Mr. Speaker, let me first congratulate the member for Ahuntsic for bringing this motion to the floor of the House of Commons. I was pretty pleased, even in absentia, to second her motion.
The member for Vancouver East basically has said it all in a nutshell. This is a very good motion. It deals with one part of the major problem that we have in relation to poverty. However it is better to deal with one part at a time than to ignore the picture totally, which has happened.
We have to remember that for the last 10 years the present government has constantly been promising to address child poverty, to address poverty and the plight of low income families across the country. However we see very little results. I certainly hope the member, through this motion, can stimulate within her party and within government the desire to start working actively on the problem.
Let us stop talking about poverty. There are many kinds of poverty and there are many ways of helping people in need. As the member for Vancouver East just said, maybe the motion itself will not solve our problem in total, and we all know that, but solving part of it will be certainly a plus and a start. It might also generate the type of debate that is necessary in this very chamber to draw attention to some of the plights of people who live on low incomes and of young people who are out there trying to make it in society with very little help.
Let me just talk about associated issues that fit right in with the motion and that is the need to help families.
One of the major institutions in the country is our unemployment insurance. I was going to say we should be proud but employment insurance is not something perhaps of which we could be proud. It is sort of a necessary evil. We would like to have everybody working when we have such a rich country with so many resources.
My province has only a half a million people and some of the richest resources in the world in relation to hydro power, oil discoveries, our fisheries and so on, yet so many people do not benefit from such resources. Therein should be our main focus to avoid having to worry about the very issue we are talking about tonight.
We all know that will take a tremendous amount of will and work, and it will be well down the road before we will not have to have such a debate. However to even think about it and talk about it is laudable, and we should aim toward getting to that day when we can say to ourselves that we remember when we had poverty in the country. Unfortunately, it probably will not happen for a while.
While we have poverty, nobody can do more about it than the very people who are in these hallowed halls in which we now speak.
I talked about the EI fund. People strive to get enough employment to qualify for employment insurance; a small amount of work, quite often at low wages, which means they end up with very low employment insurance. The totality of the income is so minuscule that families cannot survive on that kind of money and any supplement that can be given in any way, shape or form, is a plus.
I am thinking of one particular case where a woman is working to try to make that living. She takes every opportunity to find employment. She drives 70 or 80 miles everyday to work in a cold fish plant to get the few weeks of work which the fish plant offers. Then she finds out she really needs more hours to qualify so she accepts a job which provides only a few hours a week.
However, wanting to work, she continues to work, five, 10, 20 hours a week. She works for x number of weeks before she is laid off because she would rather work than draw employment insurance. She files for employment insurance. She had well beyond the qualifying time because she continued to work, but the last x number of weeks she worked only a few hours a week. Even though it would have been better for her to stay at home, she had the opportunity to work so she kept working. Because of that, her average wage over the qualifying weeks was so small that she was getting something like $60 to $80 a week in employment insurance. Imagine what it is like trying to survive on $60 to $80 a week.
There is something wrong with our system. Whether it be in the fishery, whether it be working for some company, or whether it is in finding work wherever someone can get it, we are encouraging people who know they are not going to get full time employment to go out during peak periods, get as many qualifying hours as they can in the shortest time possible, and find some way to get out of the workforce. If the work becomes scarce, their qualifying time and amount of pay drags down their benefits. That is one way we could help people.
The other major effect low income has on the families is on the children. Families on low income face the inability to help and encourage and finance their children so they can participate in the various events in society, and in particular to attend post-secondary institutions which these days is a very costly initiative.
A real bug of mine and something I have been pushing is that many young people in this country today cannot afford to get a post-secondary education. People say there are student loans. If they borrow the maximum amount, which I am sure some people in this place know all about, then at the end of the years they spend in university, they come out with a massive debt load. It is like having a mortgage on their shoulders when they start out. What a way to begin life.
Most young people head where the wages are high, which is south of the border. They leave this country and take with them their initiative and education to the benefit of somewhere else. The more sorrowful thing is that the young people know that a student loan cannot cover the costs. If they have other costs besides tuition, for their apartments, furniture, food or travel, and unless their parents can help them they cannot cover those costs. The young pages here know exactly what I am talking about. If their parents cannot help them, the easiest thing for them to do is not to go to college or university but instead to go out and find a job.
The employment that these people find later on because of their lack of education is quite often part time employment. This means that over the next number of years they will get a minuscule wage and they will not be able to contribute to the education of their children so they will draw social benefits instead of being contributors to society.
People do not want a handout. They want a hand up. Through legislation we can start giving them the type of boost that will get them on their feet so they can not only help themselves, but they can help their children. In turn this will help this great country of ours.
