Mr. Speaker, before the break, I was talking about the fact that we saw the bill introduced and the Conservative government's budget as an austerity budget that will have recessionary consequences.
The issue of employment insurance, in particular, is close to my heart. I can demonstrate the impact that this bill's provisions will have on employment insurance with a statement made by the member for Madawaska—Restigouche on the airwaves of a radio station in my riding of Rimouski. He was asked something very simple: if an employee who loses his job accepts a new job at 70% of his salary, for fear of losing his benefits, as stipulated, and he then loses this new job, must he accept a second new job at 70% of the 70% of his initial salary? The member for Madawaska—Restigouche clearly stated that that was the case, according to the logic of the bill, and that that was why we have regulations on minimum wage.
It seems clear from over here that this budget is an austerity and recessionary budget that will push down wages. The middle class and people with fewer resources will pay the price.
I would like to talk briefly about another provision in the bill, namely, division 36 of part 4, which amends the Bank Act. I can assure this House that this will cause serious problems. I feel as though we are in the movie Groundhog Day. We know how some of the provinces, including Quebec, responded to the regulation of financial markets. The matter went all the way to Supreme Court, which recognized the supremacy of provincial jurisdictions in this area. Now the federal government is trying to give itself exclusive jurisdiction over financial institutions, particularly when it comes to consumer protection.
To date, this has been a shared jurisdiction. Of course the Bank Act falls under federal jurisdiction, but consumer protection still falls under provincial jurisdiction, and both levels of government have been acting in co-operation with one another. The federal government made a unilateral decision, without consulting anyone—as was the case with most aspects of this bill—to rewrite a provision and include it somewhere, on page 386, I think, of a 430-page bill. Ultimately, this will cause serious problems because I am convinced that Quebec and perhaps some of the other provinces will want to fight this in court. The very least a responsible federal government could do is consult with its provincial partners, but this one did not.
The Conservatives have a lot to say about how much time has been spent on this debate. The government says that more time has been spent debating this bill than any other budget implementation bill in the past. That is hogwash for a number of reasons.
Seventy laws—69 to be more precise—are being created, abolished or amended. In committee, we generally devote two to three committee meetings to one bill. This bill affects 70 laws. That would represent a total of 140 to 210 hours of consideration in total for all the provisions of this bill. I can say that in committee, we devoted 90 minutes to two hours maximum to the major reform to employment insurance. We spent a maximum of two hours considering an equally big reform to old age security. There was also not enough time to give proper attention to other topics, including the legislation on employment equity, which makes federal contractors no longer subject to employment equity rules.
The bill is extremely problematic for all those reasons. We have said it before and we will say it again: this is extremely anti-democratic. We regret that we still have to be here debating this entire bill, which should have been split up a long time ago.