Mr. Speaker, I thought the Leader of the Opposition was an exception. He is such an elevated person. I apologize, it will not happen again.
The Canadian Labour Congress is calling for changes to EI. Armine Yalnizyan, from the CCPA, most recently indicated, “There is a widespread consensus across the political spectrum that the Employment Insurance Act should be changed to make the entrance requirements uniform across the country and reduce the eligibility threshold to 360 hours”.
The C.D. Howe Institute, the great champion of Liberal thought, said it was surprised the government did not do more to enhance access.
Susan Riley, of the Ottawa Citizen, said, “If the government was serious about helping the hardest hit, it would have opened access to employment insurance, along with extending benefits to those who were already covered”.
There are some amazing people who one would not normally think would support a change to EI. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, which one would not think would be championing EI, indicated in its prebudget report to the finance committee that the access issue needed to be addressed. It even suggested that we needed to look at, perhaps temporarily, the two-week waiting period. The response from the government was, “We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it”. Who said that? The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development said that on January 28.
Harris/Decima, which recently had the Liberals in the lead, indicated in a poll, dated March 30, that in every region of the country, across all regions, people believed the scope of employment insurance should be expanded in terms of coverage and length. It is not just what one might think of as the usual suspects.
Some people who have done a lot of work on this. The alternative federal budget had suggested a number of changes and had put some costing on it.
It seems like everybody believes that we have to change the system, that there needs to be access by people who need it. The only ones who seem not to believe it are members of the government, not their spouses though. We heard recently that the wife of the Minister of Finance had some issues with him, that EI should be improved, that EI was punitive to the province of Ontario.
The government, which prides itself on dividing Canadians, is now breaking up families. It is dividing families among themselves. The Minister of Finance is clinging vainly to the hope that nothing will be changed. His wife is usually right, in my experience. She is saying that it should be opened up, that it is not fair to Ontario.
It is very clear that something has to happen. This is not a light subject; it is a very serious one.
I will read an email I received, which I got a kick out of. It states, “I heard you on TV talking about EI (employment insurance) and I was impressed with your arguments. I have never been a person who believes in a lot of what you refer to as social infrastructure, whatever that is, but to me EI should be opened up, at least for now. Why won't the government do anything without being forced into it?”
That is a very good question. Last week the TD Bank made recommendations, The Chamber of Commerce, the C.D. Howe Institute, the CCPA, the CLC, the CAW, the Canadian Council on Social Development, the Conference Board of Canada, everybody who has looked at this are saying people are hurting. One would not think the government would be as blind to that as it is.
Canadians are hurting. People are living paycheque to paycheque, even when they are employed. Now they do not have jobs and they do not have savings. They have not had the benefit of a member of Parliament's salary or a big business salary. A lot of working people are going paycheque to paycheque. When they are put out of work, it is hard enough to have to wait two weeks, but then to be told they will not get EI at all is really shameful.
On top of that, we have heard about delays across the country. All my colleagues have heard about people who have had to wait longer than 28 days, in some cases 40, 50 or 60 days. The member from Madawaska—Restigouche, the member for Cape Breton—Canso and a number of Liberals in the House have raised this issue. It is a serious subject.
EI needs to be opened up. If we are not going to open it up now, when are we going to open it up? People have paid into it for years and they have the right to collect it. It is the very least that the government should for them. Instead of giving them access, it is giving them arrogance and that is no longer good enough. We need better.