Mr. Speaker, there are ups and downs in politics, and between the time that I put my question down as an adjournment debate and the time this debate started, there have been numerous reports. If the situation had been resolved in the meantime, I would have happily withdrawn the question, but unfortunately that is not the case.
I want to give a little background before I get to my question. This obviously has to do with employment insurance measures, which is the subject of the debate.
I want to remind members of some of the promises made by the Liberals during the election campaign. First, there was the promise to reduce the wait time by one week. They are telling us that this will happen in January 2017. I do not deny that this proposal is important to those who will be receiving EI, but I remind members that currently, fewer than four out of ten workers who pay into the EI system manage to qualify when they need the benefits, in other words, when the worst happens and they lose their jobs.
The Liberals also promised that they would reduce EI premiums for employees and employers. That change took effect on January 1, 2016. However, just between us, that does not solve the problem. It just means that there is even less money in the employment insurance fund to give benefits to those who need them.
The Liberals should be protecting the employment insurance fund. They are not doing that. Instead, as we saw in the most recent budget, they are once again planning to greedily pilfer billions of dollars from the EI fund, as has been the habit of both the Liberals and the Conservatives.
The Liberals also promised to do away with the Conservatives' EI reform. However, from what I have seen, there are still three categories of unemployed workers. This measure therefore demonstrates that the government is still stigmatizing workers who have lost their jobs rather than doing something to address the problem of systemic unemployment.
The Liberals should make access to parental leave and compassionate care benefits more flexible. They still have not done either of those things.
In short, the Liberals have not done much when it comes to employment insurance, even though this service, or rather this insurance that is paid for by workers and employers, is becoming increasingly important and harder to access as a result of the economic situation. That is a serious problem.
On the plus side, if there is one, since the government has done so little about employment insurance since coming to power despite making tonnes of promises, does my colleague agree that the first thing to do is introduce a single 360-hour threshold for everyone? That would enable the majority of workers who contribute to the plan to access benefits if bad luck strikes. The first thing we need to do is make the insurance plan that people are paying for available to them.
Imagine any kind of private insurance, such as home or car insurance. Imagine disaster striking and being unable to claim payment from the insurer. The private system being what it is, insurance companies operating that way would lose their clients. In this case, however, the unemployed are a captive clientele.
Here, then, is my question again: will the Liberal government introduce, as quickly as possible, a single 360-hour eligibility threshold for everyone?