Madam Speaker, I am honoured to put further remarks on the record concerning Bill C-24, an act to amend the Employment Insurance Act, the Canada Recovery Benefits Act and another act in response to COVID-19. The four main changes in this legislation are as follows. It amends the EI Act, to temporarily increase the maximum EI benefit period from 26 weeks to 50 weeks for the period beginning September 27, 2020, and ending on September 25, 2021.
It also temporarily reduces the earnings threshold to $5,000 from an original $7,550 for self-employed workers who have opted into the EI special benefits period beginning on January 3, 2021, and ending September 25, 2021.
It also closes the leisure travel loophole in the original legislation that was passed in September, which permitted leisure travellers, when they were quarantining for two weeks, to access the CRB. As we know, this seems immoral and unethical. Thankfully this legislation moves to close that. Conservative members raised the alarm on this loophole in December and January and here we are, three months later, finally closing that loophole.
The act would also bring in the Minister of Health, by amending the Quarantine Act, and the Canada Border Services Agency, by amending the Customs Act to share Canada recovery benefit application information. It would seem that this, in particular, is how they are going to audit applicants if they have applied for these monies following travel. Of course, there is essential travel for the purpose of supporting those with medical needs, or seeking medical treatment outside of the country. Obviously we understand that sometimes those benefits are necessary when returning from quarantine but certainly not from travel, as Conservative members have been raising for a number of months.
There has been a lot of discussion this week, particularly from Liberal members, which really began very aggressively this past weekend. The Prime Minister commented on this, and the Liberals really seem to want to paint a narrative that Conservatives were obstructionists on this legislation. This is completely untrue, and we worked very closely with parties to ensure that this was passed. I would point out that the first opportunity to debate the bill in the House was Monday. That was five days ago, and here we are. It has gone through second reading, to committee, and now back to third reading in only five days. I will remind members of the House that this is $12.1 billion of spending that went through the legislative process in five short days.
Conservatives understand, as do Canadians, that the onset of the pandemic was an emergency situation. We were trying to get money out the door to the nine million Canadians who were instantly laid off because of pandemic closures. We can understand that legislation was rushed through at an unforeseen speed compared with normal legislative levels. Members of Parliament who have been here far longer than I will recognize that the speed of legislation passing in the House this past year has been exponentially higher than at any other time, probably, in Canadian history.
However, it is now a year later, and that excuse to pass legislation quickly, which of course diminishes oversight capabilities and our democratic process in the House substantially, is beginning to lose its steam. Again, in a panic situation that made sense.
That is why I was quite disappointed that the bill, which expands EI benefits from 26 weeks to 50 weeks, took so long for the Liberals to bring forward. In September, we came together as parties and voted in favour of the switchover from CERB to the CRB and EI extension. The EI extension was for 26 weeks, or half a year, which brought us to March 28 when those EI benefits would begin to run out, about two weeks from now.
The odd thing is that we knew the second wave was coming. With second waves, we saw incredibly strict lockdowns that lasted for months. In Manitoba, we saw very strict lockdowns and non-essential services were shut down. We saw stores where non-essential items were taped up and we could not buy them, at least not in person. People were ordering them online, but we could not go into a store and buy non-essential items. Restaurants were closed. It was incredibly strict for a number of months. That began in mid- to early November across the country.
We would think that with some foresight from the Liberal government, the 200,000 expert civil servants it has, and the access to international economists and notable financiers, it would have thought maybe half a year for EI benefits would not be enough. In my opinion, those discussions should have started in November. Maybe they did, but it took far too long for the Liberals to finally bring forward legislation that extended those 26 weeks to basically a year: 50 weeks, which was needed.
In November, these lockdowns were coming and people went through the holidays, and now some regions of the country are still in those lockdowns. Anyone would think that maybe that second wave would take away millions of jobs, and that is what happened, as we saw historic employment losses. I think 213,000 jobs were lost in that period. One would think that the Liberals, with all of the experts at their fingertips, would have established this legislation earlier; yet it was not brought forward until the end of February. Again, the first opportunity to debate it was on Monday. As I mentioned, the legislation would extend EI to 50 weeks, which would bring us to the end of September.
When legislation was first brought forward in September, while I cannot know what the Liberals were thinking, I would expect they thought that the situation in six months would hopefully have improved and that we would start getting those jobs back. Then again with the second wave, one would think that maybe this was going to go down and not up and that we were not going to get those jobs back. That is when this legislation should have been planned.
When we spoke to the Canadian Labour Congress officials at committee, they mentioned that they had raised the alarm with the Liberal government in early January that far more than 26 weeks was going to be needed. We know that the Liberal government is closely monitoring the labour market, so again I just do not buy it that the end of February was the earliest the Liberal government could have brought this forward. It has been done under the wire to ensure that it passes before the EI benefits run out on March 28. That is lightning speed, passing this five days from when we first debated it.
Here we are. It went through second reading, zoomed through committee and now we are at third reading. It is going to go to the Senate and I hope and pray that people get the benefits they need. There are three million Canadians who are depending on this money.
Again, $12.1 billion for this bill was approved. That is $6.7 billion for the CERB and $5.4 billion for the EI extension. The only way to change the EI extension was through legislation, and we understand that. The CFIB and labour groups are supportive. As the minister has pointed out to me and others, Bill C-24 is 11 clauses, but it is 11 clauses at a very steep cost.
I appreciate the robust debate, although it is very limited, we have had in the last five days. It is absolutely necessary. I very much hope that the Liberals did their due diligence on this, that we are not missing something and we will not be here in a month or two months from now fixing something that perhaps could have been caught had we had a longer time, perhaps an extra couple of weeks, to debate this. I think I have belaboured that point enough for now.
There is another issue with this, though, that I have addressed with the Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion and the government several times over the last number of weeks. My colleagues in the Conservative caucus, as well, have brought up this very critical issue. The issue is the problem between the CERB and EI. If someone does not qualify for the EI extension, they can go on the CERB. However, if they have had an EI account or an EI claim recently, there is this very archaic EI technology that sort of hangs them up. They will have their EI account pending open; then they try to get the CERB, which families desperately need but cannot then get it because there is some sort of technology problem there.
I asked the CRA officials about it this week, and they said that millions of people do not have this problem. They are very proud, as they should be, to have gotten a lot of money out the door for people who need it. The official pointed out that there are only a couple of thousand people who are dealing with the CERB-EI issue.
Again, that is a couple of thousand Canadian families who are absolutely dependent on this funding and cannot get it because of this weird technology issue. If work had been done on this technology issue a year ago, recognizing that the archaic EI system would be put under a tremendous strain and they had planned for this and invested more money in technology than they have so far, which so far been ineffective at fixing this problem, I wonder if this problem might have been prevented.
I continue to raise the alarm on this, as do my Conservative colleagues, and yet it is just not getting fixed. The CRA told me that there is this number at ESDC that people can call. I asked the minister and she had not heard of it. Her officials checked and there is no number, but they have a task force to fix this.
Madam Speaker, I will mention on the record some of the people who are being impacted by this. I believe it is very relevant to Bill C-24 because this is the CRB-EI bill and yet there is a CRB-EI technology issue that is preventing thousands of Canadians from getting the support they desperately need and have been promised by the Liberal Government.
Laura has a sick 13-year-old daughter at home and is unable to claim the Canada recovery caregiver benefit because of this open EI claim issue. Jennifer, a young mother from the Windsor-Essex area, was forced to rely on credit cards because she kept getting bounced between departments. We hear this a lot. There are people being kicked around, being told that the government cannot deal with it and that they should call another person, and they call that person and are told to call another person.
Adam and Michelle, a Winnipeg couple with a newborn baby, have been calling CRA in shifts. We know, at tax time, calling CRA is an absolute nightmare. Right now, it is a nightmare times 1,000. People are calling, getting put on hold for four, five, six hours and getting disconnected passed around to other people. People are sort of kicking the can down the road and being told that some other bureaucrat will deal with it. I find it absolutely unacceptable that people are waiting for this money they have been promised. They need it. They have been laid off through no fault of their own and yet they cannot get through to the CRA.
There is nowhere physically that they can go. Service Canada has been closed for a year. There is nowhere they can go to ask someone to please help them. They cannot get through to a real person who can give them answers, and there is just really no fix for this. The minister has committed to fixing it, but there is no deadline for when that is going to happen and these people have been left with no option.
The last thing I will say about this is that there is a further complication. There is MyCRA account, which I have been locked out of as well, but over 100,000 Canadians' MyCRA accounts have been hacked, and so they have been locked out of them too. Apparently the CRA is telling people to go online and deal with it, but then 100,000 people have been locked out of their CRA accounts. I guess there are cybersecurity issues in this country and over 100,000 people's tax accounts have been hacked. That very serious problem is further impacting progress and payments for these thousands of Canadian families. I wanted to address this issue yet again and urge the Liberal government to do whatever it needs to do to fix this problem.
I would like to talk about what is not in this bill but should have been, or at least should have been part of the Liberal talking points, and that is how we get out of this. How do we get three million people currently relying on benefits off the benefits and back into the workforce? I do not know. I have yet to hear a plan, and that is of particular concern to me and I know opposition parties, in particular, the Conservatives. Now that it has been a year, we are raising the alarm. Where is the jobs plan on this?
The numbers are really astounding. We have spent unbelievable amounts of money. There are 3.17 million Canadians on some form of temporary COVID-19 assistance, and we know that over 831,000 people were on the CRB during the period of February 14 to 27. There are almost 1.8 million unique applicants for the CRB and $12 billion has been spent to date, which is double what was originally planned by this date, according to the parliamentary budget office. There are currently over 2.3 million beneficiaries of EI, with $20.21 billion being spent on them since September 21. These numbers are so huge, I cannot quite wrap my head around them, and more is being announced. As I have said today, we are to spend about $12.1 billion as a result of this bill. Based on the track record over the last year of cost overruns, it is going to be significantly more than that.
I firmly believe that Canadians do not want to be sitting at home on employment insurance or the like. I do believe people want the integrity and honour of having a job. I do not think Canadians want to be sitting at home. From what I hear from my constituents, people are going a bit crazy at home, because they are stuck there with no jobs and the kids are out of school. It is absolutely unbelievable the stress that young parents in particular are under right now. I could get into that and go on, honestly, for days about the horror stories I have heard of the stress this is causing Canadians and my constituents.
The minister said yesterday at the HUMA committee that she did not want to come back to renew these supports via legislation despite rapid collaboration at committee. She made that commitment, in saying that she did not want to have to come back to fix some problem with this straightforward piece of legislation. I hope she is right. I hope we did not miss something and in a month from now to have to come back at lightning speed to fix this again, but we very well may.
The problem is that in Bill C-24 there is essentially a sunset clause of September 25. That is when these CRB-EI benefits will come to a close. That is about six or seven months away, so I think we can all hope and pray that people will not need these supports then and that there will be jobs coming back. As I mentioned in my speech on Monday, September 25 kind of coincides with when the Liberal government has reportedly promised that every Canadian will be vaccinated who wants to be. I guess we could infer that if everyone is vaccinated, we could get the economy back to normal and jobs could come flowing back, but the Liberal government has not actually made that a definitive promise, that when everyone is vaccinated the economy can open up as normal and we can go back to normal. I do not know why it has not given us some sort of measures—
