Mr. Speaker, back in May, I asked the minister about the changes in the budget implementation act that impacted employment insurance. As we now know, these changes have not worked. The minister has already been forced to retract some of those changes.
Sadly, many people are still struggling. I want to ask the minister when she will start improving employment insurance to ensure that those who need it can access it, instead of making it more difficult for those who are out of work to access the funds they have paid into during all of their working years. Hard-working Canadians deserve this much from the government. We need investments in our families struggling to make ends meet.
I had also asked the minister about the gutting of the appeals tribunal for employment insurance. Instead of separate tribunals with dedicated staff, we now have one big tribunal with a fraction of the staff. Asking 70 staff to review over 30,000 appeals will not make the system efficient. It will grind to a halt and the government knows that. The minister shrugged off my question by reiterating that having few people reviewing more cases at the appeals tribunal would be more efficient. Reduced staff cannot review more cases. It is simple math. People now have to wait longer to have their appeals heard. The people asking for appeals have legitimate complaints and are in desperate need.
The facts are clear. The Conservatives have replaced the tripartite system that had appeals judged by a local three-person panel with one representative appointed by the minister, one appointed by the EI commissioner for workers and one appointed by the EI commissioner for employees. This has been replaced with a centralized system in which a small number of full-time referees will review the appeals individually. These changes will result in a loss of sensitivity to local labour market conditions and cultural context. The appellant and his or her legal counsel or representative will no longer have the opportunity to appear in person to present a case. A person behind a desk will review the case and make a decision without ever interacting with the appellant.
With this new system of appeals, the interpersonal face-to-face meeting at which judges can ask specific questions in order to understand the challenges and suffering of an appellant is now eliminated. This will not create better decisions. It will make it more difficult for those making the decisions. They will not have the ability to assess an appellant in person and there will be no opportunity to truly understand the merits of the appeal.
I want to know who the minister consulted on these changes, changes no one thinks are efficient. I want to know why the government thinks creating a backlog is an acceptable cost-saving measure. I also want to know why the government thinks that it is acceptable to leave vulnerable people waiting to hear whether they can receive benefits that they desperately need.
I want to know why it is yet again the poorest and the most vulnerable Canadians who must bear the brunt of the government's poorly thought out budget cuts.