Mr. Speaker, I am speaking today to go into further detail about an issue I raised in the House last November. I asked the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development why access to employment insurance was being further restricted for those who need it most and who have paid into the program.
Just who are the people being denied employment insurance benefits? There are no records being kept. People have come to my constituency office. They are looking for work, and they start looking early in the morning and finish late at night. They want to work. They are not earning any money and are not part of any statistics. They are unfortunate enough to be looking for work either in a field where the government cut nearly 19,000 positions—the federal public service—or in seasonal industries. I am thinking about the man who shingles roofs or the woman who works on-call as a benefits clerk.
In November, I talked about new data from Statistics Canada that showed that only 40% of unemployed workers were collecting employment insurance benefits. In other words, over half of these people are not getting a service for which they pay. This is the lowest access rate in 10 years. It is outrageous.
I cannot accept the answer given by the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, who said that around eight out of 10 individuals in Canada qualify for employment insurance. What the parliamentary secretary said completely contradicts the data from Statistics Canada.
Restricting access is part of the Conservative government's pseudo-solution to save money on the backs of the unemployed. This is the Conservative government's scheme to save money by taking it from the fund that belongs to workers, from the benefits they should receive when they are between jobs, until they find another job or return to their regular job when seasonal work starts up again.
Since the introduction of the employment insurance counter-reform, Bill C-38, thousands of Canadians have spoken out against the negative affects these changes will have on our economy, and have called this a direct attack on unemployed workers.
One of the direct consequences of reducing employment insurance is a lower unemployment rate. In turn, claimants will have to have more qualifying hours, and they will receive fewer weeks of benefits. When the unemployment rate goes down in a region, residents there receive fewer weeks of benefits. That is clear.
The government is once again limiting access to employment insurance by changing the appeal mechanisms for workers who are denied. We have proven that it will become increasingly difficult for claimants to appeal. It will have to be done in writing, and the wait times are increasing for responses. Not to mention the fact that there are fewer people to respond to claimants or to potential claimants hoping to receive benefits, since they are among those 19,000 people I mentioned earlier, who are unemployed and looking for work.