Mr. Speaker, on January 27, I asked the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development a question about a problem in Lebel-sur-Quévillon concerning the closure of the paper mill and sawmill, which put 425 employees out of work. For that town, it was the equivalent of 550,000 jobs in Montreal. On that day—budget day, as you may recall—the minister replied, “I invite the member to wait for this afternoon's budget and to support us so that we can rebuild the economy together.”
However, further to the request I made to the minister, after reading the budget several times, I have not found anything that would answer the question I asked. I would remind the House of a few facts. The Employment Insurance Act used to be called the Unemployment Insurance Act. Before that, the federal government had gathered together legislation that existed in all the provinces, but did not exist at the federal level. In the provinces, including Quebec, legislation was passed in the 1920s to help those most in need, and in 1939-40 it was temporarily taken up by the federal government, which allocated funds in order provide a decent income for the time.
As soon as the economy recovered and the program was put in place, the government ensured that it would self-sustain itself and stopped funding it, while keeping control of operations and grabbing surpluses to use them towards the federal deficit. It is in that context that, in 1996, the Minister of Finance released the name, the thrust and the goals of that program. Indeed, at the time, the minister changed the title of the Unemployment Insurance Act, which referred to the situation for which this legislation had been passed—that is to protect the workers and local economies affected. Until 1996, the program had always been indexed to the cost of living, or close to it.
So, ironically, the minister renamed it the “employment insurance” program, as if the income provided by our employment was not in itself an insurance provided by our work, and as if we needed other compensation in addition to the income provided by our work.
Worse still, the minister reduced insurable amounts from $47,000 to $39,000, in addition to reducing from 60% down to 55% the percentage used to calculate the amount of the benefits to be paid. That percentage was also reduced each time a claimant would rely on these benefits, down to a threshold of 50%. This means that benefits which, in most cases, amounted to $28,000 in 1994-95, went down to $19,500 in January 1996, and, in many cases, to much less than that. In his desire to grab money as quickly as possible, this minister, who went on to become the Prime Minister, had made his legislation, which was passed on April 30, 1996, retroactive to January 1.
In response to the question that I put to her on March 10, when I came back, the minister said that there were very great challenges in these tough times for a great number of people, and that the government had a framework and intended to stick with it.
We are now going through another crisis, and it is important to give back access to employment insurance to those who need it. People serving two or three years in jail can maintain their right to employment insurance, but that is not the case for workers, and today they need that program.