Jane Stewart

[Employment Insurance, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, honestly the best thing I can do is repeat to the hon. member her own words. On March 12 she said in the House:

The principle of overpayment is a good one. If Canadians receive government benefits to which they are not entitled, they should pay them back. No one argues with that.

The only one who seems to argue with it is the hon. member and her party. The government has only ever recovered that portion of benefits paid to people who were not legally allowed to receive them. I never thought I would ever see the day when that party challenged us on recovering benefits that were not eligible to be paid.

[Employment Insurance, March 21st, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the voluntary early retirement window is a provision that is part of the Employment Insurance program.

This program is available to both public and private employers. It is my understanding that the agreement we have with the province of New Brunswick is being honoured there.

[Employment Insurance, March 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, let me explain again to the hon. member that pre or post regulatory change, the amount of the overpayment would have been the same. In these circumstances it is only the undeclared earnings that are recovered from an employment insurance benefits recipient.

I would also point out to the hon. member that it is this government that made the administrative changes to better and more fairly collect on these overpayments.

I would also reconfirm my commitment to the hon. member that if there are individual cases that she would like me to review, I would be happy to do that.

[Employment Insurance, March 20th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, perhaps I could give the hon. member the same answer I gave her colleague yesterday on this question. Perhaps rather what I will do is quote her own press release of March 12 where she said:

The principle of overpayment is a good one. If Canadians receive government benefits to which they are not entitled, they should pay them back.

This is one of the rare occasions when I would agree with the hon. member. In fact, this is all we have ever done.

[Linguistic Minorities, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to announce today that $24 million will be allocated over two years to official language minority communities throughout Canada.

Our objective is to assist both language communities in building their capacity to improve their socioeconomic development. The government will continue to work with minority communities, in French and in English, to ensure they have the tools they need to be full participants in Canada.

[Post-Secondary Education, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, assisting Canadians with higher education is a priority for the government. That is why every year we invest $1.6 billion in the Canada student loans program and assist 350,000 Canadians. That is also why we have expanded our Canada study grants. It is why we introduced the millennium scholarship program. It is why in 1998 we introduced and implemented a series of debt management measures and expanded interest relief and debt reduction.

We continue to look at the effective tools that Canadians need. We will commit to work with Canadians to ensure that in the 21st century they have what they need to participate fully in our economy.

[Employment Insurance, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member is suggesting that somehow we created some additional overpayment or penalties. With great respect that is not the case.

Let me very clear that what we changed in August 2001 was an administrative practice. Right now the overpayment will only be deducted from the specific weeks in which the undeclared earnings were received. In the past the undeclared earnings could be collected over the whole period of the claim. The amount of the overpayment remains the same pre or post regulatory change.

[Employment Insurance, March 19th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the persistence of these questions suggests to me that perhaps the hon. member does not fully understand the process at play here. Let me try to explain it again.

In these cases we are talking about individuals who are in receipt of employment insurance benefits and at the same time have earnings because they worked, received back pay, shift premiums or vacation pay and did not declare the earnings.

In these cases the government sets up an overpayment and works to collect that amount of money which is equivalent to the undeclared earnings only, except in very rare cases associated with the two week waiting period.

[Employment Insurance, March 18th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, as I said on a number of occasions, if individuals have new information that they would like us to review we would be happy to.

Let us talk again about this question of retroactivity. I suggest that the hon. member talk to his own finance critic who said:

—the practice of retroactive legislation in general is not a good one for parliament to pursue. When we consider fiscal matters...or any form of legislation, a principle of parliament ought to be that it ought not to try to go back and change history--

[Employment Insurance, March 18th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I must remind the hon. member that it was a Liberal member of parliament who tried, through provisions, to ensure that the change was made through legislation.

It was that party that stood and that party critic who said with specific reference to this amendment:

—we come to an amendment that is trying to address what is considered to be an unfairness. The feeling seems to be that someone who has fraudulently misrepresented the facts should not be penalized and should be treated the same as any other claimant under the EI program. We have difficulty with that--

Let me repeat that anyone who makes an honest mistake will not be asked to repay more money than they did not declare.