Mr. Speaker, of course it is relevant and I think there are some issues that the member can learn. The issue he raises affects unemployed Canadians. The issue he raises is a narrow one that is shoehorned into a bigger picture.
We are talking about the unemployed. We need to know the full picture, how this fits in the context and whether people should oppose it or not. I am saying this bill is not a good bill when put in the context of what is happening everywhere.
Let us go back to December of 2008, more than a year ago, during the first difficult months of the global economic recession.
On December 18, 2008, CTV Newsnet's Mike Duffy Live, someone we all know quite well, welcomed Mr. David Dodge, the former governor of the Bank of Canada. He was asked whether eliminating the two-week waiting period for EI was an expenditure worth making. It was a very specific question, which deals exactly with this bill. He was asked whether it would be effective, whether the expenditure was worth making. Mr. Dodge responded unequivocally and without hesitation. He said:
The answer is no. That would probably be the worst waste of money we could make...because there's a lot of churn in the labour market.
His message was that this was understandable and that it was prudent to retain the waiting period, simply from an operational and a practical standpoint. He said, “that two weeks is there for a very good reason”. Mr. Dodge went on to say, “the real issue is that some of these people are going to be off work for a rather long period of time”.
We are focused on what matters to Canadians, creating and preserving jobs, investing in training and helping those hardest hit. How did we know this? Because we asked and Canadians told us.
Our government engaged in the most comprehensive prebudget consultations in Canadian history, leading up to the release of Canada's economic action plan in budget 2009. During those consultations with Canadians, and the member would do well to listen, they told us they wanted EI to be extended to help unemployed Canadians who were having difficulty finding a new jobs or who needed more comprehensive skills upgrading. That is what Canadians told us. That is also what experts like David Dodge told us. That is what we did.
Through the economic action plan, we provided an additional five weeks of EI benefits to all Canadians who needed them, to help them get through the tough economic times. Over 500,000 Canadians have benefited from that measure alone. I wonder what the member would say to those 500,000 Canadians, whom he did not stand and support in the action that was taken by the government.
However, we were not finished. We kept a sharp eye on the situation and we acted again when the need presented itself. This past fall, we introduced and passed Bill C-50, a stand-alone bill, acting further to ensure that the EI program remained responsive to the needs of Canadians. That bill provided fairness for Canadian long-tenured workers. There are Canadians who have worked for many years, who have paid EI premiums for many years and who have rarely, if ever, used the system at all.