Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to get involved in such a debate. It is not such a pleasure to follow my hon. colleague from Acadie--Bathurst. I have been in the House for a couple of years and I think everybody here will agree with me that no one becomes more impassioned than the member when he is talking about his constituents, about the less fortunate in this country, about the people who have seasonal employment, about people who have to depend on unemployment insurance and about how the way the present employment insurance is set up affects people. We all agree with the hon. member and we support him in what he is saying. I do not think there is anyone in the House who could say it the way he has.
Today I listened to one of the hon. members across the way talk about the employment insurance and the premiums. He said that a lot of people who work in the auto industry get very well paid. He said that the companies make lots of money so it does not matter what the premiums are. He said that even the unskilled workers were making, I think he said, $69,000 as a base rate. I must say that is pretty good. He said that they did not care about how high the premiums were.
Well, a lot of people in the country do not make $69,000. A lot of seasonal employees do not make $69,000. A lot of small businesses do not have all kinds of money to throw into premiums that are gobbled up by government and used to subsidize its abuses, such as wasting money on gun control, the unaccountability of money in relation to the EI fund itself and in the Department of Human Resources Development. It goes on and on.
We have lots of uses for any excess money that might accumulate in the EI fund within the system itself. There are two ways of looking at dealing with the ballooning surplus in that fund. One is to ask the question, why is there such a surplus? Is the EI fund not supposed to be designed so that it covers the cost of administering and delivering the program with perhaps a comfortable cushion?
Today in our country we have a relatively good employment rate, although in parts of the country that certainly is not true. Heaven knows what tomorrow might bring. We have had our ups and downs. A one or two point change in the employment rate will make an awful lot of difference to the amount of money that is taken out of the fund. We need a cushion. The recommended cushion by all the experts is roughly $15 billion, and that is quite a cushion. If we have the gun registry for another 10 or 15 years it is about the same amount of money as will be wasted, I guess, in relation to that.
Right now, as we speak, we have about $25 billion above and beyond that cushion resting in that fund, and for what purpose? We know for what purpose. It is to be dumped into the general revenue fund to make the government look a bit better in relation to its bottom line.
What about the people who paid into that fund? What about the people who are supposed to benefit from the fund? What about what the department involved, Human Resources Development, is supposed to do for the people of the country who are less advantaged?
As I said, there are two ways of looking at the fund. One is to ask the question: If the fund is growing at a rate of $6 billion or $7 billion a year, why are employers and employees paying such rates into the fund? Should the rates that they pay not be more in line with what it takes to administer the fund, to deliver the necessary programs and to have a reasonable cushion? I think most people would say yes to that.
If we have a surplus, are there not ways of allocating some of that surplus to people in need who are administered to by the department involved? Let me give members some examples.
We have a lot of small business operators in the country. One of the major employers generally, from coast to coast to coast, is the hospitality sector. The Canadian Restaurant and Foodservices Association and the hospitality groups are basically seasonal employers. Many of these people are not the big rich multinational conglomerates. They are small individual hotels, motels, tour operators, restaurant and bar operators who cater basically to tourists. They make their money during the peak tourist season and that varies in different parts of the country. Whether it is skiing in Jasper or Banff, whale-watching in Newfoundland or going across the Prairies in autumn, it depends on what people like. There are peaks and valleys in different parts of the country at different times in the tourism hospitality sector.
Many employees in that sector are seasonal. They are hired during the peak season. Many of these employees, especially in the summer, are students. They are hired when the colleges and universities close. They are bright, intelligent young people, first line individuals who deal with people who come to our different areas from within the country or from outside the country. They are impressive young people, some of whom speak several languages to cater to those people who come from outside.
All in all, our whole method of promoting tourism in the country is improving greatly, not because of any great input by government but because of the input by the individuals involved, small businesses that recognize they have great potential in their respective areas to sell a product from which others would love to have the benefit. They have frontline people who can do the job for them.
Many of these young people do not work long enough to qualify for employment insurance and because they are at university do not qualify to draw employment insurance anyway. However they are still paying exorbitant rates for a program from which they never benefit.
That industry has been asking for years now for a yearly basic exemption. It has said that if does not have to pay employment insurance premiums on the first $3,000 or $4,000, then it would solve a number of problems.
First, there is all the paperwork involved in dealing with a whole bunch of new employees who will only be working for a short time, who do not qualify for employment insurance and who should not have to pay into the program because they will pay in time when they graduate and start working. Second, it also puts a heavy burden on the small employer to keep track of that and pay the matching premiums.
The exemption itself would wipe out all these amounts of paperwork. It would also leave in the pockets of students who need the extra few dollars the amount that they pay into premiums from which they do not benefit.
That is just one idea on how we can help a whole sector of the economy. Everyone says that it is a great idea but year after year when the budget comes down, the government fails to address this. That is just one way.
Are there other ways that we could use this great surplus? People who draw employment insurance quite often are people who work seasonally and have to depend upon the employment insurance to get through the period of the year when work is not available.
If we look at the statistics, we will see that many of these people have not had the training that leads to full time employment. The great Department of Human Resources Development talks about its training programs. What we must do is invest in education. We must get people off the EI rolls and into the workforce. What an opportunity. Without having to go on bended knees to government or to the Minister of Finance or Treasury Board or without having to look for money elsewhere, within its own department it has all kinds of money to do what it should do. Is the department doing it? Of course not.
We are four months away from the end of the fiscal year and we have not even gone through Christmas. A number of students are preparing to go back to college again after the Christmas season. In human resources development offices throughout the country these students are being told that funding has run out. These students had been told that the department would assist in financing their education. People were told that they qualified for training allowances, that they met all the criteria and that their program was in line with what the department sponsored. Now they are now being told that there is one hitch: the funding has run out and that they cannot be sponsored to finish their courses.
This is incredible. I can understand that there might be a greater than ordinary demand for more money than the local office has to administer because of layoffs or more people suddenly got interested in an education. However I do not understand why there is no avenue for the local office to go to its regional office or to the department itself and say that it has a lot of people who want to become educated, or they want to get off the unemployment rolls, or they want to get into the workforce full time and fully trained and the office has a chance to help them. That not happening. They are told that the money has run out and that nothing can be done for them. To me that is shameful.
Who do we blame? Do we blame the poor person sitting behind a desk at the local office who has been given directions to spend what is available and that is it? Do we blame a minister who should be on the phone asking if there are more people interested in training and if more money can be spent on educating our people?
Over the year we have stressed over and over again how important it is to invest in education. As everybody knows, we have students who are paying exorbitant tuition fees. Because of high tuition fees, many cannot afford to become educated. It does not matter whether they are young or old but they want to go back and be retrained.
This especially applies to our young people. The cost of education at a university or a college has become so great that it has become turnoff. Members might say that tuition is not great and student loans are available to cover tuition. For those who do not live near a university and for those whose parents are not well off, there are all kinds of other costs. If someone lives outside the university town, there are transportation costs, room and board or apartment costs, food, furniture and all the associated costs of amenities such as the telephone and whatever. These things add up and they are all above and beyond what someone would get even if they borrowed the maximum amount available under a student loan. If a student borrows the maximum of a student loan and takes a five year or six year course, they will have a horrendous debt load when they finish that course.
What is the option? If we do not educate our young people, then we will find more and more of them on the employment insurance roll. We will find more and more of them lined up at clinics because of the conditions in which they find themselves.
Well educated people who can afford to look after their health and eat properly do not cost the same in relation to health care services as those are who are less educated and not in good physical or mental condition. With regard to our social programs that look after those on social welfare and that provide for those who are imprisoned, there is a relationship between education and the number of people involved in such institutions.
We have a choice. We invest early in our young people so they become educated and contribute to society. Through their lives they will earn money and pay income tax. We all spend what we make. Every time we buy something, 15% of it is taken off the top and put into government coffers. On top of that, we help to employ other people. The dollar keeps going around and around. That is what boosts the economy. If we do not invest in education and we have a larger percentage of people, young or old, taken out of the system, we lose on both ends. They take out more and contribute less.
To me it is a complete no-brainer. We should try to convince government that every young person should get the highest education of which he or she is capable with a properly designed financial assistance package. I am not saying we should make it free for everyone. That can be abused. However, we should make it affordable for everyone. That is entirely different.
What a country we would have after 10 or 15 or 20 years. All we would have to do is compare two students: one who is helped, goes through the system, finds good employment and becomes a contributor; and one who is not helped, is supported the rest of his or her life by the system and has no way of contributing. The figures at the end would be startling.
Another way we can use some of the money available is to assist in providing services to areas of the country where services are few and far between. I saw an example awhile ago where a regional office spent a lot of time and energy figuring out ways to cut hours from small outreach offices throughout the general region. It was thought that these offices in the outlying regions were performing services that were outside their mandates.
They were not sticking strictly to being counsellors. They were assisting people in filling out applications to different government programs. They were spending more time than they should with people who wanted to get funding for education. They were spending more time than they should in giving direction to people as to how to help themselves and their communities. All this did not fit in under the general guidelines, so it was decided they would be cut. The offices were cut down from a five day week to a four day week, depriving rural areas of the only service and government contact people had. It does not make any sense. While that is being done, there is a surplus of $40 billion dollars.
There are so many ways that money could be used to help people who are trying to put money in their piggy banks in the first place. No wonder people have become disenchanted with the government. All we can hope for is that as Christmas approaches we will see a change of attitude over there. Friday night we head home to our families. All of us can provide the amenities for Christmas. However a lot of people cannot because of the way this fund is being used.
