Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I am just telling the facts. People are actually afraid.
I heard the member for Ajax—Pickering saying earlier that they can go back on the old system because the Conservatives made that change. That is true. They did make that change, but when people call in and ask to go on that system, they are encouraged not to by HRSDC staff. They are told that they will have to do paper returns, not electronic, and that it will take longer and, by golly, if there is a postal strike, their family may have nothing to eat. Those were words that were told to us by people who looked at going onto the old system, where they would do much better. I would ask the two parliamentary secretaries to think this issue through.
I said a moment ago that seasonal industries are responsible for somewhere around 20% of our exports. However, those industries are being injured by these changes because their workers are indeed affected.
I also want to mention one of the things that came up at the meeting in Alberton loud and clear. People did not know this when they applied, but for those who are seasonal workers and applied to take their Canada pension plan at 60, the way it works is that they take their monthly Canada pension plan, multiply it by 12 to get the yearly amount and divide that by 52 to get their weekly CPP. However, 50 cents on the dollar of that CPP has been drawn back. That is unacceptable, but that is what the Conservative government is doing to seasonal workers. It is even taking the pension that they paid into away from them.
Just as bad, for people who are on parental leave, for example, nurses who are going in to work a four-hour or six-hour shift to keep their licence up, help the hospital out and keep their skills up so that when they go back to work in the health care system they can hit the ground running, they are having 50 cents on the dollar of their parental leave clawed back. These are the punitive penalties that we are seeing.
The five week pilot project that was mentioned a couple of times is being taken away without any economic analysis whatsoever. It is penalizing people further and leaving families without incomes for an additional five weeks when they are probably already without incomes for another four or five weeks. It will probably force some onto the welfare system. However, there was no need to do that. There was money in the system. Why did the government not hold hearings on the consequences of what these decisions would be?
I submit, they must reverse these decisions and reinstate the five-week pilot project.