Mr. Speaker, I listened to the hon. member and understand the major concerns. Having lived in the province of New Brunswick and having grown up there all my life, it hurts when I hear someone refer to our seasonal workers in a negative way.
When this matter was being discussed before, the hon. member for Calgary—Nose Hill stated:
Now that he is about to call an election, the Prime Minister has decided to increase EI payments to seasonal workers who already earn a comfortable annual income.
Yesterday the member for Calgary—Nose Hill revealed her party's position on low income seasonal workers when she said again that seasonal workers already earned a comfortable income.
I want to present some figures to the House. In 1996, before the Liberals slashed the EI program, 75% of seasonal workers in New Brunswick made less than $10,000 a year. How could anyone say they have a comfortable income on $10,000 a year? Everyone in the House knows that anyone making $10,000 a year cannot live in a comfortable manner.
As was mentioned by the hon. member from the NDP, over 800,000 people are not eligible for EI. Seasonal workers could be fishermen or lumberjacks. They could work in tourism. They could be construction workers. When the snow comes and the frost hits the ground they are not working.
They want to work. They do not want to sit on their hands, and they do not. Most of them work for the United Way. If their next door neighbour is having a problem, they are right there to help. That is the kind of people there are in the maritime provinces. Hopefully that is the way it is across the whole country.
Because of what has been happening and because of the changes that have negatively impacted on our people back home, a lot of them have had to leave. In the city of Saint John, the largest city in the province, people travel by bus for one hour in the morning to work at one of the fish farms in another county. Because they live in Saint John, New Brunswick, and because the government says our unemployment rate is so low, they pay a higher EI rate. Yet they are working in another county where the rate is lower for the people who live there. That is wrong and needs to be corrected.
Thank God for those men and women who do it because they do not want to be on welfare. They want to show their children and their families that they have their dignity. That is why they do what they do. Our people are like that back home. They want to have dignity. They want to work.
One member in the Bloc mentioned about the independent businessman, that small businessman who is out there. I know about that because my son is one of them.
This past winter a man came to the door of Stephen's TV shop and said that he did not have any money to pay for a TV but he would like to have one. He had not been working for almost six months but wanted the TV for his children for Christmas. My son said that he could have it and asked whether his mother made mincemeat pies. He said yes, his mother made mincemeat pies, that he had deer meat that he could give her to make the pies, and asked whether that would pay for the TV.
They are people who care, who want to go to work. The government has over $35 billion of their money in its pockets to make the government look good. It says that it will pay down the debt. That money should be in the pockets of men, women and employers who put it there. It should be an independent fund which no one could touch. It should be there for them so that they will have quality lives.
The premiums taken from their paycheques are far too high, yet the government has increased them and reduced the benefits to the people. It has put more money into the bank account.
It tugs at my heart when people come to me and say they want to go to work. It tugs at my heart when I see our shipbuilders, 4,000 men, many of whom are now on welfare. A lot of them are down in Louisiana. The Trudeau government built and put money into the shipyard. The Mulroney government also put money into the shipyard. We have the most modern shipyard anywhere in the world sitting idle.
We should be building the ships for our military right here, not buying new submarines from London, England, and then spending $800 million to make them float. We should be doing it through the Davie shipyard and the Saint John shipyard. Those two shipyards built the frigates.
Those men do not know where to go. They do not know where to turn. All they are saying is that they want to contribute to the economy. They want to contribute to Canada. They want to work. They want their dignity. The sooner we give them their dignity, the sooner they will do more in their communities to make a better way of life.
I look at our young people today. We educate them. They want to work where their moms and dads are, where their families, their sisters, their brothers, their nannies and their grampies are. They do not want to have to go away. We do not want them to go away.
A person from Vancouver came to our city market in Saint John. It is the oldest open common market of its kind in Canada. I was walking down the aisle and she came over to me and said that my people were very special, the friendliest people she had ever met. I told her that was the way we were back east. Our people are friendly, outreaching and generous.
When it comes to the commission, the commission should stay in place. The commission should handle the funds. We must get the politics out of the EI fund. We must leave it with that independent commission and then deal with it. The commission is not there to play politics. It has to be there to do what is right. That is why the hon. member from Charlotte county said the commission should remain.
That is why he included the motion. If we do not have the commission we will have politics again. Heaven knows what the men and the employers will be paying for premiums and how little they will have in their pockets to feed their little families.
I say please, every one of us here, let us take the politics out of the bill. Let us do what is right for the man and the woman of Canada, right from Vancouver and the Northwest Territories through to Newfoundland and Labrador. Let us do what is right for our people. Let us all be Canadians today. Let us all be equal in the House of Commons.
Mr. Speaker, I have to tell you for sure that everybody will be watching what the government does with that $37 billion, which those men and women worked so hard for to put in a bank account where they knew there was security for their future.
I have to say that my party is pleased that the intensity rule will be removed. That rule was wrong and it really hurt. However, we are also saying that the commission must stay in place.