moved for leave to introduce Bill C-279, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (amounts not included in earnings).
Mr. Speaker, I would first like to thank my colleague from Acadie--Bathurst for seconding this bill.
The purpose of this bill is to ensure that those hard-working Canadians who have been working all the time and are indeed entitled to severance pay, keep that severance pay. At a moment in time when every penny counts for hard-working Canadian families when they are laid off, it needs to continue to be in their hands. To take that money away from them before they are eligible to collect employment insurance is a travesty.
It is an insurance plan that workers and their employers have paid into. It is not the benevolence of government that gives them money. It is their money that they are actually repatriating to themselves.
The workers in my constituency of Welland are extremely hard hit by this economic downturn. In fact, this very day, Lakeside Steel has laid off 84 more workers and is closed for the entire week. Before all of their savings are gone, workers ought to be entitled to employment insurance, and their severance packages and their pensions ought to be secure.
(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)