Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives see crime everywhere, even where there is none. They send inspectors to spy on the unemployed in their homes. They suspect everyone of being a criminal. What are the unemployed guilty of? Are they guilty of losing their jobs or of living in a region where seasonal employment is predominant?
On March 5, during question period, I asked the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development about the home visits and the techniques one might describe as spying on employment insurance claimants by government representatives. In my opinion, the Conservatives are becoming more fierce in their attack on people's rights, and that is unacceptable.
We now know that thousands of randomly selected claimants were visited directly at their homes by Service Canada representatives. Apparently, the purpose of those visits was to ensure that the unemployed workers were seriously looking for employment.
Although the techniques for verifying the integrity of the system were implemented a long time ago and using the necessary means to prevent fraud is entirely justified, one has to wonder about the legitimacy of the current approach. There is a fine line between a legitimate verification and outright bullying.
We have even heard stories of EI claimants who had to explain to Service Canada why they were not home, when they were out looking for work, applying for jobs or doing an interview.
Unfortunately, it seems clear that this system is not designed to verify whether a claimant is eligible. Instead, the Conservatives want to covertly send unemployed workers the message that the government is keeping an eye on them. The vast majority of Canadians would rather see the Conservatives focus their efforts on the many scandals that abound in the Senate and in the Prime Minister's Office.
There is no data to support the claim that home visits are an effective way to uncover fraud, and Canadians have every reason to question what is going on, since all of the Conservatives' arguments are filled with half-truths.
I remind Canadians that, although the government claims it could recover millions of dollars from fraud, errors with EI benefits payments come from three sources: from the claimants themselves, from employers and from the administrative system. The government claims there is $330 million in potential fraud, and that includes errors, improper payments and future corrections or claims processed incorrectly.
Service Canada employees say that there is no indication that the number of cases of fraud in the system has increased. The most recent data analyzed by the Auditor General, along with the numbers that have appeared in the newspapers, show that less than 1%, approximately 0.6%, of the budget allocated to the employment insurance system is attributable to fraud. That money is nearly fully recovered, except for about $21,000. Those figures come from the 2012 Public Accounts.
There are relentless attacks on honest workers, the vast majority of whom pay their taxes and ask for nothing more than to work and live with dignity in the regions of this country. The thousands of workers who are proud to participate in a diverse economy are victims of stereotypes perpetuated by the Conservative Party, yet a senator had to give $90,000 back to taxpayers.
Fraud is never acceptable.