Debates of Feb. 11th, 2009

Budget Implementation Act, 2009

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, that was an excellent question and it goes right to the heart of the argument that I was making as to why we cannot support the budget. The budget does not fundamentally change an approach that both the Liberals and the Conservatives have taken over the last 15 or so years. Both parties continually and aggressively moved the cost of education on to the shoulders of students and their families. We believe education is a government responsibility.

Jurisdictions around the world that are doing really well economically see education as an investment in their future. There are no tuition fees in places like Finland, probably most Scandinavian countries, and Ireland. They understand that if people have the opportunity to go back to school and become the best that they can be and participate in the economy, everyone is better served. However, if financial roadblocks are put in the way, people will not be able to take advantage of that.

In these difficult economic times, when we do not know where the jobs will be or even if there will be any jobs at all, it will be more difficult for students to feel comfortable taking on the kind of debt that many of them are experiencing today. It is a real roadblock for them and more so as we stand here this afternoon.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to take this opportunity to thank the people of Compton—Stanstead, who voted me into office for a third time in four years. Just think, three elections in four years. But on to serious issues.

After the loss of 18,000 manufacturing and forestry jobs in the Eastern Townships over the past few years, I was hoping to see significant investments for these sectors so vital to the region's economy in the Minister of Finance's budget. My faint hope has been dashed. This is a political budget and priority has been given to the province with the most federal ridings—Ontario. For members such as myself who were elected to defend the interests of Quebec first, this budget is completely unacceptable.

Let us be clear. I support providing assistance to the auto sector. I am well aware that the latter, in recent years, has become the industrial engine of North America. In my own riding, several hundred jobs in Waterville or Coaticook, in particular, are directly related to the auto sector. Nevertheless, the Eastern Townships needed substantial help for the manufacturing and forestry sectors.

In the Haut-Saint-François regional county municipality, located in my riding, a number of major saw mills have ceased operations, namely those in Bury, Weedon and Saint-Isidore-de-Clifton. The forestry workers of Haut-Saint-François were expecting more from this government and today they are rightfully disappointed.

And what about the manufacturing sector? The plants of the Shermag group, a leading light in the economy of the Eastern Townships, are now all closed. Hundreds of workers have lost their jobs in Lennoxville, Dudswell and Scotstown, to name but a few, because of the indifference of the Conservative government toward them.

The office of the Minister of Public Works and Government Services is still operating as if it were the 1950s. It is being openly said that people just needed to vote on the right side to get assistance. I find that extremely edifying. Yet the powerful political lieutenant for Quebec is in the Townships, in fact in the next riding to mine. The communities hardest hit, the ones I just named, Dudswell and Scotstown in particular, are only a few minutes down the road from his riding. Like all his other Quebec colleagues, he continues to show complete docility toward the Prime Ministerat the expense of his own region and of the Quebec nation.

During the last election campaign, Conservative candidates kept on saying at every possible opportunity, that there was not, and would not be, any crisis, that Canada was sheltered from it, that people need not fear falling back into the vicious circle of federal deficits. Ninety days later, they had totally changed their tune. Strange, that. Suddenly we were told that prompt and energetic action was needed. The government promised to help the middle class and the victims of massive layoffs. With the budget, and Bill C-10 which implements that budget, we are far from achieving that.

The latest unemployment figures are disastrous. Unemployment has shot up to 7.2% in Canada, to 7.7% in Quebec and now 8.5% in our beautiful Eastern Townships region. With the endless stream of bad news from south of the border, we can anticipate significant difficulties for our local industries and their exports. Thousands of workers are losing their jobs and thousands of others unfortunately are going to share the same fate.

In this kind of situation, the government's duty was clear. It needed to provide better assistance to the unemployed, to make the unjust employment insurance system with which we are saddled more flexible. In my region, the Mouvement des chômeurs et chômeuses de l'Estrie has been calling for EI reform. The government has continued to turn a deaf ear.

And so, employment insurance will remain what it is—an unfair system that cannot be accessed by more than 50% of the people who lose their jobs, the majority of them being women. These workers lose their jobs and are declared ineligible for employment insurance because of some technical detail and they cannot quickly find other work because the economy is currently destroying more jobs than it is creating.

Everyone knows what we proposed: eliminate the waiting period, relax the eligibility criteria and get rid of distinctions between the regions in terms of the number of hours required to be eligible for benefits.

The Conservative government has done absolutely nothing. It has abandoned the unemployed.

This is typical of the Reform-Conservative ideology. This same ideology continues to overlook low-income families. These families, who are having increasing difficulty finding affordable housing, have also been abandoned because this government prefers to fight the poor instead of fighting poverty.

In Sherbrooke, the vacancy rate hovers between 1% and 2%, well below the equilibrium point. Instead of constructing affordable housing units with two or three bedrooms, the government prefers to invest in renovating existing homes. Only the Prime Minister, proudly wielding a nail gun in a chic Ottawa neighbourhood, seemed happy with his ill-advised decision.

To kick-start the economy, the Conservatives have pulled the old infrastructure trick. On the substance, I fully agree: building infrastructure has a ripple effect and contributes to job creation. However, the proposed infrastructure programs require investments according to the following formula: one-third from the federal government, one-third from Quebec and one-third from the municipalities involved.

I was on Ascot's municipal council for eight years, and I can say that financial decisions are always painful. Small municipalities in rural regions already have so few resources with which to meet their needs.

Had it been possessed of some foresight, the government might have proposed a funding model consistent with each level of government's ability to pay, that is, 50% from the federal government, 35% from provincial governments and 15% from municipalities, as suggested by the Bloc Québécois.

This government seems to be making a habit of downloading problems to the Government of Quebec. In Bill C-10, the government is showing its true colours and going ahead with its proposed changes to equalization. These changes will penalize Quebec severely. According to the new formula, Quebec will lose some $3 billion over three years. Not only is the government not investing in Quebec, but it is also denying the Quebec government the means to do so itself. Then the government will turn around and say that the fiscal imbalance has been resolved.

Unlike the Liberals, I swear that my party and I will not get down on our knees before the Conservatives.

This government's budget and budget implementation bill introduce measures that are clearly not in Quebec's best interest. We, the members of the Bloc Québécois, are not prepared to vote for a bill that deprives Quebec of billions in equalization payments, that creates a federal securities agency, and that reopens a matter that has already been resolved: women's right to equal pay for equal work.

I got into politics to defend the interests and the values of our people. I did it for justice. I did it so that Quebec could get the tools it needs to develop, to reach its full potential, and to take its place in the world.

What the government is proposing is diametrically opposed to the interests of the Quebec nation. It tramples on our values. The members of the Bloc Québécois will stand up and vote for Quebec. That is why I represent a sovereignist party.

[Serge Cardin, Bloc, Sherbrooke, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her heartfelt speech on the plight of the most vulnerable members of our society.

With respect to employment insurance, the government thought it had come up with the idea of the century—the only idea of the century—when it decided to tack five weeks of benefits onto the end of the benefit period. That is not a bad idea, but there is no way people will be convinced that the government made a real effort. In addition, there is a time limit on this measure. It will be in effect until 9-11-2010. Maybe the government chose 9-11 to symbolize the fact that what is happening in the employment insurance system is a real disaster. In fact, that has been the case for the past decade.

In addition, the government deliberately sets the contribution rate so as to limit possible benefit increases. I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about the financing board the government created, which has sole authority to set contribution rates.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, whose riding is struggling with high unemployment.

During the 39th Parliament, when I was a member of the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities, we worked together with this government to create an employment insurance financing board. Its mandate, paid for by the government, was to set the premium rates pursuant to section 66 of the Employment Insurance Act. The strange thing about all this is the board exists and the Conservatives are already meddling. They began setting premium rates themselves.

That is not the only promise they made that they have not kept. They also promised, by introducing a bill, to have fixed election dates. If that were the case, we would have an election again in October 2009. Also, they promised not to appoint any senators, saying that elections would be held and that mandates would be for eight years. What did the government do? Eighteen new senators were appointed, and it is not over; I assure this House, more senators will be appointed.

[Carol Hughes, NDP, Algoma—Manitoulin—Kapuskasing, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to point out that in 1996, the maximum employment insurance rate was $604. Now it is approximately $447. Overall, those who can benefit from it receive approximately $355 a week.

I would like to ask my colleague if she agrees that one of the best ways to stimulate the economy would be to reduce poverty and ensure that unemployed workers can access EI?

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for the question. The Bloc Québécois asked that the two week waiting period be abolished and that more people be eligible for employment insurance. Even if you extend employment insurance by five weeks, more than 50% of workers do not even have access to it. In reality, people are not all lazy as the government is saying.

We also suggested an increase from 55% to 60% of the rate of—

[An hon. member]

insurability.

[France Bonsant, Bloc, Compton—Stanstead, QC]

—of insurability. Excuse me, I cannot find the words. I am overcome with emotion. It is true: to eliminate poverty, we have to provide employment insurance benefits. Many people who worked all their lives are eligible for employment insurance on a short-term basis. These people are losing their homes and watching their savings evaporate. That is why you have to have a heart to eliminate poverty. I believe that this government forgot to order this heart, because it really did not think about poverty, about women especially, about the unemployed, about all those losing their jobs.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is with some pleasure and yet frustration that I rise today to address this budget, the so-called stimulus budget, simply because on so many fundamental measures and so many fundamental points the government has missed the opportunity.

I think that in budgets, particularly those presented in times of crisis, there are a few fundamentals that we must address in order to judge the merit of the government's economic agenda.

One is around balance. One is around understanding the needs of the country and the needs of the economy in a given moment in time. Obviously we saw in the so-called fall economic update that the government continues to miss the moment and continues to miss the mark on what economists and Canadians have been asking for consistently.

Another question is around fairness. What ability does the government have to address issues of equity and issues of justice in the policies it ascribes to this country at this most critical time?

Finally, it boils down to a matter of choices. It is no different from a family putting together a budget or an individual deciding what to spend on and what not to spend on. Choices are made, choices that sometimes only have short-term, immediate consequences, but that often have very long-term consequences.

Over a succession of budgets and over various governments we have seen that the choices made have contributed to the overextension of the economy and to the underperformance and inefficiencies that our economy continues to see, including overpolluting and not respecting pay equity rules.

In some strange irony, the government has decided to bury within a budget document the disassembling of pay equity legislation in this country. Women in this country are receiving 70 cents for every dollar that a man makes for equal work. In this moment of economic crisis, the government decided to slide in some ideological opportunism.

It also seems to speak to the idea and the concepts of the role of government. There are moments of convergence in the House, moments when the parties can come to agreement, as was the case in the apology to first nations over the residential school travesties, but while there are those moments of convergence, moments when the House actually operates well, this is a moment of divergence in the role of government at this time.

We heard the President of the United States speaking last night to the American people about the role and capacity of government in times like these to aid and assist in the Keynesian economic model, for those who follow those different theories and treaties. As the Prime Minister, like the leader of the New Democratic Party, is a trained economist, he should understand that there are moments and times for governments to step in.

This goes against some of the fundamental, formerly reformist, currently Conservative ideologies related to the role of government. One can detect that. The government does not own this budget, does not love this budget, and does not understand how it can cause so much discussion and concern in the markets. On one day it presents a budget with a fictional surplus of some hundreds of millions of dollars. Then it describes the economy is recession-proof, as the Conservatives have described it.

In October 2008 the Prime Minister said that if Canada was going to have a recession, we would already have had one. Then we had a finance minister swing radically over to another side and describe this, within weeks, as potentially one of the greatest economic recessions, leading potentially to a depression. This does not build confidence in the Canadian system. It does not build confidence in the Conservative government.

British Columbia, and in some sense Skeena--Bulkley Valley, the place I represent, have unfortunately been on the leading edge of this recession for a number of years. I have communities like Hazelton, Fort St. James, Burns Lake and beyond that have suffered 50%, 60%, and 70% unemployment rates as the forestry sector has been virtually wiped out. Mill after mill has closed.

We have gone to the government and said that we need some structural change, even a plan, from the federal government for our manufacturing sector. Is there one available? This is not a recent phenomenon. For years and years we have seen this storm coming. A botched softwood lumber deal, an increase in the Canadian dollar, and an eventual slowdown and popping of the American housing market all led most economists and forestry experts to say that the forestry sector was in trouble and would need a plan, would need some sort of coherent strategy from government.

Instead we see a hodgepodge in a budget that lumps everything together. We are looking through this budget, trying to find the pine beetle money that has been promised to British Columbia. The best estimates from government are that 30 cents on the dollar of what has already been promised and committed in previous budgets has not gone out the door.

The government calls it a crisis. It acknowledges it as a crisis, sends out the press releases and makes the announcements, but does not spend the money.

This is a fundamental question of trust. Canadians, families who are suffering through days of uncertainty, through job losses and having to migrate out of their communities, turn to a government who says it promises them more. But a promise must be based on some mutual trust.

When we look at the infrastructure announcement from the government for British Columbia, when the dust settles, it is a year later. When we look at the budget numbers and see what actually was spent on the ground in the creation of real jobs, we see figures like 15¢ on the dollar, 20¢ on the dollar. This does not build up the confidence of Canadians in the government's ability to perform.

Much has been made of employment insurance, and this is an important factor. The government's small measures on employment insurance only affect those who actually qualify, ignoring the fact that the problem lies in those who cannot qualify. We see a majority of women in the work force, for example, who do not qualify, even though they are paying into this insurance program. We will soon have to call it a scheme because a program that people pay into but cannot collect on sounds like a scheme to me.

Over the years, government has used the employment insurance fund as a slush fund, simply to transfer money from workers and employers, collected for the purposes of employment insurance, and used it for other purposes. That is unconscionable, and now we see, in times of need, the government further says, “What we will do is extend out the other end. After you have been collecting for a number of weeks, we will toss a few more weeks your way”. It is putting on blinders, ignoring purposely, very cynically, the fact that most people do not even qualify.

We have lost 35,000 jobs in British Columbia in January alone. We all know, as members of Parliament, how difficult it is to work with a new employer, to bring a town council on side and bring new jobs into our constituencies. It takes a lot of effort, especially if we are hoping for good paying jobs, manufacturing jobs. This is no easy feat to even bring 1,000 in, and our province lost 35,000, gone like that.

We are looking to the place of where those will come back. We are looking for a government and industries that will start to promote the types of economies that Canadians can believe in, and the government refuses to respond to what is in front of it.

In the north there is a fantastic example of a community that struggled to survive and found innovative ways, as its forestry sector was going down. The community of Telkwa, with 3,500 people, got together with their farmers and their community and said, “Let us build a co-operative abattoir so we can get some people to work and support the farm industries because we do not want to ship to southern British Columbia. It is not good for the animals. It is not good for the planet. It is not good for anybody, certainly not for farmers, so let us build this abattoir together”.

This government and the one before it put roadblock after roadblock in the way, and when we have asked for some small assistance for this, that would help sustain jobs and create more in a sustainable conscious way, the government has been nowhere to be found.

The Tsimpsean connector outside of Prince Rupert would help connect the first nation village of nearly 1,000 people to the port of Prince Rupert and to the community, thereby cutting all sorts of expenses to government itself. We need the government to step up and to pay some attention.

We had the opportunity of having the new Minister of Natural Resources in front of committee and I had a very simple question for her. After I congratulated her on her appointment, I said that I would like the minister to please define what green energy, clean energy is under this government? Her response was to turn to one of her officials with a quizzical look on her face. There was no working definition, yet when we pick up the budget, page after page refers to green energy, clean energy. What exactly does the government mean by that? It is looking backward at technologies that Canadians have subsidized, such as the nuclear industry, to the tune of billions upon billions of dollars, with inherent risks and all sorts of ethical challenges.

Carbon capture and sequestration take up the vast majority, the lion share, of what the government is talking about as renewable. The last time I heard “coal was a renewable energy” was out of a Conservative minister's mouth. Nobody else in the world believes this.

It seems like fiction placed upon fiction, and when we look for trust, when we look for confidence, when we look for the balance of choices that every government must make, we find the government lacking. It is unsupportable and I think at the end, while the Liberals are choosing to support this budget for political expediency, philosophically this actually fits. This marriage, this convenience alliance and new coalition actually fits. They believe in these measures. The unfortunate thing is Canadians will suffer for it and our economy will become no more efficient, no more green, and no more looking to the future than it was before.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is interesting to note, when we talk about this country of ours from coast to coast to coast, how interrelated it is in so many facets. Unfortunately, in this particular interrelationship it really is one of decimation in his riding and mine when it comes to unemployment.

We see the struggles of the folks who live in our ridings and what they suffer through day in and day out. Those folks are looking to us for hope and for us to say to them, “Here is the way forward”. What we do not see in this budget is a way forward or any sense of hope for those folks who are asking us to simply show them the way and they will work toward it.

They are not asking for a hand out. They are asking for a hand up. They are saying, “Put the effort into us and we will repay it tenfold. We will put forward effort like you have never seen before”. “Let us get back to work” is what they are saying. They do not want to be unemployed. This is no choice of theirs.

My question for the hon. member is this: Does he see hope in the eyes of his constituents and in this budget?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, prior to this budget being released I went on an economic tour across my region, northwest of British Columbia. That particular constituency is enormous. I spent a few weeks on the road going from town to town and putting the call out. This was not an invite only special guest public forum that was organized by the government. We saw some of those come through town and people laughed them off. At my meetings all were welcome.

What I heard from constituent after constituent, voter after voter, family after family and town after town was that they were simply looking for willing partners. In Fort St. James people had ideas about bioenergy that they need support with. In Burns Lake people were saying that they were ready to put their kids back to work. In Terrace, Prince Rupert and Kitimat they were all suggesting options in economic possibilities. They recognized the challenge within their industries. They recognized in the fishing villages up and down the coast that more processing must be made available and they were willing to play their part, but they had been dancing alone.

It seems to me that when a government is unwilling or unable to listen to the people on the ground, unwilling to listen to the people who have their finger on the pulse of what is happening next, people lose trust and a sense of hope. That is something that we cannot afford to lose no matter how dark the days get because the northwest of British Columbia has seen some dark days and challenging times.

Yet, people come together and find strength in new ways. However, they need the role of government to be certain and determined. They need to have an essence of trust and faith in their government not to break promises and appoint 18 buddies to the Senate, not to break promises time and time again because people will hold the government to account when it finds itself in some sort of cynical position.

A budget is being presented, supported somehow by a party that may find ideological alliances, and at the end of the day, after the effects of this budget are fully seen, my greatest worry is that more people will suffer and end up further down than they are right now. It is very difficult to get them out of that position once they are there.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Questions and comments.

The member for Chambly—Borduas has the floor for a very short question.

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

Madam Speaker, I would first like to congratulate my NDP colleague for the clarity and pertinence of his speech. I would like to ask him the following question.

Does he not find that an important segment of society is negatively affected by this budget? I am referring to women. One of the budget measures deprives women of the right to go before the courts to obtain employment equity. Another is related to the issue he raised with regard to employment insurance. We know that a large majority of women do not qualify for employment insurance benefits. However, contribution rates are frozen making it impossible to improve the system.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley has 30 seconds to answer the question.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Madam Speaker, that is a good question.

I cannot believe that the government would use the economic crisis as an excuse to trigger a crisis of rights. Under this government, women's rights have been completely dismantled and thrown in the trash.

I cannot believe that cabinet ministers would say that this is a good thing for women, a good thing for the country now. That is incredible. It is just politics.

I do not understand how we can have a government like this in 2009. It is incredible.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

Before recognizing the next speaker, I want to read the following:

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 Winnipeg South Centre, Status of Women; the hon. member for Vancouver Quadra, Infrastructure.

Resuming debate. The hon. member for Chambly—Borduas

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

Madam Speaker, we are repeating the mistakes that federal governments made in the past when dealing with economic crises. I am talking about the crisis of the early 1980s and the one of the late 1990s. Each time, the federal government tried to get through the crisis by making the provinces and Quebec shoulder part of the federal responsibility for various programs, particularly social programs.

After the crisis of the late 1990s, two successive governments, the Conservative government in the early 1990s and the Liberal government beginning in 1993, adopted the same policy to withdraw their contributions to funding programs in areas like municipal infrastructure, social housing, health, education and employment insurance.

In health, for example, they introduced a rule that the government's contribution had to be proportional to the population. In Quebec, that federal government policy resulted in an imbalance that reduced funding for health by 8% compared to the early 1990s. The same thing happened with education.

Municipal infrastructure was especially devastated. From 1992-93 to 2001, the federal government stopped contributing to upgrades for municipal infrastructure. Funding did not resume until 2001. That led to a deficit in infrastructure upgrades for water systems and roads, with the result that municipalities today no longer have the means to modernize their infrastructure. A large number of municipalities have infrastructure more than 40, 50 or 60 years old, when normally it would be considered outdated after 35 or 40 years. Maintenance is required, but now the money is just not there.

According to a study on this topic, there is a real deficit of $144 billion. That is a huge figure. If all we had to do was upgrade infrastructure, it would cost approximately $144 billion. That is an enormous amount for municipalities.

These terrible policies are being repeated today. One of the policies adopted in the past saw the Canadian government offload its responsibilities onto the municipalities, the provinces and individuals and start paying down the debt and avoiding deficits, much to the detriment of those who were struggling.

Take, for example, employment insurance. As others before me have said, employment insurance leaves some 55% of the unemployed out in the cold. They cannot receive benefits. It makes no sense. Over the past 12 years, $57 billion has been siphoned off. If that is not offloading a national responsibility onto the backs of the most vulnerable, I do not know what is.

I have come back to this because not only have things not changed, but the budget that was passed and that they want to implement shows that nothing will change either.

This budget freezes premiums at the 1982 level, and there has never been a lower level since then. In other words, the employment insurance program will not be improved. This is in total contradiction to what has been said, particularly by the Liberals. The Conservatives have said so too, but we do not believe them any more.

We tended to believe the Liberals when they said an effort had to be made to improve access to EI and that they were committed to doing so. That is what they said when they were campaigning. They said that the burden had been borne by the unemployed for too long. They therefore made a commitment to ensure that EI was made more accessible. Then, at the first possible opportunity, they jumped into bed with the Conservatives and said they were going to pass this budget, regardless of its negative impacts on the least well off, the people the Liberal Party leader calls the most vulnerable members of our society.

It is absolutely shocking that they can say such things and then vote for the opposite.

What are they seeking to do today? They say they are investing, and they are spreading money around more or less everywhere, including for infrastructure—I acknowledge that—but they are doing nothing for the most vulnerable, as the Liberal leader calls them, nothing for them. As far as infrastructure is concerned, I too was once a municipal council member, and even when I was just an ordinary citizen, I have always been concerned about the money available to our municipalities.

Look at the situation our municipalities are being placed in now, with the money being allocated to them. Hundreds of millions of dollars in past budgets were not used. Why not? Because the municipalities do not even have the means to pay their share. Normally, that share should be 15% but it is often 25% or even 30%. For the announced programs, particularly community recreation infrastructure, the federal contribution is 50%. If the provinces—or in our case, if Quebec—cannot contribute because of prior commitments to other programs, it is obvious that the municipalities will not be able to shoulder 50% of these projects. Thus the Canadian government is sure that it will be able to keep that money in its coffers. Even if the contribution rate were 30%, most municipalities cannot manage it. Why not? Because of the phenomenon I referred to a while ago, the famous policy in the past, when the government had the idea of offloading its responsibilities onto the provinces, including Quebec, and the municipalities. The burden was so heavy that now they no longer have the means to take on implementing new projects, or even just to renovate what needs renovating.

As I have only one minute left, I will try to conclude my remarks. I would also like to talk about social housing. For nearly 12 years, previous governments cut funding for social housing, with the result that we have a serious shortage of social housing now. The government says it is reinvesting $2 billion, but most of that money is going to renovations. That does not leave much for new units for people who have no choice but to go into social housing.

In conclusion, to the people wondering why the Bloc Québécois is voting against this budget, I say that it is clear. My colleagues spoke about other aspects of the budget. We will stand firm and not accept something that is unacceptable. To us, this budget is unacceptable.

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

Madam Speaker, in the budget there is really no long-term funding for a national housing policy. It is a missed opportunity.

Thousands and thousands of people are waiting for affordable housing. In Toronto alone, people have to wait at least 6 to 10 years to get affordable housing and many of them are seniors. They are waiting and they say to me that by the time they get affordable housing, they probably will not be alive. They are very worried about where they are going to live. They cannot afford to rent because the costs are going up, but their pensions are not going up.

What does the hon. member think about this so-called one-time provision of money which will not build any affordable housing in the long term? There is a complete lack of a national housing policy in this budget.

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

Madam Speaker, I thank my NDP colleague for her question. She is right to be concerned.

We believe that at least 2% of the $2 billion for this year should be recurrent funding for building new social housing. There are problems when the vacancy rate is no more than 3%.

There are 12 municipalities in my riding, and not one of them has a vacancy rate above 3%. Two of these municipalities have a 0% vacancy rate, and the rates in the other municipalities range from 0% to 2%.

What does this mean? First, people with low incomes are forced to spend too much of their income on housing, often 50%, 60%, 70% and even 80%. This makes no sense. What does that leave them for food and clothing?

Often, these people are forced to move away from their own families to find affordable housing in other cities. Let us be clear. When I say “affordable”, I mean housing that is financially affordable, but not necessarily acceptable from a cleanliness standpoint.

The government needs to make a massive injection of money to build new social housing. My colleague is quite right.

[Gérard Asselin, Bloc, Manicouagan, QC]

Madam Speaker, I would first like to congratulate the hon. member for Chambly—Borduas on his excellent speech.

I would like to raise two points. I represent the riding of Manicouagan, one of the largest ridings in Canada, located between the Betsiamites River and Blanc-Sablon.

I had the opportunity to serve as a municipal councillor in the City of Baie-Comeau for 14 years. Since becoming a member of this House, I have noted that the tax burden of many small municipalities is carried by the residential sector. This does not affect industrialized cities, but rather it affects the towns that do not have access to business taxes and various property taxes. These municipalities therefore depend on their citizens.

The Bloc Québécois proposed a policy to the federal government that would give money to the regions in order to help municipalities. The contribution rate would have been 50% from the federal government, 35% from the Quebec government and 15% from the municipal level.

The Conservatives have come back once again with a division of contributions into three equal parts. The municipalities in my riding will have to let that train go by, since they do not have the means to get on board.

[The Acting Speaker, NDP, Denise Savoie]

The hon. member for Chambly—Borduas has 40 seconds to answer the question.

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

Madam Speaker, you keep chipping away at my time.

I thank my colleague who is quite right. That is what I was talking about earlier and he is right to bring it up again. I can give the example of a water treatment plant in a municipality in my riding, a municipality that had to move quickly a few years ago and assume more than 50% of the cost of the water treatment plant. I can say that this municipality is on the verge of bankruptcy simply because it assumed more than 15% or 25% of the cost of the water treatment plant.

This example demonstrates that most small and medium-sized municipalities are facing incredible challenges when it comes to infrastructure.

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, it gives me a great deal of pleasure to rise to speak to the budget.

Over the course of the last few days, I have heard a great deal of comments from all members on this side about the inadequacies of the employment insurance system, as it is now called. I prefer the old title of UIC. If people are employed, they would not need to collect it in the first place. Nonetheless, I digress.

Let me put it in more concrete terms around what it is like to be unemployed, not from the perspective of someone who is unemployed, but as someone who has helped folks with claims since 1992. I will walk members through the life of a claim.

We have heard about the statistics, the hours and the five weeks, which is nothing. We have heard all of those things, but we have not heard about what it is like to walk all the way through it, to actually go and apply for the unemployment insurance, to go to an office that is understaffed and has fewer computer kiosks than it had before to take care of those folks, to be unable to get a piece of paper to fill it out with a pen or pencil because they want it on a computer. They tell people to go to their public library if the office is too busy or if they do not have computers.

From the get-go of walking through that front door, there is a barrier for those who may not feel they are technically literate enough to do it on a computer. There is a refusal on part of the Employment Insurance Commission to give them a piece of paper, even though the act says it is required to provide it when asked for. Too many claimants are refused and that is wrong. It should be made easier for them because it is their money.

The life of a claim really starts when people apply. However, when they apply, all it means is they have put in an application. There is no guarantee of acceptance because then they base themselves on the rules. The rules are rather prohibitive in a lot of cases. However, let us assume that people do indeed qualify. They apply. There has to be documentation. Their employers must send a record of employment, colloquially called the ROE. If the employer forgets or just does not bother because it has gone out of business, the claim is delayed. Without an ROE, people cannot get unemployment insurance, even though they qualify. They might have been working for ten years, but the fact that their employers did not do something simply delays it.

Let us assume that people do indeed qualify immediately. For the first two weeks, they do not qualify for any money because the rules say they do not get paid for those two weeks. It means they get paid for weeks three and four. However, they do not receive any money in weeks three or four because they have to fill out more paper, or do it on a computer if they are capable, or phone it in, to explain that they did not work during those weeks. This means that, if they are lucky, they get paid in week five.

Think about that. The people are unemployed. Perhaps their employer has gone bankrupt. Perhaps their employer is leaving the country, like John Deere is doing, even though it is profitable. Nonetheless, people may not have had any money since week one. They are now in week five and they receive their first cheque. What did they do in the intermediary period? What do they do from week one to week five? They are about to qualify, not someone who has a hiccup in the sense that perhaps the claim has been pushed to the side because it needs to be looked at or because there is no documentation.

When we look at those just from the claim phase timeline, people who are unemployed will not receive money at the very moment they need it. Instead, they will have to wait well over five weeks. I ask the government what its sense is of what those people should do for those five weeks. Sit on their hands? Look for work? We accept that they look for work. In fact, the unemployed are the best folks who look for work because they are always looking for work. Because they were working before, to suggest that they would not is a slap in the face of those workers. To qualify for unemployment insurance, they need to have a work history, which means they are able-bodied workers who really want to work. From that perspective, it is a non-starter.

On this side of the House, I have heard my colleagues ask about what we need to do to the system to enhance it. What we need to do is wipe out the two-week waiting period so when people apply for unemployment insurance, they will actually collect unemployment insurance.

I reiterate that it is our money, those of us who pay into the EI system. It is not taxpayer dollars. It is not collected from the tax base. It is collected from those who work for a living and contribute to an insurance program.

The Liberal government changed it from UIC to EI, but kept one letter in that system, “I” for insurance, and that is exactly what it is. I pay the premium, then when I need my insurance, I get to collect it. The problem is the government has decided to put enough rules in place that we do not get to collect it. One in three in the Niagara Peninsula, in the southern part of Ontario, are now collecting unemployment insurance. Almost two-thirds do not, yet, they paid their employment insurance premiums.

How many folks would like to pay their car insurance, have an accident and have the insurance company say, sorry, that they are in the 62%, so they do not get to collect on their car insurance because they are not in the other third? I do not think too many folks would put up with that. Yet the unemployed, at the most vulnerable point in their life, are faced with that type of restriction.

Therefore, waiving the two-week waiting period, which puts money into the pockets of those who need it at the point they need it, is where the government should have gone. Instead, the government chose to tack five weeks to the back end of a claim, if they qualified.

There is a song, and I am not sure how to sing it, and certainly I would not try in the House because I cannot carry a tune, that talks about nothing from nothing is nothing. Five weeks of nothing truly is five weeks of nothing. Ultimately, what they have gained is absolutely nothing at the tail end, and the government knows that through its own statistics.

The other side is, how to make people qualify. Reduce the hours. It is an hours based system now. We are not asking the government to go to a weeks based system. Three hundred and sixty hours would ensure that at least two-thirds, if not 70%, of those who were working would now qualify. However, that did not happen either. The government decided it would keep it at the lowest level possible so the least number of people could qualify.

Where are we with that? I talked about the claim phase. Let me tell members what they are doing in the Niagara region when it comes to the EI office. As I said earlier, I worked in conjunction with that office in a previous career since 1992. That office is about a third, if not a quarter of the size of what it used to be in 1992. At the very moment in time, when we need people in that office to service the unemployed, it has decided to restructure and the head office will now go to London, Ontario. Thank goodness it did not pick London, England, although I am surprised it did not try to go that far. At least it went to London, Ontario. The problem is that London, Ontario, in the greater southern Ontario area, now has more than 2.5 million to 3 million people in it rather than the 500,000 that our office looked after initially. Now it has four times the number of claimants to look after.

The minister said in the House earlier that its service would get better. Right now in the Niagara region people do not get money in week five. They get money in week six. Sources have said to me that if the backlog continues, they will not get money until week eight. It is reprehensible that we cannot make this system work better.

If we want a stimulus plan to put people back to work, the office has to re-hire and re-fill the positions in the EI office that they have simply let go under the government over the last number of years. We would create jobs in that particular environment, not jobs that we necessarily want because it means more unemployed, but it is something we would like to see.

As we can see, the unemployment piece is an economic driver. Don Drummond of the TD Bank said that we needed to do ensure that those who were unemployed would collect unemployment insurance because that unto itself was a stimulus. Think about that. That is a stimulus in itself. We do not have to do much else because that is a stimulus.

I would like to add one more thing from a personal perspective. We have talked about things that are missing from the budget. Let me talk about something that is in the budget, and that is equity for women. I will do this as a father.

My wife and I were blessed with a millionaire's family, as it is called. The first time we had children, we had two. We had a boy and a girl. I find it absolutely abhorrent that somehow my daughter will be treated, when it comes to equity, less than her twin brother. They were born three minutes apart. To suggest that somehow my daughter, who is now a young woman today, and her twin brother, who is a young man, both out in the workforce, would have less of an opportunity to have less pay for work of equal value than him, after nine months of living together, is abhorrent. That one aspect is enough to defeat the budget.

[Pierre Lemieux, Conservative, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Agriculture]

Madam Speaker, I take exception to my colleague's position regarding the budget, particularly since he decided to vote against it before he had seen or read a single thing about it. He has done a disservice to Canadians.

He mentioned changes to EI. In this very budget we are talking about $1.5 billion over two years for EI and non-EI training programs. We are talking about $500 million to extend EI benefits for workers in longer term training. We are talking about $50 million over two years to cover severance pay. We are talking about extending EI for an additional five weeks. These are all positive measures. I do not understand how my colleague can vote against these measures. They are positive measures.

He says that he sees they are positive measures. However, he is voting against them because they are not exactly the way he would like to see them. That is where the disservice to Canadians comes in.

How can he reject such positive measures?

[Malcolm Allen, NDP, Welland, ON]

Madam Speaker, let me talk about severance pay, since I know a lot about severance pay and EI. It does not get people one dollar more from employment insurance to get severance. EI claws it back, dollar for dollar, which means they do not qualify, so that is a non-starter.

Let me just quote for the member what the Association of Community Colleges in Canada said about the training programs, “We do not have the places.” They do not have the infrastructure in place to accept all those folks that perhaps the money would help, if the government can get it out the door fast enough. The problem is, if we look at the last program, the money did not get out the door.

If the government did get the money out the door, we would simply have folks lined up at community colleges waiting to get in. That is what the community colleges said. They said that they needed $7.4 billion, of which they expected the federal government to come up with $3.4 billion, to help them build the spaces to get those folks in and retrained. What they did get instead was $300 million this year and $200 million next year, which by my count is a shortfall of about $2.9 billion.

It seems to me we will have people lined up outside community colleges waiting to get to those seats to be retrained. Standing and saying “we will”, does not get it done.