Madam Speaker, it is with some pleasure and some sadness that I rise to speak to this motion today.
The pleasure is because of the pride I feel in my party for putting forward what I think is a measure that will be of immense assistance to hundreds of thousands of Canadians and it is something that I know is desperately needed in these tough economic times.
The sadness is because this is one of those measures that we as parliamentarians are forced to consider taking. Many Canadians are facing an economic disaster and a terrible fear for the future of parents and their children and the seniors whom they often support.
This issue is somewhat personal to me for a few reasons.
This is not just an issue of numbers or an issue of theory. I worked for 16 years for a trade union. I sat in my office every day, Monday to Friday, week after week, month after month. In just about every period of time that I was in my office, people who were laid off from their jobs or fired from their positions come to talk to me about their employment prospects and the fact that they were unable to get acceptable amounts of protection from government.
I also wonder how many members of the House have been in that position. I wonder how many members have actually looked across a desk at the eyes of unemployed men or women who wonder how they will make their rent payments, or how they will buy groceries for their children or pay for their children's athletic programs or school supplies when they were faced with a two week waiting period.
I have heard many members in the House speak of the two week waiting period, calling it a deductible. What are we deducting from? We are deducting from the incomes of people. This is not a car we are talking about. This is not replacing items of property taken in a theft from one's garage. This is telling Canadians that they have no money for the next two weeks, and we do not care.
The Conservatives want to put five weeks on the end of a claim. What does that tell the people sitting across the desk from them, when they are wondering how they are going to buy groceries for the next two weeks.
I have had to explain to people why they do not qualify for benefits whatsoever. This is not a two week problem for them. Over 60% of Canadians, and almost 70% of women, seven out of ten unemployed women, will not get any benefits because of the measures the current government and previous Liberal governments put into place.
What do we say to them? Do we tell them they have to face the next six months without any income? Do we call that a deductible?
I wonder how many members in the House were ever on employment insurance. I would venture to guess that on the government's side of the benches, not many. I think if they had been on employment insurance, they might have a different perspective on this matter.
I have been on unemployment insurance, which is what it was called back in 1991. I received $409 a week. The maximum amount a person can get now is about $458 a week. We are talking an extra $30 or $40 after 18 years.
When workers come and tell us that they do not have any money for two weeks and six out of ten tell us they will not get any money at all, for the lucky 40% of workers, or 30% in the case of women, who do get benefits, they get an average of a little over $300 a week.
Many members from British Columbia in the House have spoken to this issue. In Vancouver $1,400 a month will barely pay the rent or the mortgage, yet that is the average amount we expect workers to raise their families on during this economic recession and downturn when they may be unemployed for many months. This is the reality of the issue. It is not just theory to these people.
I want to talk a bit about the motion before us. I hope all members of the House could find it in their conscience to support the motion. It takes positive measures that would help the Canadians I spoke of and it would provide effective stimulus to our economy, far beyond many of the measures currently in the budget.
New Democrats propose to eliminate the two week waiting period. We propose to reduce the reference period to a minimum of 360 hours worked, regardless of the regional unemployment rate. Our motion would allow self-employed workers to participate in the system. It would increase benefits to at least 60% of income based on the best 12 weeks in the reference period. Our motion would encourage training and retraining.
It is not that the budget does nothing in the area of employment insurance. It does some things, but the steps it takes are insufficient.
I have heard members opposite speak about consultation with Canadians. They use glowing and exaggerated claims that the consultations on the budget were the biggest consultations in Canadian history. Really?
Who did the government consult? Did the government consult one representative of employee organizations? Did it consult one trade union? Did it consult one group that represents and works with unemployed workers? I do not think so.
I saw the blue ribbon panel with which the government consulted, and it was made up exclusively of people from the business sector. Not one person of that 10 or 12 member panel represented unemployed workers or understood their realities.
If the government did consult with unemployed workers or their representatives, it would not be able to stand in the House and say that those unemployed workers wanted five weeks tacked on at the end of an unemployment claim that hardly anybody gets, that condemns them to poverty and that does not address their needs.
I want to talk a bit about the stimulus effect of our measure.
Ian Lee, the MBA director at Carleton University's Sprott School of Business, argues that employment insurance is the single best tool for the government to use as a means of providing economic stimulus. Why? Putting money into the hands of middle and working class Canadians immediately is sound economics in a time of recession because those people will spend that money. They will put it in their communities. They will patronize their local businesses. They will purchase clothing and items for their children. That money will be circulated.
Using the multiplier formula, every dollar spent on employment insurance results in $1.64 being injected into the economy. That number is just ahead of the multiplier for infrastructure dollars spent, but is a much quicker response for the economy.
I also want to talk a bit about proportionality. The government has claimed that it is putting $1 billion into training and approximately $2 billion in the budget is allocated toward employment insurance. I want to contrast that. That sounds like a lot of money and it is nothing to snivel at.
The government is proceeding with $55 billion of corporate tax cuts and has guaranteed $75 billion of bad debts and mortgage-backed securities held by banks in our country. It has allocated $125 billion to profitable corporations and has allocated $2 billion to the hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers. That is less than 2% for workers.
That tells a lot about the priorities of the government. It answers the questions that I hear repeatedly about why New Democrats do not support the budget. We do not support the budget because it is imbalanced, unwise and it will not help Canadians.
New Democrats want to help unemployed workers and their families. We urge all members of the House to support the motion as I am sure they want to do the same.