Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleagues on this side of the House for their kind words in this debate on EI and what we need to do to fix a system that has been broken for a number of years.
My colleague from the Bloc made reference to the fact that there was a point in time when severance pay did not delay receiving employment insurance and vacation pay was seen differently from how it is seen today by the Canada Revenue Agency.
If someone is paid vacation pay on a weekly basis, in other words, if a person is entitled to $50 of vacation pay and it is paid weekly, it has no effect on the person's EI if the person is laid off at a subsequent point in time. However, if the vacation pay is paid on an anniversary date, that delays the person's EI. As my colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor said, that delay is pushing people into poverty.
We just heard my colleague reference a young woman named Shannon who told her story to a room full of strangers. In a sense she was telling the story of an extended family across the country at this time in our history when people are suffering.
On this side of the House we are trying to let the government know by relaying these stories that the suffering could at least be mitigated. The end to the suffering will come when we come out of the recession and people have jobs again, but at the very least we should help those in the country who are suffering.
This bill would help them. After all, it is their money. The money they are entitled to claim through EI is money they themselves have paid into the fund. One can debate what happened to the other money that was there and should have been kept in abeyance for just this time in history. I will concentrate more on the issue of looking after all of those in society who, through no fault of their own, at this moment in time find themselves in hardship. Those people who walk away from a job, do not qualify for EI. This bill does not talk about that. This bill concerns people who are unemployed through no fault of their own.
My colleague from Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor is hearing from the AbitibiBowater workers. I am hearing from the John Deere workers who will be out of work in a month. Some 800 workers in the riding of Welland, specifically the city of Welland, will be laid off through no fault of their own. That profitable company decided to leave and go to Mexico and threw those workers onto the employment lines. Most of them have worked all their lives, so they are finding out for the first time in their lives that their severance pay will preclude them from collecting employment insurance when they are laid off. It could in some cases be for over a year.
The government has taken a half step, maybe a quarter step, and said that if people use their severance pay to pay for their own retraining, the government will let them qualify for EI. The government ought to be a little more generous than that. The government ought to be fully compassionate and allow them to keep their severance. The government should retrain them for the jobs of tomorrow, and let them collect EI. It is their money. They paid into the fund. They are entitled to it. That is exactly what they should be allowed to do. It should not be about people spending some money and maybe the government will give them some money. The government cannot give what is not the government's to give. Those people are entitled to collect EI because it truly belongs to them. They are the ones who paid into the fund.
We on this side of the House have an understanding of the hardships, an understanding of the needs of those who have found themselves unemployed. We see on the other side of the House a sense of pushing people away, “Let us not bother with them at the moment. They can come back and see us later and perhaps we will let them qualify then”.
That is not what a compassionate country is about. That is not what the system was meant to do. The system is meant to take care of people in their most desperate hour of need. That is not happening. It is a real shame, that for all of those years that those people have worked, somehow they should not be entitled to EI as others are entitled. The entitlement should be the same. It should always be about equality. The way to make the system equal so that one is the same as the other is to allow them to keep that money.
I hope all members of this House will support the bill.