDP, Bill Blaikie]

It is my duty, pursuant to Standing Order 38, to inform the House that the questions to be raised tonight at the time of adjournment are as follows: the hon. member for Mississauga South, Airbus; the hon. member for Moncton—Riverview—Dieppe, Airbus; the hon. member for Willowdale, Automotive Industry.

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Hamilton East—Stoney Creek.

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise today to join my friends from Hamilton Centre and Hamilton Mountain in this important debate.

I will be speaking to Bill C-50, as the others have, and in particular the aspects of Bill C-50 concerning employment insurance. One of the most important parts of this debate must include how the unemployment insurance fund came to this end, how it became employment insurance in the first place and what it meant to the working people who had been paying into the fund all of their working lives.

I can recall in the early to mid 1990s the finance minister of the day, the member for LaSalle—Émard, undertook substantial and fundamental changes to the social compact that Canadians held so dear. It was also what we believed was part of the very foundation of why Canada was a great country. It took into account the needs of people when they fell on hard times.

It was during this period that new buzzwords started to appear and it became the language coming from Ottawa, the bubble that is Ottawa. “Downloading” and “offloading” were among the most destructive of the words that I heard used. One may ask why? In the name of deficit fighting, the Liberal government of the day foisted changes in the form of the Canada health and social transfer onto the provinces. The Liberal government systematically began to seriously cut back the funding the federal government was transferring to the provinces, as well as offloading many of their responsibilities.

Included were changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act, which were meant to reorganize the act and begin to focus more on retraining, as we heard the member for Hamilton Mountain speaking about a few moments ago. In my community of Hamilton, workers began a cycle of training, retraining and then some more training, but no one understood what they were training for because there was a serious job crisis at that time. No jobs were available, just this cycle of training and retraining.

In addition, during that period, the theft of some $50 billion of worker and employer contributions was well underway. However, to grow the fund to the unprecedented size of in excess of $50 billion, the Liberal government first had to build up the fund and to do so, changed the eligibility rules. Following the massive rule changes, Canadians found that instead of the benefits they previously could depend on, the benefits that for years they had paid for, more and more Canadians found they did not qualify for the benefits at all or, if they did, they received them for a far shorter time period.

This effectively forced some Canadians onto welfare rolls. These Canadians were offloaded, so to speak, from the more equitable funding available from income tax and shifted over to the less comprehensive programs funded by property tax. That not only hurt those workers, but it added a new burden to the municipalities. We have heard from the FCM how it has the $23 billion deficit in infrastructure in the country, and that is part of the reason it has that. However, municipal governments, especially in hard times, had to raise property taxes and that hurt people on fixed incomes, pensioners or low income earners.

Canada's employment insurance program was significantly undermined by the previous Liberal government. Canadians knew it as one of the strongest programs, which helped working people when they lost their jobs. When they needed bridging to new employment, this program used to provide funding for unemployed workers. Some 80% of unemployed workers used to get EI, or UI as we knew it, to help them through that transition. As a result of the cuts made by the previous Liberal government and other changes to EI, it significantly undermined who would get benefits and the level of those benefits.

Today, about two-thirds of Canadians do not get employment insurance benefits. I still find it impossible to accept that new language. The fact that so few actually get the benefits is shocking. If other insurance companies refuse to allow individuals access to the benefits they have paid into, there would be a huge uproar across the country.

This move to EI and what we have before us today is completely unfair. Working people across Canada and employers, in good faith, have paid into the employment fund for many years, building a huge surplus. The estimates vary but some say it is as high as $57 billion. It now appears the previous government, as well as the present government, used that money to pay down the debt and for other programs. People who have been paying into the fund and who ought to get the benefits are denied those benefits.

This is at a time when the current government's budgets have failed to invest in strengthening our economy and opted instead to reduce social spending in favour of the huge corporate tax breaks to the banks, oil companies and gas companies. Consecutive Liberal and Conservatives governments collected EI premiums and made a conscious decision not to distribute those proceeds to the people who need them.

The jig is up. What will the Conservative government do with this misappropriation of the EI premiums of Canadians? What is its goal? Rather than saying there is an imbalance between the money paid in and the abysmal level of benefits and services available as a result of the inadequacies in the EI program, the Conservatives have decided to write these billions of dollars off Canada's book. To ensure that they never have to repay the money, they are setting up a separate account that will not be accountable to Parliament.

In spite of all the rhetoric we hear day in and day out in election campaigns about accountability, the Conservatives are legislating accountability away in this bill.

This should be unbelievable. Sadly, and equally unbelievable is the Liberals who, in the ultimate act of self-preservation, will sit on their hands, take a walk or somehow allow this stuff to occur. I guess it is understandable when they already were accomplices to the theft or even the masterminds behind so many of the subtleties of the theft that it led to the legislation before us today.

How does this provide fairness and support for unemployed workers across the country?

People in my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek are among the thousands who have lost their manufacturing jobs. These manufacturing jobs paid living wages, provided good benefits and allowed workers to live and retire in dignity with adequate pensions. Unfortunately, these jobs are evaporating, forcing workers into non-standard arrangements. What will the budget do for the workers of Hamilton who are in need?

Clearly, the provision contained in Bill C-50 will legitimize the stealing of billions of dollars from the employment insurance fund, and is done to cover the steep costs of the government's corporate tax breaks, estimated at $14 billion yearly.

The Conservative government is taking the wrong approach on employment insurance, especially by creating a crown corporation for EI, as envisioned in Bill C-50.

With Bill C-50, the Conservatives are ducking their much touted public accountability, and are aiding and abetting the continuation of the fine tradition of previous governments, of stealing the money of Canadians, the tradition of taking billions of dollars in premiums paid by workers and employers and using them to support their own political agenda, rather than providing benefits for those most in need.

The government's creating of the Canada employment insurance financing board as a crown corporation will completely undermine the principle of parliamentary accountability for employment insurance.

The NDP agree that EI should be separated public accounts, but it is the government's job to manage it. It is the government's responsibility to take care of its people, not profit from them.

The government must recognize it owes Canadian workers and their families a $50 billion-plus debt. That money belongs to the workers and their families and it is time to give it back.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is clear the Auditor General said that if we are to have an EI reserve fund, rather than $2 billion, we need $15 billion in it.

Not only the Auditor General has said this, I notice that Mr. Michel Bédard, who was the chief actuary for the federal employment insurance fund, has said that a $2 billion cushion is too small and that his organization believes the new corporation being debated today would need $10 billion to $15 billion to draw on to avoid wild swings in premium.

If the corporation needs the funds, it would have to borrow it and therefore pay interest. Does the hon. member think it is fair that the money the workers put aside is now being taken away, the entire $56 billion, and instead they are forced to borrow money in future and have to pay the interest. Is that fair?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, of course it is not fair and it is not realistic, especially when we consider that the workers and the employers built a foundation of a fund that should have been self-sustaining. There were enough dollars in that fund to protect workers for many years and not subject the government to borrowing money and paying interest. In fact, it is absolutely ridiculous.

However, I do not think we can lose sight of the fact that the present government and the previous government need to be held accountable for the money that has been misappropriated, the money that belongs to the workers of Canada. It should not be written away, as it is about to be done.

I call upon the Liberals, as other members of the House have, to join us and stop this theft of Canadian workers' money.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to compliment my hon. colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek. Members may not know this but the hon. member is the former president of the Hamilton and District Labour Council and was the longest serving president of the council. Therefore, the member has a reputation and a track record for standing up for working people. It is a perfect segue to take a member like him directly from the labour movement, elect him to the floor of the House of Commons and then bring in a Conservative budget that attacks unemployed workers in the way that this has.

I want to thank him for bringing those personal experiences and knowledge here to the floor of the House of Commons. What does he think about the idea that all the people he represented, the hundreds of thousands of workers he represented for all those years, had all their money used by the former Liberal government as a legal slush fund by which it played a shell game to create its balanced budgets? I would like to ask him to reflect on how those workers feel about having paid all those years only to see the money virtually stolen from their fund. This fund was for unemployed workers, nothing else.

How does he now feel about the idea that out of that $54 billion there will only be $2 billion put aside at a time when the world and the U.S. in particular is teetering on the brink of major recession? Could the member explain on behalf of those workers what this does to them?

[Wayne Marston, NDP, Hamilton East—Stoney Creek, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Hamilton Centre for his kind words.

It is difficult to stand here and relate the stories that I have come across when I was in the position of president of a labour council at a time when we had restructuring, such as the 350,000 jobs lost in manufacturing in the last few years, and to have those people come before us and ask what they will do. Some apply for EI but find out they only qualify for 13 weeks or whatever the number of weeks.

We know the reality that is left for them is welfare. We have people who have proudly worked all their lives, who contributed to an employment insurance fund that was supposed to be there for them, contributed to pensions that were supposed to be there for them and that social compact that I spoke about earlier in my remarks where they could depend on their government and their country, and they have been betrayed. There is no other word for it.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to join in the debate on behalf of my constituents in Hamilton Centre.

I want to touch on three things in the short time that I have.

First, I want to talk a bit about how the system was unfair to my home province of Ontario, even prior to the budget bill coming forward.

Second, I want to talk about the $54 billion, much in line with the question I asked my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek in terms of all that money being paid for one specific purpose and what it means to see it diverted into other things and not being there when it is needed.

Third, I want to enunciate the absolute unfairness, which is such a mild word, that over 60% of the people who paid EI premiums are not eligible to receive benefits.

With respect to the first item, Ontario loses, I would like to put on the record some of the remarks that are contained in a Toronto Star editorial dated February 10, 2008. Its headline reads, “Benefit rules cheat Ontario's jobless”. It reads in part as follows:

Workers in Canada have no choice whether to pay Employment Insurance...premiums. No matter where they live, they must pay, and in that sense they are all treated alike.

But they are certainly are not treated equally when it comes to collecting EI benefits. While nearly 80 per cent of workers in Newfoundland qualify for benefits when they lose a job, the figure in Ontario is closer to 25 per cent. And for the minority who are eligible in Ontario, benefits run out much sooner than they do elsewhere in Canada.

According to Premier Dalton McGuinty, here is what this unfair treatment means: “Last year, the average unemployed worker in Ontario received $5,110 in regular EI benefits, while the average unemployed person in the rest of Canada received $9,070.” That difference cost Ontario's unemployed $1.7 billion

Because of that built-in unfairness, introduced through a series of “reforms” by the Chrétien government in 1996, EI in Ontario can hardly be called an insurance program when barely a quarter of workers can count on benefits if they lose their jobs.

In setting a higher bar for Ontarians to qualify for benefits, Ottawa ignored the fact that Ontarians who lose their jobs need EI support while hunting for a new job, just like the unemployed in any other region. But far too many Ontarians never get even that limited support.

The article closes with this paragraph:

Ottawa needs to straighten out this mess and restore fairness to all Canadians. The time to do it is in the upcoming budget, before Ontarians feel the full brunt of the spillover of a recession in the U.S.

Unfortunately, as members know and as the rest of the country now knows, the government did not fix this unfairness in Ontario.

Mr. Speaker, as you would know, as you have been here longer than anyone else in this House, it is not historically easy for Ontario MPs to stand and talk about what they are getting in fairness because Ontario used to be so big, population wise and in its strength of economy compared to the rest of the country, but that has changed significantly.

The Toronto Star was right to point this out. Ontario MPs will continue to raise the issue of unfairness because I suspect that the newfangled machinery being created by the government will still not address this problem, in addition to all the new problems that will be created. We will not stand by, particularly as Ontario gets massacred in the number of jobs that are pouring out of Ontario and out of Canada.

Second, with respect to the $54 billion, I am glad the CLC is taking the action it is taking in terms of making a claim. This is not like any other fund under the purview of the finance minister. As we all know, there is a virtual consolidated revenue fund. Everything goes into one fund so there is one bank account and then on paper we break down how much is allocated for each of the various departments' activities. There is one collective chequing account into which everything gets deposited and then the breakdown is provided on paper and then within that the accountability on how it was spent and so on.

As my friend pointed out, EI used to be unemployment insurance, which I am still not happy with, but the EI fund is different because it is not general revenue. It is money that workers pay, in part, and employers pay, in part, to ensure money is available to support workers and their families in the transition from one job to another. It is not to pay any other bills, buy anything else or to pay for other programs. It is to help unemployed workers.

The former Liberal government ignored that mandate and used that money to pay for the great economic miracle, which it likes to talk about, in the nineties that it performed because it balanced the budget. Balancing a budget is no big deal. It is not that difficult. If that is one's only purpose, then just slash all one's spending. The balancing, in and of itself, is not the answer, especially when we find out that it was able to do that balancing act on the back of the unemployed workers' fund. Even without this change into an arm's length agency, Canadian workers have every right to demand that every penny be put back into that fund for workers who may need it in the future.

Do members want to know why we are so incensed about this budget? Do members want to know why we are dragging this out as long as we can? It is because of the damage that is being done to people, such as workers and others, in that budget.

Unfortunately, the government listens but it does not hear. Whether I am loud or not, I really do not care whether that bothers government or not. When people are unemployed for months and they do not have the money to buy their kids the shoes they need or put food on the table, the government would be hearing a lot louder from those workers than it would be hearing from me today.

The fact is that this new fund would wipe out the $54 billion in one move. It would be gone and it would start over with $2 billion.

Let us understand what is going on. Two important things are going on, or three if we consider the fact that the Conservatives have left inequities in place, like those that are hurting my fellow Ontarians.

The first thing the government is doing is trying to eliminate that moral debt. CLC will argue that it is a legal debt in court, but certainly one can make an argument that it is a moral debt, that the money is owed to the people for whom it was put into that account in the first place. However, this game plan is meant to take that $54 billion and just sort of pave it over and permanently ignore the debt that is owed to unemployed workers in this province, and, instead, it puts in $2 billion.

What happens if there is a major downturn or if the downturn continues? What happens if that $2 billion runs out? Will the money be there or not? Will we run a deficit and start to make it look like unemployed workers are the cause of some kind of economic drain on this country when they have done absolutely nothing wrong?

The other thing it does is it makes it much more difficult for ordinary members in this House to get accountability because, it is true, ministers will stand and say that they did not make the decision, that they had nothing to do with it, that it was arm's length making all the decisions so they should be blamed.

Workers in this country have heard “blame them over there” for long enough. This budget bill hurts unemployed workers. Every worker who is not unemployed who might be listening and who thinks he or she does not need to worry about this should understand that they are one pink slip away from being a part of this catastrophe.

Let us remember that we all know the difference between a recession and a depression. A recession is when it happens to our neighbours. A depression is when it happens to us.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have listened with great interest to the speeches we have heard here today.

I must say that I am deeply disturbed by the fact that $54 billion has just vanished. My friend from Hamilton Centre indicated that it was a travesty that this money was taken out of the hands of unemployed workers. To that, we heard calls from the government benches that the money is already gone, which is even worse.

I would like the hon. member to comment on one of the things I heard over and over again in the Standing Committee on the Status of Women, which was that women are particularly negatively impacted by what is happening with employment insurance in this country. Of all of the women who contribute, only one-third are ever able to collect the benefits that they need. Those benefits are needed when they are on maternity leave or when they face a layoff. Many of these women have little children who are depending on them.

Even worse, self-employed women, young women and middle-aged women who clean offices or do services within the community, do not even get the benefit of qualifying. Nor do farm women. Where would some of these hon. members be without the good women who work so hard to provide food and sustenance for this country?

Would my colleague comment on some of these things?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity and the remarks of my colleague from London—Fanshawe. As everyone knows, she is a very effective critic on women's issues and once again has proven that point.

It does take us back to the issue that each of us has spoken to. I am glad to have the opportunity to underscore it. Of all the people who pay EI premiums, which is everyone who pays them out of their paycheque, 68% of the women who make up that 100% who pay EI premiums do not qualify.

The number for men is about as bad at 62%, but unfortunately, once again, which is why my colleague is so effective in her remarks, it is women who are being hit harder. If we look at the agenda of the government, we can see that it is pretty consistent. When we take a look at what it did to the Status of Women, we will see that it took out the word “equality”.

This is not a government that is going to stand up for women. This is not a government that is standing up for workers. That is why each of us needs to stand up. I do not know what the official opposition is going to do. Probably nothing. The Liberals are getting very good at sitting on their hands.

But this is a bill and a budget that call for Canada's representatives to stand up and say no, the Conservatives are not going to do this to workers, they are not going to do this to unemployed workers and their families, and they are not going to do this to the women of our country, because it is wrong.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, speaking about unemployed workers, we have lost 378,000 jobs since November 2002. Those were manufacturing jobs that paid well. That entire sector is in crisis. That number represents about one in six of all the manufacturing jobs that existed in Canada prior to November 2002. What is this theft of $56 billion going to do? What is the message that those of us here are sending to these unemployed workers?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is a representative of Toronto, the largest city in the province of Ontario, naturally, and these people are being hit very hard. This theft of $54 billion means that if we get into a serious downtown we run the risk that there will not be enough money there, even for those who do qualify. It may not happen tomorrow, next week, next month or even in this cycle, but eventually, unfortunately, cyclically it will happen. When it does, we run the risk that there will not be enough money there, even for those who do qualify.

There are two things that need to be fixed. One is that more people who pay the premiums should be entitled to collect the benefits when they need them. When they are down and out, they do not need their own federal government putting the boots to them by telling them the support mechanism that is there is an emergency fund that they do not qualify for.

What would be just as bad would be to qualify and then find out there is not enough money because the money has been taken by the previous government and the debt will not be paid by the current government, a debt that I hope it loses in the courts, because it ought to be paid. It ought to be there for every unemployed worker who needs the money. That is what it is for.

For far too long, governments have been taking that money and using it for other things to make themselves look good, leaving unemployed workers and their families twisting in the wind.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

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.

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for outlining some of the problems associated with part seven of Bill C-50.

My colleague pointed out how fundamentally wrong it is to deduct something from a person's paycheque for a specific purpose and then to use it for something completely different and for which the government was never authorized to use it. That goes beyond misrepresentation. It builds an expectation that workers will be covered for income maintenance should they be unfortunate enough to be laid off.

Would my colleague agree that this is a double insult? First, it is fundamentally wrong to take money off a worker's paycheque every week, and there is no choice because it is compulsory, and then use it for purposes the worker may not have ever authorized or approved. Second, it is a misrepresentation to say that a worker has insurance against unemployment and then when the worker becomes unemployed, in some cases, the worker has a less than 40% chance of being eligible for any benefits. A youth has only a 25% chance and a female youth has a 15% chance of qualifying for any benefits at all. What kind of an insurance policy is that? I would ask my colleague to expand on these two big lies associated with the EI fund in recent years.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a great insurance scam and the Liberals and Conservatives are scam artists. That is what I see it as. Governments have been raking in this money by the shovelful. People should not have to grovel for that money, which is what is happening and it is their own money.

It is worse than a scam because people have no choice. They cannot shop around to get other employment insurance corporation anywhere else. They have to pay because the Canadian government says they have to. It is mandated. It is the only game in town.

That is why it is a complete scam for ordinary workers. It is unfair, unjust and unethical. This bill should be defeated. The Liberals should stand up for their principles.

[Irene Mathyssen, NDP, London—Fanshawe, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to something my hon. colleague said with regard to the Liberals and their treatment of the employment insurance fund.

I recall in 1997 the prime minister of the day standing up at a $250 a plate luncheon and declaring that the Liberal Party had defeated debt and deficit in this country and that the people at the luncheon had made a great contribution. It is interesting that he neglected to talk about the thousands and thousands of Canadians who had lost their employment insurance benefits while I suspect that the people who could afford $250 for lunch suffered not.

I was wondering if my hon. colleague could comment on that.

[Olivia Chow, NDP, Trinity—Spadina, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I remember the despair on the faces of hotel workers who were laid off when the hotel industry suffered greatly during the SARS crisis in Toronto. Many of the workers had to sell their houses because they had no money to pay their mortgages. They said to me, “We have paid into this insurance. Why are we not qualified to get some of it back? It is our money”. They were desperate. They lost their homes. Some of them were in great despair. That is what happened to ordinary workers when they faced unemployment.

[Paul Dewar, NDP, Ottawa Centre, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleagues for their interventions. I think most people would be more than surprised to find out that probably the two most significant changes that have occurred with the Conservative government exist in Bill C-50. I say that because what we have in front of us is not a traditional budget bill. Bill C-50 has a couple of Trojan horses in it. One will irreversibly change our immigration system and the other will irreversibly change our employment insurance system.

In speaking of the changes to the Employment Insurance Act that are in front of us, it is interesting that the Conservatives previously had suggested that government should get out of the way of Canadian citizens and just let the invisible hand take over. We have seen that with the rhetoric and certainly the economic philosophy of those of the Calgary school. We have seen the government and its predecessor party advocate for that.

It is interesting what the government is doing. It is taking what was a social democratic idea, something that was a progressive idea and it is using a crown corporation to delegate away the authority, to delegate away the responsibility and to delegate away any efficacy of our employment insurance system. It is deft policy making on the one hand, but it is really absurd on the other.

We have a government with a philosophy of a certain school of economics that does not actually believe in crown corporations. If we actually got behind closed doors with some of our friends in the government, I think the truth would come out that if they had their way they would get rid of all crown corporations. I find it passing strange that the Conservatives are using the crown corporation structure with respect to the EI system. I guess they think that Canadians can be fooled, but I do not think that is the case at all.

Employment insurance, or unemployment insurance as we used to call it, came out of the Depression. In 1935 Prime Minister Bennett came up with the idea and was pushed by the predecessor party to the NDP, the CCF, to do something about the egregiously horrific situation of people suffering from unemployment. I could regale members with stories that were passed on to me from my mother and father who lived through the Depression. Their parents would help people at the back door by giving them food and supplies. People would go to the back door because they were too ashamed to go to the front door. This country built social programs to deal with that. That was in 1935.

When it was first brought in, an interesting thing happened from a constitutional perspective. It actually was one of the times we had to deal with the nature of our system. The relevant act was challenged and the unemployment insurance measures that were brought in 1935 were deemed unconstitutional, because unemployment was deemed the responsibility of the provinces. That constitutional crisis had to be dealt with and changes to the BNA Act were made in 1940, I believe.

Then we went forward with an unemployment insurance system in different capacities for many years. It got to a point where we saw the unemployment insurance system as a progressive way of dealing with downturns in the economy which happened from time to time. We would have a safety net along with our health care system and our pension system. Canadians were proud of it because we built it and supported it. There was a consensus on that.

Around 1990 we saw the first challenges to it fiscally with the previous Conservative government. There were cuts and again in 1993 and yet again in 1994. In 1996 the whole thing was revamped. The then Liberal government changed the name. The most recent way to deal with things is to change the nomenclature, never mind that the challenges to those who paid into it to actually qualify were undermined, but change the name and somehow people will not notice. Now the government is trying to change the administration of it to a crown corporation. It is delegating away the authority, delegating away the accountability and delegating away the ability for us to have a robust system. By 1996 with the previous Liberal government, we were dealt yet another death blow. There was another chink in the armour of our employment insurance program.

Many Canadians who paid into this system will never have to use it, which is the idea of insurance. We pay into it hoping that we will never have to use it, but we pay into it because we know that it should be there for people if they need it. What frustrates so many people is that they watched the previous government stand and take credit for slaying the deficit when in fact what it did was a shell game.

It was preposterous to see and it was horrible to watch as it claimed that it had done all the work when in fact all it did was bleed working Canadians of the money that they contributed to the employment insurance fund. Then it said, “Look, we have slayed the deficit”, and along with that of course it downloaded responsibilities without money to the provinces.

When we look at the history that I have just provided, employment insurance came out of an experience in this country of the Depression. We had constitutional challenges to make sure it was congruent with our British North America Act and it was something that over time was built and changes were made. It has been challenged since 1990 in terms of the fiscal capacity of the fund and recently in 1996, it was raided and the name was changed.

We know that something desperate was going on with employment insurance, and I challenge anyone in this House to tell me that they went out on the doorsteps and campaigned to have the Employment Insurance Act taken out from the accountability of Parliament and thrown over to a crown corporation. There is not one. I see everyone looking down at their computers and their shoes with great interest at this point because they know that none of their constituents had a clue about this planned proposal.

Just like the changes to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, not one of these government members went out and talked to their constituents. There were no consultations. Not one of the government members, not one of the cabinet ministers or the Prime Minister, I could go through the whole list, consulted Canadians on this change. That is reprehensible.

We live in a representative democracy. We are supposed to be under the guise of responsible government and what we have is a government packaging together all of its changes, feeding them through in a budget, and hoping that no one will do anything. Of course, the official opposition will not do a thing. It will say, “Just wait until we are back in power with our God-given right to govern and we will change everything again”.

The problem with that is that by the time the Liberals get there, there will be a crown corporation set up for employment insurance. It will be too late. There will be an immigration system that centralizes power in the hands of the minister, that gives temporary citizenship to employers to use people and then throw them on the scrap heap when they do not need them anymore, for places like the tar sands. Those things will have been done, and do not tell me that any government is going to come in there and put the genie back in the bottle successfully and without harm.

That is what we are talking about. We are talking about the breaking of a tradition, the breaking of trust, the breaking of a social contract between citizens and their government with this change in the bill, and at the end of the day, what we have done is say to Canadians that we do not care about them. Why? It is because we have foisted all of the responsibilities, fiduciary and otherwise, to a crown corporation that has no accountability here other than whomever the government decides to appoint to that board.

It is a sad day in this place. It is a sad day for responsible government and it is a sad day for everyday people when a government is allowed to do that. That is why this party and our members on this side of the House will gladly stand against the government, vote against this bill, and say to Canadians that when the election day comes, ask the government how it voted and what it did. Did government members look down at their shoes or did they look people in the eye and say, “Yes, we are going to represent you and do something in your interests?”

[Pat Martin, NDP, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I have a comment and a question to put to my colleague from Ottawa Centre.

I was interested in the way he illustrated the fact that there are EI changes in the budget implementation bill that do not properly belong there and there are immigration changes in the budget implementation bill, which I view as a further Americanization of Canadian politics when all these extra things are stuffed into a budget bill. He called it a Trojan Horse. That is a good, graphic illustration to which Canadians could probably relate.

However, in the context of passing a budget implementation bill, which has a few goodies that the Conservatives are throwing out there to try to endear themselves to Canadians, in the same context, they are sneaking in these major policy changes. I would like to ask the hon. member about that from a process point of view.

I would also like to ask him about the Canadian Labour Congress analysis of the impact of the changes to EI, the most recent changes by the Liberals when they changed the number of hours needed to qualify, et cetera. What was the impact on his riding?

In my riding alone, those changes accounted for a loss of $20.9 million a year worth of federal money that used to come into my low income riding that no longer comes in. I am asking if his riding, which is similar to mine in many ways, experienced a similar impact when the EI rules were changed?