Mr. Speaker, I will start by saying that I will be sharing my time with the member for Timmins—James Bay.
I will begin by stating that I will be supporting Bill C-44. Perhaps some of my colleagues have children, and they know as well as I do that the most difficult thing in the world is to watch their child suffer or to learn that their child has suffered. I do not even want to imagine what a parent goes through when their child disappears or dies as a result of a crime. It is far too painful. A mother or father never recovers from such a blow, and it must take a long time for the pain to subside even a little. I still think of my grandparents, who died 25 or 30 years ago, and that is nothing compared to the loss of a child.
Bill C-44 will allow parents who go through such turmoil and grief to take the time to heal a little before returning to work. It will also prevent them from suffering serious financial difficulties in the meantime. Parents of a seriously ill child will be able to take the time to be with their child during that difficult period. When my children were young, one of them played baseball with a young boy whose younger brother had a serious illness. The little brother was about five years old. He was being treated and often stayed in hospital. You do not leave a five-year-old child alone in the hospital. Both parents had used up their holidays and other leave, but the illness obviously did not go away by the time they had exhausted their leave. They had to ask for unpaid leave. Their finances suffered and they were afraid of losing their jobs. That is exactly the kind of family that could have benefited from leave with benefits.
Helping parents in such a way is an excellent initiative. However, I find it somewhat maddening that the Conservative government is prepared to amend the Canada Labour Code to help one group of parents but not another. When the member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie wanted to bring changes to the same code to protect pregnant or nursing women, the Conservatives slammed the door in his face. This really smacks of partisanship and cynicism. The purpose of his bill was to prevent miscarriages and health problems in newborns by ensuring that pregnant and nursing women whose jobs fall under Canada Labour Code jurisdiction were not subject to dangerous situations at work.
Why show kindness and common sense to one group of parents, but not to another, when in both cases, we are talking about the life of a child or unborn child? The trauma is similar. It makes absolutely no sense. The only plausible answer to my question is that Bill C-44, which we are discussing today, was introduced by a Conservative minister, while Bill C-307, which sought to compensate and protect pregnant women and their unborn children, came from an NDP member. Is that what the Conservatives call democracy now that they have a majority? The public will remember that come 2015.
There is another problem. Just a year ago, when the Conservatives promised the public that it would help parents of murdered, missing or seriously ill children, they also promised to do so out of general revenues. That is what Bill C-44 proposes in the first two cases, but not in the third. Benefits for parents of sick children will be taken from the employment insurance fund. Why do I see a problem with that? There are many reasons.
First, the employment insurance fund has a deficit of $9 billion. Second, employment insurance money is supposed to be a safety net for unemployed workers. Third, once again, the Conservatives did not do what they said they would do.
Let us talk about my first point: the employment insurance fund has a deficit of $9 billion. The anthropologist in me would like to give a quick history lesson. In the 1990s, under a Liberal government, the state stopped funding employment insurance. Instead of having three contributors to the fund—the worker, the employer and the state—there were only two contributors, the worker and the employer. So the pot was already shrinking.
In the late 1990s, the Liberals took money that had been set aside for workers and rolled it into the general revenue fund to balance the budget. That money did not belong to the government because, as I just said, it had been contributed to the fund by workers and employers.
When the Conservatives came to power, they continued to chip away at the employment insurance fund. What a surprise it was when recently, there was no more money in the fund to pay claimants. The government had to increase workers' and employers' premiums. That is not fair. People paid for that insurance for years, and then they were told there was no more money and they would have to pay more if they wanted the benefits to which they were entitled.
If a private investor takes off with our savings, we call foul, but is it any different when the government does the same thing?
Second, I mentioned that the employment insurance fund is supposed to be a safety net for workers who lose their jobs. That is why it is called “insurance”. Maybe we should stop calling it “employment insurance” and start calling it “unemployment insurance” like in the old days because it is insurance against unemployment, not for or against employment.
The money in the fund comes from workers and employers and should be used when a person loses his job and has a hard time finding another one, or when the nature of his work does not make it possible for him to work all year long. Everyone knows what I am referring to because we have been talking about seasonal workers a lot lately.
This fund could be used to address a number of other problems directly related to employment. For example, over the years, my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst, who was the NDP employment insurance critic, made dozens of proposals to expand the scope of the program. Less than four out of 10 unemployed people receive employment insurance benefits. This shows that there is a fundamental problem with the system. The money in the fund should be used to address these problems.
Benefits for parents of sick children should come from general revenues—as per the Conservatives' election promise—and not the employment insurance fund.
All the money pillaged from the employment insurance fund—$54 billion—could and should be used today to help workers affected by the latest economic crisis, those workers who recently lost their jobs as a result of all the Conservative government cuts. There are 300,000 more unemployed people today than before the 2008 crash.
To conclude, I support Bill C-44 because it supports parents going through painful times, and who should not have to add financial problems to their stress. However, I would like to ask the minister to keep the promises made by her party to use general revenues and not the employment insurance fund to cover these measures. I would also like to ask her to consult Canadians in order to learn about the real problems faced by thousands of unemployed people, in order to make reforms to the system that will make it fair for everyone. I can assure her that she will have the complete co-operation of the NDP for such a project.
Finally, I would also like to ask the government to show as much compassion for the parents of children who have disappeared in circumstances that are not related to a crime and also to caregivers who find it difficult to survive on the meagre resources currently provided by governments, as requested by the Canadian Palliative Care Association.