Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by thanking my colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour for sharing his time with me today in this important debate. He is a tireless advocate for improvements to social policy and has done a terrific job representing the Liberal Party on issues like employment insurance, child care and post-secondary education. I salute the hard work he has done on behalf of so many Canadians to improve these important programs.
I also want to thank my colleague from the NDP, the hon. member for Hamilton Mountain, for moving this very important motion today in the House of Commons. Like the hon. member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, I will support it in the vote next week. Employment insurance remains a key issue, not only for people who lose their jobs but also for people who are trying to find ways to stimulate the Canadian economy in such difficult times.
The wording of the motion is very important because it addresses a number of issues that affect people who really depend on employment insurance to survive difficult economic situations or who are seasonally employed. I want to salute the people in my riding of Beauséjour who have worked so hard for years to improve employment insurance. I am thinking in particular of a committee of employers and employees in some seasonal industries, especially in the Cap-Pelé area but also in other parts of my riding. This committee worked with me and with the previous Liberal government to make improvements to the system. My colleague referred a little while ago to some of these pilot projects, for example basing the system on the 14 best weeks in the previous 52. This was a change for which people like Rodrigue Landry, Ronald LeBlanc, Aline Landry, Aurélia Denelle, and the former mayor of Cap-Pelé, Normand Vautour, worked very hard, trying to make changes that helped seasonal workers and also helped employers have workers. For example, these improvements enabled people to earn 40% of their employment insurance benefits without being penalized. This encouraged them to accept all available work. Five weeks were also added to deal with a difficult situation known as the black hole.
The challenge now is to make these pilot projects a permanent part of the Employment Insurance Act. That is what the Liberal Party promised. There was a formal commitment to make these pilot projects, which we developed several years ago, a permanent part of the act. I thought that was a good start toward improving the system. The government, though, simply tried to extend the pilot projects, which has caused a lot of uncertainty in these industries and among their workers. That is very regrettable.
The current economic situation requires some other improvements to employment insurance as well.
The two week waiting period, as some of my colleagues before have explained, and like the member for Acadie—Bathurst who explained it well, is not a two week waiting period. It is known as a waiting period, but in fact it is two weeks where the person who is applying for benefits will have no revenue. The person will have no income support for those two weeks. It is sort of like a deductible in an insurance policy, but they are a very punitive two weeks.
These people are not rich. For them to have no income for two weeks means that when they finally get their benefits, often 8 or 10 weeks later because of the backlog and failure to process the applications in time, they are massively behind in their bills. They are buying groceries on credit and are behind in paying the hydro bill or other bills. The two week waiting period needs to be reduced or eliminated. Workers' compensation regimes have perhaps a three day period. Why should employment insurance have 14 days?
The real issue, on top of that unfairness, is this horrible delay that people encounter now. MPs get calls in their constituency offices and hear of horrible examples where people are kicked out of apartments because they cannot pay rent due to waiting 55 days to receive an employment insurance benefit.
There is an organization in Shediac, in my riding, called Vestiaire Saint-Joseph. It is a food bank that serves hundreds of needy families in my region. The volunteers who work at Vestiaire Saint-Joseph often tell me that, because of the delays in employment insurance, families have to come to the food bank to get something to eat. This is an injustice that must be corrected.
Something should be done as well to deal with the regional rates issue.
There is a variable rate in terms of access. The number of hours that are needed to have access to employment insurance, or the number of weeks of benefits one would have depending on where that one happened to live, or what the unemployment rate might be in that particular census district, leads to great unfairness.
Let me use an example of somebody who lives in a suburb of Moncton called Lakeville. That individual goes to work 20 minutes down the road at a fish plant in Cap-Pelé or Shediac and works side by side with somebody who happens to live in the village where the fish processing plant is located. The person who commutes 20 minutes a day would need two or three times the number of hours to access employment insurance and that individual's benefits would last for a much shorter period of time, yet that individual worked side by side every day for the whole time he or she was qualifying for employment insurance.
The variable rate does not reflect labour force mobility in today's economy. If individuals go from my community to work in Fort McMurray and get laid off, as many people have in that particular area in the last number of months, and they then return to New Brunswick, they could benefit from an employment insurance regime different than that from the people they worked side by side with every day in Fort McMurray. That no longer makes sense in the economy of today.
That is why I think it is a great idea to reduce the number of hours required for EI. The NDP has suggested this. My colleague from Dartmouth—Cole Harbour and a number of others in our Quebec caucus have worked hard to try to reduce the number of hours required by part-time workers, new Canadians, thousands of workers in Ontario who find themselves losing their jobs because of the difficult economic circumstances and the neglect of the government to act. These individuals are unable to access employment insurance because of a regime which no longer reflects the economy of today. I very much support the effort to reduce the number of hours required for employment insurance.
Self-employed Canadians should be eligible for employment insurance benefits, particularly parental leave benefits, sickness benefits, or compassionate care leave. The previous Liberal government increased the number of weeks one could have with respect to parental leave. We tried to bring in a compassionate care leave provision. These were important improvements that were made in employment insurance. We can go further.
My colleague from Sydney—Victoria, who happens to share this desk in the House of Commons with me, has brought forward an important bill that would extend the number of weeks for people in the case of a serious illness.
My colleague from Madawaska—Restigouche also introduced bills to reduce the waiting period and to make employment insurance available to parents who have to take a child to the children’s hospital in Halifax because there are no similar facilities in New Brunswick. Parents who accompany their children to Halifax are deprived of employment insurance. I think improvements can be made here.
I will be supporting this motion with considerable enthusiasm because it highlights the government's failure to improve employment insurance. Adding five weeks at the end of a claim would not be as important as removing the two weeks at the beginning where an individual is punished, or dealing with the five, six, seven, sometimes ten weeks of delay in receiving benefits or improving accessibility. We will continue to work on these issues.