Michel Gauthier

[Employment Insurance, December 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it took our researchers several days to come up with the 1-800 number that all unemployed workers in Canada will need to know. Our extensive research showed us that employees were unable to answer the questions put to them. And the minister thinks that the poor folks who will soon be unemployed will have no trouble obtaining all the answers and information they need. It is to weep.

The 1-800 number is to all intents and purposes not in operation at the present time. Three weeks before the system is to start up, and I draw the minister's attention to the coming holiday period, employees have still not been trained to implement the EI system. I ask the minister to tell us what has become of the transition measures that were going to ensure that people moving from the old to the new system received fair treatment? Where are they written down, where can a person see them? That is a clear question.

[Employment Insurance, December 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, how unfortunate it is for the minister's reputation that he always comes up with the wrong answer to the right question. I do not get it.

If we question the minister about active measures, he tells us about transition, when we ask him about transition, he talks to us about employment centres, and when we ask him about employment centres, he goes off on another tangent.

I will ask him another question. We have checked, and it is quite obvious that public servants are still not able to inform the public about the new EI system.

Will the Minister of Human Resources Development confirm that nothing, and I mean nothing, has been done as of yet to provide public servants with the information they need to inform the public properly about the new system and the related transition measures? In short, will the minister admit that the situation in his department and in employment centres is one of total confusion?

[Employment Insurance, December 11th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, unemployment is the public's No. 1 concern. This is the message the Prime Minister received loud and clear again yesterday. Unemployment is increasing and Statistics Canada released

figures today showing that over 5 million people, up 38 per cent from 1989, are living under the poverty line.

It is now December 11, 1996, and the EI reform takes effect in three weeks. The Minister of Human Resources Development has been trying for weeks now to reassure the public that the reform is a good one, but we are worried, and so is the public.

How can the Minister of Human Resources Development claim that complete information on the new EI system is available to everyone from a 1-800 number, when it was impossible to obtain this telephone number in Canada employment centres, when it took several days to get it, and when those answering this 1-800 number were not even able to tell us anything useful about the transition measures?

[National Defence, December 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the minister is very modest. Everyone knows he may be reached at national defence.

More seriously, though, and this is in fact extremely serious, I would like to ask the minister whether, when it was possible for this employee, unbeknownst to everyone, his superiors and his colleagues, to carry on these activities for weeks if not months, using a Canadian army computer in a top security centre, the minister can be certain, with all the challenges of informatics, that the same thing is not happening with military secrets, for example, or information of strategic importance?

How can the minister assure the public that he has the means to control this if he is unable to control something like child pornography?

[National Defence, December 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the minister's explanations, and I will ask him the following supplementary.

How does the minister explain to the people who pay the salaries of the department's employees the fact that, in a top security centre of the Canadian army, an employee in an important position, a high level strategic position, can spend the bulk of his time over weeks, if not months, creating pornographic material without any questions being asked? Can the minister explain that?

[National Defence, December 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday, in his remarks, the Minister of National Defence tried to minimize his department's responsibilities in the seizure of over 20,000 pieces of child pornography at the National Defence Research Establishment, a high security centre, with the explanation that it is not possible to monitor every computer in the Department of National Defence.

Understandably, but how can the minister make light of such events, when in fact the individual using the research centre's network was not only obtaining material, a very serious matter of itself, but was feeding a network, a very large international child pornography distribution network?

[Transfers To Provinces, December 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance knows very well that the biggest cuts were to provincial transfer payments, and that they also dipped substantially into the UI fund. This was primarily how the minister refilled his coffers. We know this. He cannot deny it. Furthermore,

those living in poverty in Quebec and elsewhere in Canada know it. They know it each day that the government has hurt them, that it went after them cruelly.

Will the Minister of Finance admit that the best short term response to child poverty, family violence and school dropouts would be to re-establish the provincial transfer payments for social programs that it was too quick to cut, and will he promise to do so in his next budget and to inform government members that the path they have set out on is a very bad one?

[Transfers To Provinces, December 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is because we are used to tricks from the other side. We have seen the government in action for three years.

Generally, when government members throw out an idea, the government is later tempted to use it in making unpopular decisions. That is why we are putting it on notice.

I ask the Prime Minister if he could tell these members and the House that the measures they proposed in the Liberal report to help students and the poor do not represent even half of what his government has cut in health, social assistance and higher education during its term of office, and that, as a result, it is still a long way from undoing the harm it has done to the most vulnerable members of society.

[Transfers To Provinces, December 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in the report by the finance committee's Liberal majority, we learn that, with the limited budgetary flexibility now available to it, the federal government could, at the suggestion of its members, provide assistance primarily to the disadvantaged and to students through measures that will cost it less than $2 billion in total.

My question is for the Prime Minister or the Minister of Finance. Will the Prime Minister, or the Minister of Finance, admit, and furthermore, could they inform members of their caucus, that if the government has $2 billion to play around with today, it is first and foremost because it has cut social transfer payments to the provinces by almost $5 billion over two years?

[Employment Insurance, December 4th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, let us take this calmly and explain matters to the new minister. In the example he himself gave us a few minutes ago, the minister said that the woman would now be eligible for employment insurance on the basis of the hours she worked. We know that her hours have to be indicated in order for the Canada employment centre to process her application.

In 1996, no employer was equipped to count the hours employees worked. The application was based on the number of weeks worked. How will they know this woman worked 720 hours? There is no way of knowing.