Mr. Speaker, I would like to use my time to thank my fellow citizens in Laurentides—Labelle who placed their faith in me. This is the first opportunity I have had to do so.
I would especially like to thank all of my volunteers, including Samuel Gervais and Alexandre Dubé. I would also like to thank everyone in my team. People will soon get to know them. I would like to thank Maryse Larente and Annie-Claude Poirier at the Mont-Laurier office, and Isabelle Paré at the Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts office. Lastly, I would like to thank Mathieu Laroche Casavant, who now works on Parliament Hill.
Our loved ones make a difference in our lives. My mother was instrumental in my being here today, addressing members of the House in an effort to improve the collective well-being. I would also like to thank my in-laws. Work-life balance is a challenge that many of us are currently facing.
Of course, I would also like to thank my children, Anne-Sophie and Ève-Marie, and my spouse, Yanick Thibault. They have been there from the start, and they have faith in me. I must honour them, since what happens here during the 43rd Parliament will determine what happens in Canada in the coming years.
I would also like to recognize someone who gave me the courage to do this, and that is former MP Johanne Deschamps. She was a member of the House for four Parliaments, from 2004 to 2011. She made a significant contribution to the well-being of constituents, particularly when it came to employment insurance.
I would like to explain why I decided to go into politics. In my short life, I have worked in various sectors where employment insurance was very important. I am talking mainly about the forestry industry, which experienced a crisis, and the health sector, which underwent a significant reform.
I also worked in the arts, in the community sector and in social development. That brings me to the positive impact that an increase in EI sickness benefits would have, and we sincerely hope that will happen. I am sure that members of the House will agree to quickly increase the number of weeks of benefits from 15 to 50.
As I was saying earlier, I hope that we will be able to improve the employment insurance program during this Parliament. I am sure that we can do so. That is what we have been talking about since this morning. Right now, the system is unfair because it provides only 15 weeks of sickness benefits. People have no control over their health, just like they have no control over a plant closure. This warrants analysis.
I have to admit that the employment insurance system has been improved in recent decades. I will admit that, but there is still work that needs to be done to make the system fair. This system is not accessible to most people who contributed to it.
Let's look back in time, since the best way to know where we are going is to know where we have come from.
I want to remind everyone that until 1990, in Canada, the government paid into the EI fund. In 1990, the Conservative government upset the balance by putting an end to federal contributions to the EI fund, meaning it had to be funded entirely by employers and workers. This created a very large deficit. What happened? The government tried to make up for the deficit by slashing the coverage provided by the system, reducing the amounts paid to claimants and tightening the eligibility rules for workers.
This had a major impact. It cut the number of people covered by the system in half between 1989 and 1997. It also created a huge surplus, and I have proof. Figures show that labour income accounted for 2.3% of Canada's GDP in 1990 and 0.6% in 2015. The people of Laurentides—Labelle were directly affected by those rules, which put them in an extremely vulnerable situation. I must admit that I even experienced it myself, and I could go on and on about it.
Those cuts helped amass a slush fund of nearly $50 billion. Who suffered? Our workers and employers suffered. For the last 30 or 40 years, they have been the only contributors to the fund, and every year, the surpluses in the fund are swallowed up by a federal machine whose appetite knows no bounds. I would like to know why taxpayers' money is being used for things that are not in their best interest. It saddens me today to know that many of our friends, colleagues and relatives have been deprived of this program.
Now I wonder. I think the employment insurance program in its current form is no longer about helping workers. Should those who benefit from this program not be the ones who contribute to it? Some of these people spend their whole life building up this fund without ever being able to access it when they really need it, especially when they involuntarily contract a serious illness.
We all know that no one chooses to get sick. I would like to share with the House an experience I had a few years ago when I was a political staffer for the hon. member for Laurentides—Labelle, Johanne Deschamps. I was having a hard time helping a constituent when he told me he had just one week of benefits left and was not even halfway through his chemotherapy treatments. I checked the law. Indeed, this person had no other options, since he was not eligible for EI benefits because he had several assets. That bothered me because we had no way of giving him something he was perfectly entitled to receive.
I would like to share another thought with the House about the term “insurance”. In my opinion, insurance exists to cover real needs, such as theft, fire or disability insurance. When workers have needs due to illness, the program does not do enough to assist them.
Do hon. members agree that the assistance should be equivalent to what a worker gets when they lose their job?
I am sure no one can object to improving the well-being of our constituents. We have to make this program fair. Right now, it is not fair to everyone who contributes to it. I am calling on all hon. members to agree to extend sickness benefits to 50 weeks.