Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this very important subject.
I recognize, as do many of my colleagues in the House, the need to reform our social safety net. There are several compelling reasons for that reform. We live in a world where more and more skills are needed to meet the needs of more and more jobs today. It is also a world of rapid technological change and we have an aging labour force.
We live in a society where unfortunately marital breakdown has become more commonplace, leading to poverty. That is one of the reasons I am a strong advocate of returning to traditional family values and of polices which help families stay together. We live in a society where those in need can rely less and less on their families and communities for help.
Canada's current income security programs were set up at a time when unemployment, regardless of skills, was a brief condition between jobs; when the one-income two-parent family was the rule; and when child poverty was hardly talked about, let alone measured.
Canada has seen great change in the last decade alone. The former government was working on reforms that would help Canadians meet today's challenges, reforms that would reorient passive income support programs to an active investment in people; reforms that would remove barriers that prevent many from becoming active members of the labour force; reforms that would replace disjointed programs with a coherent system.
Social policy must be designed for people. More specifically it should be designed for the people who need the most. Canadians already pay enough taxes to have some of the most generous social programs in the world. Our challenge is to use the money already in the system to make programs as flexible as possible so recipients can receive the benefits to meet their needs and become self-reliant.
We must encourage individuals to break the cycle of dependency and help them to help themselves. I realize, as many Canadians realize, that if we do nothing the quality of these programs will deteriorate. Social policy must be updated to fit the realities of the nineties and the 21st century so that all Canadians can participate and face the opportunities and challenges ahead with confidence.
I will be listening to my constituents in the days, weeks and months ahead and getting their input, but these are some of my initial concerns with the green paper. I am not convinced the government's discussion paper contains a coherent set of proposals that will let us move in the direction which I have been talking about.
I am deeply concerned about the time it has taken the government to bring forward the discussion paper. It was a paper that we were supposed to see in the spring. We should now, according to the original timetable, be looking at legislation. While we were waiting and as we continue to wait, thousands of people and thousands of mothers and families wanted and want to leave welfare but could not and cannot because they would lose the dental and medical benefits their children need.
As members of Parliament we are often called on to help people in dire straits, people who are not worried about constitutional niceties like a division of powers. For example, I know a family with a severely disabled child. In the past the family has been able to count on government support to help meet the needs of their child, but no longer.
Families such as these look to the federal and provincial governments to work together to rationalize programs so they help those most in need. Some of the most worrisome parts of the paper are the suggestions for changes in UI, worrisome because in its two-tier proposal the government was unable to offer a definition of frequent user.
In areas of Atlantic Canada we have people who can be considered frequent users of UI. It is not because they are abusing the system. Nor are their employers abusing the system. It is because some parts of our economy are highly seasonal. That is why Atlantic Canadians need a coherent system of programs that will allow them to move with the changing times. What they do not need are proposals that cut them off at the knees.
Canada's strength has always been to combine a strong economy with a commitment to a secure social safety net that supports the needs of Canadians. Historically we have proven to be practical people who see that we have to move forward and adapt to changing conditions in order to keep our high quality of life.
I am not convinced the government's proposals will let us do that. This has been said in the past but let me repeat it because I am a firm believer in it: Good economic policy goes hand in hand with good social policy and vice versa.
We should all want to protect programs that work and change the ones that do not. We should all want to see to it that our workforce is trained to the highest standards. We should all want to make sure that our educational system produces graduates who can take full advantage of opportunities in a constantly changing economy. We want those graduates to have long term, high paying jobs. We want an educational system that encourages lifelong learning.
I do not believe Canadians will be well served by an approach to social policy that wants governments to borrow billions of dollars or impose more taxes on Canadians to retain a false and unrealistic sense of security. Nor will they be well served by an approach that will simply rip apart the social fabric. We need a reasonable approach with the watchwords of fairness, efficiency, self-sufficiency and dignity.
I will support proposals that advocate that approach and make the system more proactive. Hopefully before it is too late the government can offer such suggestions because I fear the discussion paper released yesterday does not. In fact in the words of a wise man, "never has a government taken so long to say so little".
