Debates of Feb. 25th, 2016

Opposition Motion—Employment Insurance

[Alaina Lockhart, Liberal, Fundy Royal, NB]

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for recognizing the hard-working people of Atlantic Canada. My riding is in New Brunswick, and we have certainly faced some employment issues in the area.

The reality is that it is not a matter of seasonal workers, but a matter of having seasonal work in Atlantic Canada. How does the member propose that businesses in our area find and maintain their workforce if we do not make some allowances for the fact that there is a time of the year when these people will not work? We do need them back when the work starts again. I would appreciate the member's perspective on that.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that. Again, I would like to say what an impact Atlantic Canada has had on Alberta. We have talked a lot about that in the House over the last couple of weeks.

The downturn in the energy industry is not an Alberta-alone problem. This is something that impacts constituencies across the country. I am glad the member asked the question.

Energy east, for example, would diversify the economy in Atlantic Canada. I am fairly certain that my colleague across the floor voted against our motion to support energy east. A project like that would certainly benefit New Brunswick in terms of employment opportunities there.

[Erin O'Toole, Conservative, Durham, ON]

Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my friend and colleague from Foothills for his passionate advocacy in the House. He is one of the hardest working members and one of the by-election club members that a few of us belong to.

I had the privilege of working with some of his constituents years ago as they recovered from the horrible flood in the High River area. His constituents are passionate and hard-working folk.

He mentioned the social safety net. A lot of NDP members in their speeches here today talk about people who have suffered from accidents and a whole range of things. There is a whole range of social safety net programs, including CPP disability, both at the provincial and federal levels, for that. The EI program is about job insurance for long-term jobs that people have lost.

Could the member speak for a moment about how some members are talking about programs that help in other circumstances, that EI should not be the catch-all, and how the number of qualifying hours of work proposed by the NDP would change the system?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for coming to High River and helping with the flood. My community appreciated that greatly.

There are other programs that are available. Employment insurance is meant to be a temporary solution to losing a job. Other programs are there for help with a family member, caregiver support, etc. There is a multitude of other programs available for those who are in times of need.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, it is a great pleasure to rise here to discuss an issue that I am very passionate about. As the former minister for employment, I had some occasion to work on these subjects in the past.

Today, I would like to address the motion before the House of Commons to bring in a 45-day work year in Canada. Let me unpackage how we come to that 45-day or two-month period people would be required to work under the proposed changes the NDP has put before the House.

The NDP has suggested that we should lower the entrance requirement or qualifying period to 365 hours for Canadians right across the country, regardless of the labour market in which they find themselves. Three hundred and sixty-five hours in qualifying time based on a 40-hour work week equals about nine weeks, or two months. In other words, under the proposal before the House right now, people would work for two months and then collect employment insurance for 10 months. That would be available in every region of the country, regardless of the unemployment rate. In other words, even in places where there are labour shortages and employers are having difficulty recruiting workers, we would be paying people not to work.

The result of this would be an increase in the costs of the employment insurance program. That would be evident by virtue of the fact that in order to fund the additional benefits under this proposal and to compensate for the fact that fewer people would be working because more people would be on EI, the government would have to increase premiums. All the benefits paid out from employment insurance come from the premiums paid by employers and employees.

The estimates for the cost of going to a 45-day work year or two-month work year range from about $1.5 billion to $4 billion a year. As we can imagine, all of that burden would need to fall onto the shoulders of taxpayers, both workers and the businesses that employ them, through increased premiums. If we increase the employment insurance premiums, we make it more expensive to hire and thus discourage hiring. We would be punishing people for the work they do, particularly low-income workers, because employment insurance premiums are a regressive tax. They do not increase in percentage terms based on the income people take. This would be a very regressive tax increase that would disproportionately target small businesses and low-income workers and would detract from the government's stated goal to help the middle-class and those who “want to join it”.

Furthermore, it would impose new burdens on the Canadian workforce. Imagine if in every place in the country there were large numbers of people who worked only two months out of a year and then used the employment insurance system for the remaining 10 months. What would that mean for our workforce? I will let the House use its imagination. I suggest that instead of taxing people who work and the people who hire them in order to pay people not to work, we should encourage job creation. I have some practical suggestions for the government and the NDP on that score.

First, we have a growing surplus in the employment insurance account and the NDP is quite right in suggesting that that money does not belong to the government. I propose that we use it to cut employment insurance payroll taxes by 21%. That reduction in taxes was laid out in last year's budget. It is booked as part of the fiscal framework and it can be afforded based on the surplus that had been growing in the employment insurance fund when the Conservative government left office. That would make it less expensive for employers to hire and it would reward workers by letting them keep more of what they earn.

Second, we need to continue to re-profile our training program. For too long we trained people in this country for jobs that did not exist.

I was able to work with the previous government in order to re-engineer some of those training programs to connect people with available jobs. We worked on a labour market development agreement that was signed by British Columbia and Saskatchewan. Other provinces supported the agreement. That would have seen the employment insurance training dollars, of which there are about $2 billion a year, directed toward connecting people with jobs that actually existed. When they go into a provincial or territorial employment office, their training is not funded until there is an employer with which they are matched up.

Instead of having people coming in and saying that they would like to study accounting and having training dollars immediately available, the employment worker at the job training centre would check the local hiring registry and ascertain if someone is hiring accountants in that area. Employment workers do not want to send people to training programs until they know it will result in a job. By involving employers at the front end and ensuring that the unemployed train up for an available opening, then we increase the success rate.

We created something called the job bank over the years. That job bank is available to help people ascertain what openings are available. Now the goal should be to match the employer seeking the employee with someone who is unemployed, and to use EI training funds to bridge the gap between the two. The money is already there. We just need to deploy it in a more targeted and precise fashion.

In addition to training, though, which is great for developing credentials, we need to do a better job of recognizing credentials. That is the case in the professions, mostly for newcomers, but also in the trades.

When I was in British Columbia meeting with business leaders, I met several very well-trained tradesmen who had been in the workforce for 20 or 30 years as welders and an electrician, but who had never received a Red Seal ticket or any occupational designation to go along with their work because their work had always been informal. Those types of people have difficulty moving between provinces and opportunities because they do not have their ticket, even though they are equally skilled as the many people who do.

One of the things on which the government should work with the provinces is to quickly recognize the credentials of long-tenured tradespeople who have not done formal apprenticeships and therefore have not received their formal ticket. That would allow them to get a certification that would permit them to move between provinces.

We need to complete the work of apprenticeship mobility. The Atlantic provinces signed an agreement that allowed their apprentices to move around the region in the middle of their apprenticeship program. However, because apprenticeships vary, even within occupations, from province to province, oftentimes a third year apprentice pipefitter, for example, who might have been working in Alberta under an employer, under a journeyman or woman there, but has lost their job because of the downturn, cannot then pick up and move to a new opportunity that might have opened up in, say, Ontario, because the apprenticeship systems in the two provinces are different. We need to do across Canada what the Atlantic provinces have done out east, which is to try to harmonize completely the apprenticeship program.

We have done so for ticketed tradespeople. In other words, under chapter 7 on the internal agreement on trade, a trades person with a ticket in one province is recognized in all provinces, and that is also the case for most professions. If individuals get themselves certified in, say, Alberta, but then they need a new job in another province, they can use their certification there. We need to finish that work for apprentices now that it has largely been done for journey people.

Finally, we need to streamline the process for recognizing the credentials of newcomers, particularly professionals from abroad.

We have an enormous number of foreign trained professionals who come to our country. If we could get them licensed to practise more quickly in their field, they would fill important needs in our workforce at very low cost to Canadian taxpayers, and it would allow them to fulfill their extraordinary potential when they get to our country.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I want to take a moment to correct a few things that the member has said repeatedly, even though he should know better, since he was once the minister of employment and social development. This same information has also been repeated by the former MLA for Calgary—Foothills, and even by the Conservatives in the previous Parliament.

When the member says that we want to reduce the eligibility threshold to 360 hours, he knows very well that that number of hours is about nine weeks. Those nine weeks would give workers access to EI for 21 weeks, not for the rest of the year, as the member has been claiming since last year.

What is more, he seems to be suggesting that unemployed workers are going to abuse the system by working for just two short months and then collecting EI. He must know that, if an employee leaves her job voluntarily, she is not eligible for EI. If an employee is fired due to incompetence, he is not eligible for EI. There is a lot of misinformation here. I wanted to take a moment to “correct the record”, as the Prime Minister often says.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Madam Speaker, what I have been trying to tell the member is that we should be encouraging people to work. There are a number of ways to do so. First of all, I said that our training programs need to connect people with jobs that are actually available. Second, we need to recognize the skills and competencies that our workers have already acquired and help them obtain their certificate or work permit for regulated occupations. Third, we need to lower taxes for those who hire our workers and create jobs. I prefer that over a system wherein people work for two months in order to receive EI for the rest of the year.

[Stéphane Lauzon, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary for Sport and Persons with Disabilities]

Madam Speaker, I would like to say that my colleague across the way mentioned three very important points, including help returning to work, training, and working with the provinces. That is what we are committed to doing.

We talked about this in our speech. The government is committed to improving the employment insurance program so that it may better reflect today's reality. Our government will continue to enhance existing tools and services.

We are not going to reinvent the wheel. We are going to improve existing services, and continue using the national job bank to help unemployed workers get back to work.

What more does our government have to do to satisfy my colleague's demands?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

First, the government announced it wanted to partially eliminate the tax cuts we announced when we were in government. We, as a Conservative government, had proposed reducing EI premiums by 21%, thereby allowing small and medium-sized business to hire more people.

The current Prime Minister announced that he will cancel in part this tax cut for our small and medium-sized businesses. That is a mistake.

Also, the work to recognize workers' credentials and professional credentials will never stop. This work began a few years ago and we made a lot of progress, but I encourage the government to keep at it until newcomers in Canada can have their credentials recognized.

Every month, I meet an extraordinary professional who immigrated to Canada and is having a hard time getting recognized. As a result, he has to work at a job that does not meet his expectations. When doctors or engineers come to Canada, they should be able to work in their field. Recognizing these credentials should continue to be a priority for every government.

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Madam Speaker, I will begin by informing you that I will be sharing my time with the excellent member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot.

I rose in the House on several occasions during the last Parliament, between 2011 and 2015, and especially after 2012, to talk about employment insurance. The reason is simple. The reforms implemented in January 2012 by the former Conservative government were extremely harmful to several Canadian regions, especially eastern Quebec and the Atlantic provinces.

The reforms implemented in 2012 created new categories of claimants, including frequent claimants, who, upon becoming recipients of employment insurance, had to accept jobs paying 70% of their previous salary. Frequent claimants often include those who accept seasonal jobs, which is still quite often the case in eastern Canada.

The Conservatives also removed the definition of “suitable employment” from the legislation. Previously, workers could refuse a job if it did not match their field, skills, or training. The Conservative government eliminated the definition of “suitable employment”. If a worker refused a job that did not match his training, his benefits could be suspended or denied. The previous government forced workers to accept any job within 100 km of their home. Travelling one hundred kilometres is not the same in an urban area as it is in a rural area. In a rural area, it takes one hour to travel 100 km for a job that quite often pays 70% of the worker's previous salary. Naturally, the cost of gasoline is not included in the salary or the benefits. Many workers were thus forced to move and, in particular, to leave rural municipalities, which were greatly affected by this decision.

Various articles and publications then revealed that a system of quotas had been imposed on employment insurance as part of the reform. Public servants were forced to meet savings quotas to recover benefits that had been paid, finding virtually any excuse to meet that quota. This forced public servants, most of whom did not agree with such measures, to conduct extremely invasive inspections. They were often forced to catch claimants on a technicality in order to deny benefits. This often affected some of the most vulnerable Canadians, people who had just lost their jobs.

One other thing that was very damaging was that the government eliminated the boards of referees. These boards were made up of employer, union, and government representatives who understood the local realities in each region and could act as an appeal tribunal for cases where a claimant was denied employment insurance. These boards of referees worked very well but they were eliminated. Instead, the government created the Social Security Tribunal, which has so far been a dismal failure.

It should also be noted that outside of this very specific reform that was implemented in 2012, the Conservatives ended the pilot project that had helped partially fill the spring gap. What is the spring gap? I invite my Conservative friends to listen because they seem to be out of touch with the reality in the regions where there is a significant number of seasonal jobs.

Take the Lower St. Lawrence for example. A worker has to work 720 hours in order to get employment insurance. That means 18 weeks of seasonal work in tourism, forestry, the maple syrup industry, or agriculture. For working 18 weeks, the worker is entitled to 21 weeks of employment insurance benefits, which is the minimum. It is not for the rest of the year, as the Conservatives keep saying. It is 21 weeks, which is the minimum. If we add 18 weeks plus 21 weeks we get 39 weeks. That means that the worker who was laid off because of a seasonal job, has no earnings or opportunity to receive income. The pilot project partially filled that gap in the regions with a high unemployment rate, where a vast number of jobs are seasonal. Again, that is very much how it is in eastern Quebec and eastern Canada.

No one wants economic diversification in my region more than I do, so that the economy does not have to rely on seasonal employment so much, but that is the reality right now. The reform had a major impact on my region. When the reform was implemented, I toured my riding and organized information sessions in Rimouski, Lac-des-Aigles, Dégelis, and Pohénégamook. Those information sessions drew 300 to 400 people who had been directly adversely affected by that reform.

What people told us was that the reform affected non only unemployed workers, but also employers. Earlier, the members for Carleton and Foothills talked about ways to innovate and improve training programs. Currently, the 2012 reform is hurting employers because they have to cover most of the cost of training their employees. Training a brush cutter in the forestry industry costs about $10,000. That is seasonal work. When those people get a job offer, they feel they have no choice but to leave and go elsewhere. That is a net loss for the employer, which then has to hire other people, train them at that same cost, and then watch them leave too because they cannot collect benefits if they get a job offer somewhere else. Those are the stories I heard.

I heard all kinds of stories from the maple syrup, agriculture, and forestry industries. I heard about a woodworking business in Saint-Jean-de-Dieu in my riding that had to close its doors for two months and is closed now because there is no work. It has been paying its employees to do nothing for two months so that it will not lose them because they are highly skilled workers. Those are the kinds of things the Conservatives are refusing to see and accept. They think that job training is a miracle solution for regions with high rates of seasonal employment. That makes no sense.

The employment insurance reform was implemented from coast to coast to address what was then a worker shortage in Alberta and Saskatchewan, but it was at the expense of the other regions, such as eastern Canada, where the reality is completely different.

Another example that has really affected my community is the fact that small municipalities that cannot afford a full-time general manager are forced to hire them for just four, five, or six months of the year. Of course, those individuals then receive EI until they can return to the job, because there is not enough money in the budget. I have seen examples of small municipalities that have lost their general managers to jobs in places like Rimouski or Rivière-du-Loup, because they are less than 100 km away. All that person's knowledge of the municipality and its entire culture and history are lost all at once. The municipality is then forced to hire someone else and train them, only to see them leave again afterwards.

In my riding, we have had to deal with a number of cases. Since the 2012 reform, roughly 500 people from all across my riding have come to my office in Rimouski, and my staff there have helped those people with their fight against the government regarding the loss of their benefits.

A very recent case that we managed to resolve shows how overly harsh the public service is in these cases. I am talking about Pierre Bérubé, who decided to quit his job as a seasonal worker, in order to go into business. He bought a truck and became a truck driver. Employment insurance demanded that he pay $5,000, between the time he purchased his truck and the end of his benefits, since they deemed that he was ready to start working as a truck driver. However, because of the capital investment he had made, he could not go into business right away, and he was preparing to do so. Employment insurance considered that he could start work immediately and imposed a $5,000 penalty on a man who was just trying to get by. This is the kind of overzealousness we saw under the Conservatives.

Today's motion is extremely relevant, because the Liberals made a lot of commitments about EI. Members are familiar with their commitment to reduce the waiting period. However, they also committed to cancelling the EI reform that the Conservatives imposed in 2012. My concern is that the Minister of Families and the Minister of National Revenue, who is also the member for Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine, a region that has been seriously affected, are already indicating that there will not be any significant changes to EI until 2017 or even 2018.

People are in desperate need now. The government made these commitments and we do not need consultation, since we have already seen the consequences of the reform. The government could repeal the reform immediately, and I encourage it to do so. It could start by voting in favour of our motion and immediately bringing down the next budget to move forward with repealing the EI reform.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I want to go back to a point that was made by the Conservative member for Carleton earlier. I was sitting here almost fuming listening to his remarks.

The member for Carleton talked about 360 hours, and I disagree with that setting in the NDP motion, but the member's remarks were nothing but disingenuous to workers in this country. To claim that the NDP proposal of 360 hours would be paying people not to work, and that they would work nine weeks and draw 50 weeks is malarkey. What it goes to show is that it comes from a mentality that existed within the previous government that if people were penalized enough, they would be forced to work, and if they were left without income, they would be forced to work. That is not the mentality that I know the NDP has or this party has. We believe in incentives.

Does the member opposite feel the same way, that the party over there is disingenuous to workers in this country, who deserve better respect?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more. The member called it malarkey; I would call it baloney.

It is completely misleading for the Conservatives to say that we want people to work for only two months and then sit at home and do nothing for 10 months.

First, that is false. It does not work like that. People are required to work for a minimum of 360 hours, or nine weeks, so that they can access employment insurance benefits based on the nine weeks of earnings. They will not receive 100% of their wages. They already receive 55% of their wages for 21 weeks. Based on the current method of calculation, they will not even receive the full 55%.

What the Conservatives are saying makes no sense. It is disinformation that makes the unemployed, those people who are seasonal workers and are often laid off, appear to be lazy and only looking for a way to stay home. I find that extremely insulting.

To answer the question about the 360-hour eligibility threshold, I think that it is reasonable, and I would remind the member that the Minister of National Revenue and member for Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine promised during the election campaign to decrease the threshold to 420 hours, which is not that much more.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to see that the second opposition party is seeing the light with respect to employment insurance.

During the election campaign, it was proposing instead to take more than $7 billion from the fund. If it no longer has a copy of its platform, the Bloc Québécois can provide one.

Could my colleague explain what has led the NDP to do an about-face on this?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her question.

Maybe I should introduce her to Yvon Godin, a former MP who was a staunch defender not only of employment insurance, but also of an independent employment insurance fund, which is something else we fought for.

She is of course referring to the ridiculous argument the Bloc Québécois made during the election campaign that we wanted to take money out of the employment insurance fund, which is totally false.

Right now, the employment insurance fund is part of the federal government's consolidated revenue fund. In our election platform, we planned for a surplus that was higher than the employment insurance fund surplus. We had no intention of using that surplus; we would have had a surplus anyway.

What the Bloc Québécois did not understand and refused to understand was that we even introduced a bill to create an independent employment insurance fund. That bill was introduced by my colleague, Robert Chisholm , who was defeated, unfortunately.

The NDP intended to have an independent employment insurance fund, and that was clear in our election platform. I should point out that the Liberals did not have that in their platform.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I wonder whether my colleague would pay for a private insurance policy that insured less than four out of 10 people. In his view, would most people want that kind of insurance policy? Could he put that into the context of employment insurance?

[Guy Caron, NDP, Rimouski-Neigette—Témiscouata—Les Basques, QC]

Mr. Speaker, this insurance policy covers very few people when they lose their employment. I saw that in my riding.

People who worked hard and paid their EI premiums through their work and ended up unemployed were denied employment insurance benefits for some reason or another. It was either because the employment insurance processing service was too harsh, and I am not blaming them because they were only following government guidelines, or for other reasons beyond the worker's control.

To top it off, when those workers want to appeal a decision, they often have to wait six, eight, or 10 months before their appeal is heard by the Social Security Tribunal of Canada, which is a total disaster. The system is just not working.

The government promised to reverse the reform and we encourage it to do so.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, of course I support the motion. After 20 years of Conservative and Liberal reforms, the EI system is in a pitiful state and cannot provide families with the support they need. The government needs to take action immediately, specifically in the areas of eligibility and the EI fund.

In their election platform, the Liberals promised to clean up the mess in the EI system by repealing the Conservative reforms. Understandably, a program that is meant for workers is problematic when it is the employers who are criticizing the reforms, which is what is happening right now.

Before I became a member in the House of Commons, I was a municipal councillor. The Union des municipalités du Québec, an organization of employers, had adopted a resolution calling on the federal government to suspend the EI reform until economic impact studies were conducted. Here is what the president of the Union des municipalités du Québec had to say:

This reform will have a major negative impact on the social and economic fabric of the regions. It will drive seasonal workers and their families out of the regions. We will lose skilled labour power and entire families. In Quebec, we have been working for years on policies and projects promoting jobs and prosperity in the regions. We cannot sit idly by in the face of this reform. We urge the Government of Canada to suspend the reform until it assesses its real economic impact.

In the 1990s, more than 80% of unemployed workers received unemployment insurance benefits. The Liberals destroyed this program and, after their reforms, only 50% of unemployed workers had access to benefits. It was at that point, in the mid-1990s, that I decided to become a member of the board of directors of Saint-Hyacinthe's Mouvement action chômage. I found the reforms to be completely unacceptable.

Last December, the most recent data showed that only 39.9% of unemployed Canadians were receiving benefits.

I would like to talk about the impact that 20 years of Liberal and Conservative reforms have had on my region. I am very proud to be the member for Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, Quebec's agrifood capital. Agrifood products and seasonal work go hand in hand. In my region, many seasonal workers were affected by the Conservative and Liberal reforms. These workers are considered frequent claimants and, during periods of unemployment, must accept work that is 100 km from their homes and pays 70% of their usual salary. The City of Saint-Hyacinthe has set an objective of growing its population to 60,000 by 2020. As I just mentioned, municipalities are worried that their residents will have to move in order to look for work elsewhere.

This may mean that seasonal workers have to find a permanent job during periods of unemployment, and these jobs are often lower paying. When seasonal workers are called up in the spring to go back to work for the agri-food companies, many of them will not return to their seasonal employers, for fear that Service Canada will indicate on their file that they voluntarily left their employment without just cause and they will lose their right to EI. As a result, seasonal employers constantly lose their experienced workers who do not return to work for them when the new season comes around.

As I mentioned earlier, employers are now the ones complaining about the reforms. In my region, the Fédération interdisciplinaire de l'horticulture ornementale du Québec is requesting seasonal employer status and asking that its workers not be penalized because they work for seasonal companies.

HortiCompétences, an ornamental horticulture sectoral workforce committee in Saint-Hyacinthe, has been critical of the fact that its employees seem to be considered second-class workers. This is not a good way to encourage these workers to remain in the field they have chosen and for which they were trained.

The Quebec Produce Growers Association said the following:

“This sector is currently vulnerable”...the employment insurance reforms are hurting produce growers. “We already had a hard time recruiting local workers, but it has become even more difficult with the reform.”...Many seasonal workers went back to the same employer year after year. Now, they are penalized by the employment insurance rules.

It is clear to us that a universal qualifying threshold is the best solution. Regional unemployment rates vary widely. In a region like mine, where the unemployment rate is low, seasonal workers are penalized because they will have a hard time qualifying for employment insurance year after year. It is unacceptable that 60% of unemployed workers do not qualify. That impoverishes whole regions. Employment insurance beneficiaries spend their income locally. Employers have made it clear that, when their workers have no income, they lose customers.

As my colleague mentioned, we switched from boards of referees to the Social Security Tribunal of Canada. Many more people were comfortable with the complexity of the previous system. The Liberal and Conservative reforms made it impossible for ordinary mortals to navigate the labyrinth of the new Employment Insurance Act and its appeal system. In my region, there were significant delays in setting up the social security tribunals, and, as a result, many workers had to wait more than a year to collect benefits.

I have to wonder about this situation. What do we say to a worker who is let go after the company where he has worked for 25 years undergoes restructuring? This honest worker will submit an EI claim that will take several months to be approved. Under the new guidelines, he will be called to a job search session before he even receives his first payment. He will be pressured to accept any old job, even if it is not suited to him and has nothing to do with his qualifications. After just a few days, he will be forced to quit that job in order to find suitable employment.

As we know, this honest citizen will automatically be deprived of his right to receive benefits. Why? Because he is now considered a repeat offender by the employment insurance officers. This will then lead to interminable delays due to disputes.

Without support, his chances of getting his benefits back are almost nil. In the best-case scenario, he will receive his first payment between three and six months later. Is that how an honest worker deserves to be treated? I do not think so. That worker could be one of us, or one of our children, a parent or neighbour.

In my region there is an advocacy group for workers with or without a job, called Mouvement action chômage. That organization kept a record of the ramifications of abolishing the boards of referees in our region. It noticed that with the new Social Security Tribunal very few workers are able to make an appeal. Many workers wait months or even an entire year before being heard by the new tribunal.

According to Mouvement action chômage in Saint-Hyacinthe, only four out of seven cases heard in the past few months resulted in redeterminations and only because they were backed by Mouvement action chômage. Those who defend themselves have no hope of getting anywhere.

The directives the employment insurance officers receive are wreaking havoc on seasonal workers. In agri-food, in my region, those who apply for EI more than once in less than two years face stricter eligibility requirements, and for no good reason. Often the reasoning provided in the workers' file is just ridiculous. We know that.

In closing, unfortunately, if the decisions being made by the Employment Insurance Commission officers are any indication, then Mouvement action chômage in Saint-Hyacinthe will have its work cut out for it in the coming months.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, after listening to the tenor of the debate today, I thought it might be appropriate to highlight the fact that many, if not all, Liberal caucus members can recall going through the last federal election and talking a great deal about reforming and making changes to the program. Employment insurance, for years, has been very high on our agenda. The member for Cape Breton—Canso has been a very strong advocate for the program. We incorporated it into the election platform.

The minister has taken it on and said that we will be coming forward with reforms to improve the program. This is wonderful. Canadians from coast to coast to coast, I believe, will get behind the project. We recognize the differences in the different regions. There have been visits, whether by the Prime Minister or the minister, to the province of Alberta to address the concerns about commodity prices in that province and Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador. We should anticipate that we will see some very positive changes.

Would the member want to comment on the changes that I know she is aware of that are not far down the horizon and that will, in fact, improve the program?

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to hear that the Liberals want to repair the damage they caused to employment insurance in the 1990s. A fine way to make positive changes to employment insurance would be to support our motion.

I invite my colleague to do so because it will make eligibility rules fairer for all regions and set up an independent employment insurance fund, which will make it possible to reinvest in training. Workers and employers contribute to the employment insurance fund, which can be used to provide fair benefits and training to workers. The next step is to repeal the Conservatives' reforms, which penalize workers.

[Pierre-Luc Dusseault, NDP, Sherbrooke, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech and her in-depth knowledge of this subject and of her riding in particular. I have to admit that it was difficult listening today to a number of Conservatives rise in the House to talk about employment insurance. It was very reminiscent of the speeches we have heard over the past few years in the House.

To put things into context, not only has the previous prime minister used the term “lazy”, but a number of members who continue to sit in this House have used fairly egregious language.

For example, as recently as 2014, the member for Lac-Saint-Jean said, “We often pay people on employment insurance to sell...well, they're not always good substances. I want it to stop. I want the people that we're paying not to work to find a job.”

The member for Haldimand—Norfolk and a former minister also said, “We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it”. In 2013 she also said, “Once again, the NDP is protecting the bad guys”.

Another former Conservative member from Nova Scotia, who was not re-elected, said, “all those no-good bastards sitting on the sidewalk in Halifax that can't get work”.

I quoted some Conservatives. I would like the member to talk about the Conservatives' attitude and about the unfortunate trend we are hearing in speeches from this party, which was fortunately not re-elected.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

These are the kinds of comments that really get to me. I spent a large part of my career as the executive director of a social reintegration organization for young people experiencing family problems. I saw a large number of young people who were trying to get back into the job market and trying to find their place. They were constantly being penalized by the EI rules.

For many young people who are entering the job market and who have an unstable job with irregular hours, it is almost impossible to accumulate the minimum of 910 hours required to file an initial claim for benefits. They often work on call. These are young people who want to help themselves, but the EI reforms do not help them at all.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Central Nova.

I am quite pleased to speak to the motion that suggests certain changes be made to the employment insurance system. I agree with many of the changes that are in the NDP motion, with one major exception, and that is the 360-hour component.

I tried to find out from a number of sources what that 360 hours would cost the system. If a government is going to make decisions, it has to make them in a reasonable and responsible way. I asked members opposite the question, but they did not have an answer. I have not been able to find it in any of the material related to the NDP motion. Someone could perhaps get up later and give us the numbers. Stating 360 hours, without having the numbers to go along with that, is not the proper way to change legislation.

Beyond that, many of the points that the NDP made in the motion were in our election platform, and some of them are in the mandate letter to the Minister of Employment. We will be moving forward on those points.

People who have to use the EI system want it to be as efficient as possible, and that is why I am opposed to 360 hours. In our discussions with workers, their concern was related to the initial qualifying hours of over 900. We will be moving to allow regional rates, which are lesser hours and dependent on the regional EI or job rate, to be the qualifying areas. In that way, workers will be treated more fairly.

The difficulty that the economy is facing at the moment has put a lot of pressure on the employment insurance system. The Minister of Finance announced the new numbers in his mini economic update. Difficulty in the energy sector in this country is putting pressure on the system. Therefore, there is a greater need for the employment insurance system to operate effectively to get a social and economic safety net into the hands of workers. What is really unusual is that we are hearing calls from Alberta on the need to have the employment system work effectively.

I want to turn to Alberta for a minute. The duration of EI benefits has increased in four economic regions in Alberta. The number of weeks available in hard-hit regions in Alberta has increased by five weeks, to the maximum entitlement nationally of 45 weeks. If we compare December 2014 to February 2016, qualification for EI regular benefits in the northern Alberta EI region has dropped, while the maximum entitlement has increased to 45 weeks, matching the highest level of support in the country.

I want to make sure that the House and everyone knows that the energy difficulty in Alberta, the falling prices, is being caused by many global factors, and also in part by the fact that Alberta is landlocked in terms of getting our energy to market. That is posing greater difficulties for workers in a lot of regions of Canada, and mine in particular. There are a lot of people from Prince Edward Island, Nova Scotia, Alberta, Newfoundland and Labrador, who work in the oil industry in Newfoundland and Labrador, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and in the Peace River area of B.C. They are all being impacted as well, as a result, and they need to qualify for employment insurance.

When we look at the Alberta EI numbers, we really have to factor in the cost to workers in the rest of the country, not just in that threshold of numbers. The number of people without work in Prince Edward Island and other areas of the country who travelled to work in Alberta and elsewhere are in the other regions' numbers.

It is important that we do everything we can. That is what the Minister of Employment is trying to do with the changes we will be bringing in. Many of them are in the NDP motion.

As we said in our platform and the mandate letter for the minister, we will reverse the 2012 changes to the employment insurance system that forced unemployed workers to move away from their communities and take lower-paying jobs. We will change that. We will develop more flexible parental benefits. We will be easing access to EI support for caregivers. The list goes on.

However, there is one point I want to make with regard to my region and an absolutely pathetic move by the previous government. In trying to support the regional minister at the time, from my province, the government created two EI zones in Prince Edward Island. That has to be fixed too. I am encouraging the government to fix that along with the rest. It is not in the mandate letter I note, but it has to be fixed.

Here is an example of what happens in a situation like that. We are a country of seasonal industries. Some talk about the need to work year round. It would be great, but we are in a country where it snows, freezes, and gets too cold for some industries. Therefore, they have to shut down for a while. The employers of those industries need their workers to come back and start when the season kicks in again, because they are the skilled workers who are trained and know how to work in their field. They want them back. The employment insurance system that these workers pay into is there to give them the safety net so they can have income, provide for their families, and spend their money is their communities in the off-season.

That is what the employment insurance system is there for. It is not, as the Conservatives try to pretend, because people are lazy and do not want to work. People lose their jobs for many reasons. As well, when businesses shut down they need that safety net. These workers are very important for seasonal industries.

I will give an example of the two zones. On Riverdale Road in my riding, one worker is in the Charlottetown zone. He needs more hours and gets less benefits. A worker on the west side of Riverside Road is in the rural zone. What happens? They both work at the same plant. They both work in a seasonal industry in New Glasgow. The one on the rural side qualifies for EI. The one on the Charlottetown side does not. That is a sad situation that the previous government put in place, which I am asking my government, my party, to fix, to get back to one zone in Prince Edward Island.

Let me close. I know my time is limited. I will quote from the Progressive Economics Forum. There are a lot of labour groups who are part of that group. In its point number one, it says this:

Repeal the 2012/13 EI changes. This includes but is not limited to the punitive and discriminatory job search rules, a detrimental ‘best weeks’ calculation for low income workers, removal of the extended benefit pilot project, erosion of the ‘working while on claim’ benefit for those taking casual work while unemployed, and the politically-motivated addition of new EI regions in Prince Edward Island and Canada’s North.

That includes a list right across the country. It is asking the government to do most of what we said we would do in the election.

The NDP motion does not even go as far as we said we would in the election, but it includes that 360 hours, which is a mistake. Otherwise, I could support the motion.

I cannot support the motion, but I support the principle of it. As we move forward with this party and this government, we will indeed make the changes that we committed to in the election and that are outlined in the mandate letter.

[Brigitte Sansoucy, NDP, Saint-Hyacinthe—Bagot, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to inform my colleague that the 360 hours were, indeed, costed. It would cost $1.2 billion, a hit that the EI fund could easily take, in light of its existing surplus.

The 360-hour threshold was supported by 80 groups of Canadians, including unions, anti-poverty groups, student groups, and women's groups.

I am happy to hear my colleague say that our proposal does not go as far as he would like.

Would it not make sense to support the motion and then do more?

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, finally we get the numbers, or maybe. I do know sometimes the NDP's math leaves a little bit to be desired.

However, in the context of the 360 hours, $1.2 billion, this is something that the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Labour will have to grapple with.

We look at the number of things we have said we would do under the Employment Insurance Act: the parental care leave, the caregivers, the doing away with the five-week pilot project, and the list goes on. The minister and the government cannot be locked into hours when we start. We said we would go to the regional hours for qualifying, but we do not want to be locked into that because we want to be able to do all the other things that we have committed to do and we have to prioritize those.

For that reason I still cannot support the 360 hours.

[Monique Pauzé, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague put a very fine point on the economic difficulties that Canada and a group of other countries are currently experiencing.

The Bloc Québécois believes that employment insurance has a stabilizing effect when countries are going through hard economic times. It also enables those who lose their jobs to maintain a certain level of buying power.

As my colleague correctly stated, that is what we call a social safety net. To maintain it, we have to make sure that the employment insurance fund serves workers who lose their jobs, and the best way to do that is to make the employment insurance fund independent.

Will the government remove the employment insurance fund from the consolidated fund so that it can be used for its true purpose?