Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak today to Bill C-50 at report stage. This is the Conservative government's bill that will amend the Employment Insurance Act to increase employment insurance benefits for long-tenured employees.
In particular, I will be talking about the technical amendment. The amendment ensures that long-tenured workers, already receiving EI regular benefits when royal assent is obtained, have sufficient room in their benefit period to receive all of their additional benefits. We have added this amendment because we want to ensure that all long-tenured workers benefit from the additional weeks provided by the bill.
Bill C-50 was brought on by a particularly severe global recession that led to serious cutbacks in production and workers losing their jobs. In particular, it has tended to affect workers who have held down jobs for many years, often in a single industry or who face difficult prospects of getting back into the workforce. These long-tenured workers have done their jobs and they have done them well. They have paid their taxes and EI premiums, and they have not known what it was like to have been laid off or to be looking for another job.
What is really quite unsettling is that for many of them their benefits are fast running out and that is what Bill C-50 is all about. It is about treating workers who have worked long and hard with respect. It is helping them out in their time of need. Bill C-50 would provide from 5 to 20 weeks of additional EI regular benefits depending on circumstances and individual eligibility. In so doing, this initiative would provide these individuals with extra time to find alternative employment.
The amendment before the House would make certain that if they are receiving or have recently exhausted their regular benefits when the bill finally receives royal assent, they would have sufficient time to receive all their additional benefits under Bill C-50. This will benefit long-tenured workers from all sectors of the economy.
Long-term workers make up about one-third of those who have lost their jobs across Canada since the end of January and who have established an EI claim. Bill C-50 provides valuable extra time for workers who must now look for a new job. To be unemployed can be a terrible shock for someone who was not expecting it after years and years on the job.
To ensure that workers benefit from this measure regardless of the timing of royal assent, this new provision would establish a fixed date of January 4, 2009 for eligibility. Given that the measure would be available to new long-tenured claimants up to September 11, 2010, this means payment of these extended benefits would continue until the fall of 2011. It is estimated that this temporary measure under Bill C-50 would ultimately benefit about 190,000 long-tenured workers.
The amendments to Bill C-50 and Bill C-50 as a whole are part of the great economic action plan for Canada. In short, our economic action plan contains measures to help all unemployed Canadians.
Bill C-50 tells long-tenured employees that they deserve these extra weeks to help them take charge of their lives, because they have contributed so much to their former employers and now find themselves without work for the first time.
We are focusing our efforts on what is important to Canadians; we are helping those most affected by the recession; and we are investing in training and job creation. We have taken a lot of measures. The best way to help the unemployed and their families is to revive the economy and help Canadians return to work. This is our top priority.
Additional measures have been put in place for long-tenured employees. They are the Canadians who have paid premiums for many years and are having difficulty finding new jobs.
So, Canadians are benefiting from the measures included in the economic action plan. There were, for example, other measures that I will mention now. We added an extra five weeks to employment insurance, something that will help 300,000 Canadians. Job sharing has made it possible to protect the jobs of 165,000 Canadians. Freezing the EI contribution rate means that employers have more money and can create more jobs and that Canadians can keep more of their hard-earned income. Our measures include the payment of an additional $60 million to older workers, because they have inestimable knowledge and potential we must continue to tap. Finally, investments have been made to ensure that Canadians get benefits in a timely manner.
For all these reasons, I call on my colleagues to join me in voting in favour of Bill C-50.