Mr. Speaker, I too am pleased to speak to Bill C-308, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (improvement of the employment insurance system).
I listened carefully to my hon. colleague from Madawaska—Restigouche who just spoke. I think that he has superbly summarized the very real difference for a seasonal worker who, because of where he lives or his line of work, has to make use of this employment insurance system.
I also listened carefully to what the member for Nepean—Carleton said, despite the fact that he had a very hard time with the word “exacerbate”. In fact, I would suggest that he listen to the recording; he will understand why some members in the back were chuckling. He was trying to entertain us with notes prepared by the Prime Minister's Office. This is quite natural, given that he is the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister.
In real life, people who are deprived of employment insurance visit our constituency offices. I find particularly contemptuous the way the member for Nepean—Carleton attacked the unemployed and the idea of providing them with more assistance. As the member for Madawaska—Restigouche just pointed out so aptly, this is money that is going straight back into the economy. Instead of playing favourites, the best way to jump-start the economy is to put money into people's pockets so that they can spend it in their local communities. The issue having been covered from other angles, I will give a concrete example, then provide an analysis of how this disastrous situation with the EI account came about.
This is the type of real life situation we encounter in our riding offices. A young teacher came to see us last summer. He was to teach a summer course but it was cancelled because not enough students enrolled where he was teaching. He had been a supply teacher during the year and accumulated 896 hours of employment. I remember the figure. The number of hours would normally have been enough; however, he actually needed 910 hours. That is the reality. It is difficult to accumulate 910 hours as a supply teacher. That is real life. During the summer he had to support himself and was struggling.
Let us now examine what the Conservatives have done with the employment insurance fund since coming to power and what the Liberals had started doing before them. This fund had accumulated $57 billion in premiums paid by each and every employee of all companies. It did not matter whether the company made money, broke even or lost money because every company and every employee had to contribute to the employment insurance fund. This money was set aside to help workers cope with the predictable cyclical nature of employment in Canada.
To create tax room and give the richest companies a gift, they plundered $57 billion from the employment insurance fund. Then they created $57 billion in tax room. In fact they gave $60 billion in gifts to companies. How did they do that? They transferred the moneys from the employment insurance fund to the government's general revenues. Some may say that it is not a big deal because it was always the government's money. However, it is a big deal because these moneys, as I just explained, were paid by all companies, even those not turning a profit or losing money.
Who got the $60 billion? By definition, if a company does not make a profit, it cannot benefit from tax breaks because it does not pay taxes.
So who got the money? Oil companies like EnCana in Alberta in the Prime Minister's backyard. EnCana received hundreds of millions of dollars in taxpayers' money. That money was paid directly to EnCana. The Conservatives raided the employment insurance fund and put the money into the government's general revenue fund. Then that cash was given to the richest companies, oil companies and banks. That is the Conservatives' fiscal policy. Never mind other issues, their jokes about a 45-day work year and so on, that is the sad truth about what the Conservatives did.
Then, because all that cash was given only to the companies that had made the most money, economic sectors that were already struggling, such as the forestry sector in Quebec, Ontario, British Columbia and New Brunswick and the manufacturing sector, got nothing.
Since the second world war, Canada has managed to build a balanced, stable economy. We are the second-largest country in the world, and we have barely 30 million people. It took a lot of doing to occupy all that land and make it productive. But it also took some planning and an understanding of resource sectors, such as forestry and mining. The same goes for the processing sector, as well as the service sector, which is providing more and more value to our economy.
Their policies have completely destabilized the balanced economy that Canada has enjoyed since the second world war because they have given all of the money to western Canada, specifically to the oil and banking industries. Well before the current crisis that hit Canada 13 or 14 months ago, during the first two and a half years of their minority government, the Conservatives caused the loss of over 350,000 jobs. Those job losses occurred mainly in Quebec and Ontario in the forestry and manufacturing sectors.
That is the Conservatives' sorry track record. Their economic approach is so ideological that it is practically dogmatic. Everything is fine as long as it is in their interest. The rest of the time, they say that people who want the government to play a role in the economy are out of line because they are trying to decide who wins and who loses.
In reality, they were the ones who determined the winners and losers in advance. They were the ones who decided that the big oil companies and the banks would be the winners. They took money from workers and businesses and transferred it to the winners they had already chosen. That is how their dogma. The hypocrisy here is that they lecture us about the free market, as though a true, clean, free market were the decider of all things. That is absolutely not the case.
They also intervene as much as anyone who came before them, except that they systematically intervene in favour of the rich. That is the difference between this side of the House and the Conservatives. When they have a choice to make, instead of deciding to help the least fortunate, to help those who need it most, their first instinct is to talk down to them, as the Prime Minister's parliamentary assistant just did, to make fun of the unemployed, not to help them, and to say everything is just fine. Everything is fine because they stole money that should have gone to the unemployed, and they gave it to their buddies, the oil companies and the banks.
That is the Conservative approach. By not taking into account the real environmental impact and environmental costs of the oil sands, they are making things worse. The Canadian dollar is on the rise, making it increasingly difficult to export our manufactured goods. The main reason for our high dollar—obviously we have become an oil powerhouse—is the arrival of petrodollars from the United States.
We export crude oil from the oil sands, and we also export jobs: 18,000 jobs were directly exported to the United States. We do not even do the pre-processing here. What is even worse is that with this year's $60 billion deficit, we are racking up debt for future generations instead of leaving them clean, renewable energies.
The Conservatives are passing down the opposite of sustainable development to future generations, and they will be very harshly judged. They love to get their pictures taken with future generations. It is time for them to start taking action for these future generations.