Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to this bill. Whenever we have a bill or a measure before us that helps people and is constructive, we are all for it. We are in favour of Bill C-13 because it corrects a flaw, an injustice actually, towards Canadian Forces members who take parental leave.
As we know, when Canadian Forces members return from a mission and go on parental leave, they are sometimes forced to leave home again because of an operational imperative to return to duty. These people are being treated badly. They should be compensated for this time and allowed to take the full period of parental leave.
First off, I would say there is a flaw in this bill that needs to be fixed in committee. I believe that my colleagues from the three other parties will agree on this since we spoke about it briefly. We must make this bill retroactive. I hope we can correct this flaw during the debate or in committee.
We would like the bill to be retroactive, not indefinitely of course, but at least by 52 weeks, to the previous year. This would cover military staff who were on parental leave during that period and who could have been penalized if they had to return to military duty abroad because they were not covered by this bill. They should be allowed to use the rest of their parental leave upon their return.
The Bloc Québécois will support this bill because we must recognize that members of the military participate in dangerous and exceptional missions that can also lead, at the same time, to injustice with respect to their rights under the employment insurance system. One of those rights is the ability to use all the parental leave to which they are entitled.
This bill is necessary. The Minister of National Defence, who just spoke, will agree that the Conservatives' measures are not always exactly right because they are one-time measures. They are piecemeal attempts to respond to a specific need, in this case, that of the military.
The same thing happens with all workers subject to employment insurance. It is a poor practice because when you implement a measure to correct an injustice for one segment of society, in this case the military, you neglect to implement similar measures for other segments of society, who are also penalized by the application of the Employment Insurance Act, in particular. I will come back to the overhaul of employment insurance, which was raised earlier by my colleague for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour.
We do not give enough recognition to the contribution of the Canadian Forces to Canada and to each part of our country, in our case, Quebec. Many Quebeckers are currently serving in the armed forces.
These soldiers come home in fragile condition as a result of the missions they were sent on. They are physically fragile because of injuries, but they are also psychologically fragile. They do not receive any assistance, or very little, to reintegrate into society. The family unit is the basic building block of society. They often come back overwhelmed and severely affected by their mission. When they return to their families, they are in shock, because what they have just seen and experienced has changed them.
Bill C-13 provides an opportunity to recognize that the assistance we must give our soldiers should not be limited to a single measure, such as parental leave, which is not nothing. It is an important measure, and that is why we will vote in favour of Bill C-13.
This debate must serve as a reminder that there are other dimensions to the distress and injustices the soldiers are exposed to. There is a lack of psychological and financial support. In our role as parliamentarians in our respective ridings, we meet people from nearly all walks of life, including veterans and soldiers who were sent on missions and who, even if they were not fighting on the front line, witnessed situations that were traumatizing. Upon their return, it is clear that they have changed. Even those who did not know them well before their departure say that they are not the same. The majority of these soldiers are men, and their behaviour is often inconsistent. They are having difficulties and there are few or no resources to help them.
In many cases, they are abandoned by the armed forces. That needs to be said here, in the House. We must implement measures to supplement the lack of resources available to them when they return from their missions.
Earlier, I talked about the financial aspect. In 2005, the government of the day proposed and the House passed a measure to give returning veterans a lump sum to replace the monthly payments they had been receiving. The idea was that returning veterans would be better off getting a lump sum to help them rebuild their working lives quickly by starting a business or retraining, for example.
Experience taught us that this measure was not the wisest approach under the circumstances, mainly because of the situation I described earlier, the shock soldiers experience when transitioning from a mission or a combat zone back into society. Some people remain traumatized or shattered, while some recover and adapt. Many go on living with their problems and do not talk about them.
However, the government realized that many individuals spent their lump sum payments on things that may not have been good for their families or for themselves. In most cases, people squandered their lump sum payments. The measure we took was not appropriate under the circumstances and did not help soldiers or their families. On the contrary, it hurt families.
That has to change. What we are proposing is reinstating monthly payments. Of course, there will have to be a certain amount paid up front to help people reintegrate, but we need to bring back monthly payments so that people can reintegrate gradually and, most importantly, be guaranteed an income in the medium and long terms. We think that this would be a wiser approach, and that is what we have to work toward now.
As such, the Standing Committee on National Defence supported 34 recommendations that raise the issue I just mentioned, among other things. We circulated a petition to ensure a lifelong monthly pension for soldiers. As I said earlier, most soldiers are pretty messed up when they come back home.
I would like to come back to the instrument that we want to use to assure our military personnel that Bill C-13 will give them all of the parental leave provided for in the employment insurance system. Over the years, the employment insurance fund has been used for other things. In order to be able to use it for other things, the two successive governments ensured that as many people as possible would not be eligible to receive employment insurance benefits. More than 50%, 54% to be exact, are ineligible. How did they do it? The government put all sorts of stringent measures in place in order to accumulate the biggest surplus it could. We are talking about $57 billion. Of course, the government and the two parties that formed the successive governments want us to stop talking about it. It is disturbing that the government pillaged $57 billion from the employment insurance fund. And it did it on the backs of those who lost their jobs.
What happened? Access to employment insurance was restricted to the max. One thing is for sure, we need to keep working to overhaul the employment insurance system. That is what the Bloc Québécois is doing. We have introduced various bills in order to amend the number of hours needed to qualify. During the election campaign, virtually everyone said that 360 would be an appropriate number of hours. However, once they were elected, we saw what happened. Félix Leclerc, a Quebec poet and songwriter, had a song about this. The day before the election, they called you their best buddy and the next morning, they could not remember your name. It is the same for this commitment, this promise. All of the parties agreed on 360 hours, but now, we are about the only ones, along with the New Democrats, that are sticking with that number and continuing the fight.
Employment insurance coverage should also be increased permanently from 55% to 60% of income.
The law must be amended so that individuals the government deems uninsurable can be insured. There is a principle of culpability whereby individuals who apply for EI are assumed to be malicious and ineligible. People have to prove that they are entitled to EI even though they have paid their premiums and they have the required number of weeks. The time has come to do away with the principle that an individual is guilty even before he or she has received any EI benefits. It is true that some people are not entitled to EI because they do not qualify, and this is to be expected, but these people are a small minority. There must be very clear rules to determine who does and does not qualify.
The famous two-week waiting period must also be eliminated. During the election campaign, there was a general consensus that the waiting period should be eliminated, but the government announced that it would not grant the royal recommendation for this measure. It has not kept its promise. When the Conservatives were in opposition, they made a recommendation with us that the waiting period be eliminated.
Independent workers must have access to EI on a voluntary basis. What this government has done for independent workers amounts to half measures. It has made them eligible for a portion of EI benefits. Workers in Quebec are eligible only for leave for serious illness and compassionate care leave, which is not very much.
What independent workers have to pay for their employment insurance benefits is three times what they actually cost Quebec. This is not true elsewhere. Quebec has its own system of parental leave. The other provinces of Canada can have access to parental leave, and more power to them. That is fine with us. They pay the appropriate premium, but workers in Quebec have to pay three times the cost. I hope the government will tell independent workers that they are paying too much, because it has not told them so far. Yet the House unanimously adopted a Bloc motion on this. The party in power agreed that the government should redo the math and make premiums proportional to benefits.
In conclusion, we agree with this bill, because it corrects the injustice Canadian Forces members face. At the same time, the bill should remind us that there is a lot of work to do to overhaul the employment insurance system. We need to tackle this as parliamentarians, or else the government will keep on doing a piecemeal job.