René Laurin

[Employment Insurance Act, May 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Quebecois members will also vote nay on this motion.

[Employment Insurance Act, May 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Quebecois members will vote yea on this motion, with the addition of the hon. member for Roberval who has joined us.

[Employment Insurance Act, May 13th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Bloc Quebecois members will vote nay on this motion.

[Employment Insurance Act, May 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, because of the difficult economic context of the past few years, most people must now question how long their jobs will last and how secure they are. Because of the economic context, even someone who has been in the same job for the last 10, 15 or 20 years can no longer be sure of how long he will be able to keep it.

Recent examples have shown how bad the situation is. The most recent one is the Kenworth plant, where workers whose jobs had seemed secure for many years suddenly learned the plant was closing. In this kind of context, people must be much more provident than before in preparing for what could almost be called the whims of fate. No one today knows whether they will be able to keep their jobs.

As a result, all the plans people were making to buy things like houses, trips or cars have become uncertain. People can no longer make long term plans because they feel insecure. In the old days, their relative job security allowed them to spend or at least to think: "If I ever lose my job because of economic conditions, I can still

count on unemployment insurance to keep me at the same income level for a certain time while I look for a new job".

People had much more confidence in the unemployment insurance system, which was then a true insurance policy. It was aimed at providing a degree of security for workers; it was a cushion protecting them against job loss. People could still afford to buy a house on the grounds that, if they lost their jobs and were without a salary for a few months, UI would make up the difference. With the help of lending institutions such as banks and credit unions, they could hope to pull through.

In the last two years in my riding office I have had the opportunity to meet with and talk to hundreds of people having problems with the UI system. The economic context being as I described earlier, more and more people have trouble seeing the UI system as a real insurance policy in case of job loss.

Not only did the unemployment insurance fund show a deficit during those years, but the administrative process became heavier and the claims system became more complicated to a point where people in need were not even sure if they would qualify for unemployment insurance.

Here are a few examples. First, let us look at people who have a business and who have a family, who have children. The first people they hire are their children, which is quite normal.

Let us suppose I own an asphalt paving company. You know that, in Canada, at least in Quebec and I think in most provinces, asphalt paving is a summer industry. It is rather difficult to pave streets, driveways, and so on, in the winter.

Let us suppose I own an asphalt paving company and I hire my two sons to work for me. They work all summer but, unfortunately, I have to tell them in November: "I no longer have work for you. There is no paving work done in driveways and in the streets because snow is coming. The government has stopped all highway construction work for the winter".

Therefore, I advise my sons, who paid unemployment insurance premiums during the whole period, to apply for UI benefits for the winter. But now people at the UI office question the validity of their claims. They think there is something fishy because they are the owner's sons. There were no questions asked when it came time to take the premiums, to deduct the premiums from their salary, but now when they come to claim benefits, there is a great concern over whether the owner's son was really in an employer-employee relationship or whether it was not more of a father-son relationship.

All the while the UI inspectors carry out their investigation, the kids have no income. They too, in turn, must deprive their own children of the necessities of life because when you have no income, the whole family suffers.

While UI is carrying out its investigation, these citizens who paid UI premiums do not receive benefits, until it is established beyond all doubt that they are indeed entitled to them, until it is established beyond all doubt that if these kids had not done the work, their father would have had to hire other people to do it.

This is the kind of thing that, in my opinion, is very unfair to people paying for a service. If there was a desire to improve things, instead of assuming from the outset that people were dishonest and taking advantage of a situation, why not trust them and assume from the outset that, in these cases, since their premiums were accepted, they will be considered eligible for unemployment insurance and receive the benefits claimed? If investigations are needed, let themm be done afterward; if false claims are discovered, people will be penalized accordingly. But taxpayers who have made contributions cannot be made to wait for months until an investigation is over.

That is the first example of how Bill C-12, as it stands, does not make unemployment insurance any better.

My second example involves availability, which we would have liked to have seen improved by Bill C-12. Someone on UI would often like to take training, so as to improve his chances in today's competitive atmosphere. His idea is: if I am having trouble making a living with the knowledge, experience, skills and training I have at present, I will try to improve my situation by taking some upgrading courses and learning something new. This is a completely normal reaction, and one many people have.

Unfortunately, when a person is receiving unemployment insurance, he does not have the luxury of doing this, for anyone who enrols in a course is considered by unemployment insurance officials to be no longer available for work. In other words, if you get off your backside and take the initiative to do something, you will get your UI cut off as no longer available for work. Not very encouraging to those trying to help themselves.

We might have hoped that Bill C-12 would have done something to help these people improve their situation, but no. And what is worse yet, when there were openings for people to take courses, they were even told: "Sir or Madam, you have too much education already, you have plenty of training, you are quite self-sufficient enough, so you do not need this course. So just keep on waiting until we find some way to help you".

Mr. Speaker, I see you are indicating that my time is up. I hope to be able to continue sometime this afternoon, so as to get across my entire message on this matter.

[Guaranteed Income Supplement, May 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would urge the minister not to call me minister because I am afraid he will hold me responsible, with him, for the present situation.

What guarantee can the minister give the House that seniors affected by this problem will be reimbursed without delay?

[Guaranteed Income Supplement, May 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Minister of Human Resources Developmnet.

For the second consecutive month, a large number of concerned and destitute seniors have not received their guaranteed income supplement. Last week, at the Saint-Léonard office, in Montreal, 135 seniors were turned away by overburdened officials who asked them to make an appointment even though the phone lines were always busy. Worse still, when an official could finally be reached on the phone, he said that he did not know when the situation would be rectified.

Will the Minister of Human Resources Development confirm that, not only have these seniors been deprived of their guaranteed income supplement without knowing when the problem will be resolved, but they have also been unable to obtain adequate service from his department?

[Unemployment Insurance Act, May 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, as my colleagues did earlier, I would like to say a few words about this bill, not about each of its clauses, because it is a rather thick, not to say dense, document and I would need more than one day to go over everything.

The fact that some 220 amendments to what the government thinks is a perfect or almost perfect bill have been moved goes to show that it is in fact far from perfect and needs a few alterations at least to make it better.

We only need to look at the title to see all the problems the government had to deal with to make this bill look more attractive. The government wants to replace an insurance against unemployment by an insurance that almost goes against employment, but of course, it cannot put it this way. I had a professor, at university, who used to teach us about insurance and explain the principle behind insurance, as was developed by the British, as follows. He would say it in English and we would be very impressed since, at the time, although we did not speak English fluently, we paid a lot of attention to whatever was said in English or to English principles.

The professor used to say: "The principle behind insurance is as follows: "To divide amongst the many the losses of the few"". He would then explain in French, for those who like me at the time did not understand a word of English, that it meant to divide amongst the majority of the people concerned the losses of a number of them. So, the object of the unemployment insurance program we used to know was to divide among the majority of the people who were lucky enough to have a job the losses incurred by the few who had the misfortune to lose their jobs and end up on unemployment. That is the fundamental principle behind ou unemployment insurance system.

Now, we see that the government wants to change the name, probably to suggest that we want to divide among as many people as possible or among the majority the losses incurred by those who would find a job. I hope that is not what it means. You do not get insurance against a job, although that could make some kind of sense, because the government kept talking about jobs, jobs, jobs, and people could say: "What if I suddenly find a job, maybe it could hurt me. It might be better to keep receiving UI benefits or to find something else", since the jobs currently available are not enough to make a decent living.

I am kidding when I say that, because it would be ridiculous for the government to seek passage for a bill that would protect us against the risk of finding a job. What the government tells us, and I think this is how we must interpret it, is that this bill seeks to assure people that they will keep or find a job on the labour force.

Now we must ask ourselves this: Does the bill, as drafted, reach this goal? I cannot demonstrate that every section of the bill does not meet this goal, but I would like to give some examples of real cases in our ridings, particularly in mine.

I will give the example of women or men, but as it happens it is more frequently women, who want to re-enter the labour force after

having raised their children or for some other reason, after having been outside the labour force for some years. What happens to these women? Those who are lucky enough to find a job will have to pay UI premiums as soon as they start working. But to be entitled to benefits, even if their job is a short term one and if they work only for a few weeks or months, they will have to have worked at least 910 hours. What does that mean, in practical terms? We have to compare because for people who are already working and lose their job, the number of hours is not as high. I believe it is something like 700 hours.

What does that mean in practice for these women? After having raised their family, they cannot rest on their laurels because they want to get back to work. Let us say a woman finds a job where she works 3 hours a day, from 9 to noon, 5 days a week, which amounts to 15 hours. If this person is very hard working and really wants to make more money, she also works on Saturday. So she works 6 days a week, 3 hours a day, for a total of 18 hours. At a rate of 18 hours a week, this person will have accumulated at the end of the year-and I am counting only 50 weeks because this person really deserves 2 weeks holidays-900 hours of work. It would only be 750 hours if she worked 15 hours a week. Since the law requires a minimum of 910 hours to be eligible for employment insurance, this person, after having worked 900 hours during the year, will not be deemed eligible for employment insurance if she loses her job.

So this person pulls herself together and tries again the following year. She starts working in January at a rate of 15 hours a week because there is no other job to be had, and her boss needs her for only 15 hours, or 18 hours, a week. She starts working again, and will accumulate 750 hours if she works 15 hours a week or 900 hours if she works 6 days a week. At the end of the second year, she will have accumulated 900 hours again. If she loses her job at the end of the second year, she will not be eligible for employment insurance again. But she will have paid premiums from the beginning.

From the very first hour of work, this worker has paid premiums for unemployment insurance, or employment insurance as we must call it now. At $2.95 for each $100 earned, her contribution will total $186 at the end of the year. After two years, it is two times $186. After 5 years at $186 a year, those contributions amount to close to $1,000. However, that worker would still not be eligible for employment insurance. If that is what the government calls helping people to get back to work, I think that it will have to realize that it is not the right way of helping people.

We could take the example of day care workers. In remote areas, families where the father and the mother work have difficulty finding people to take care of their children. These people do not want to declare their earnings because, of course, they do not make enough and they would be penalized. How does unemployment insurance help those people? It cannot help them because there is no way for them to become eligible for unemployment insurance.

I would also have liked to give the example of training courses denied to people who are already too resourceful. When they find themselves unemployed and they want to improve their skills to redirect their career, they are told that they are too resourceful or too highly educated to have access to the courses and that they must continue to get unemployment insurance benefits and look for a job without additional training. This is ridiculous.

I would have liked to talk about self-employed workers but, since my time is running out, I will leave that to my colleagues. Maybe I will have an opportunity to do so myself later on if the government allows us to debate this bill all day today and again next Monday and Tuesday. We will have the opportunity to deal with these points and to say how this legislation does nothing to help people who are unemployed or who want to find steady employment.

Mr. Speaker, I see that you are listening to me with great interest and respect, as you always do, and I thank you for that. Once you leave the Chair, you will no doubt help me convince your colleagues of the validity of my remarks.

[Taxpayers Bill Of Rights, April 30th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us today reflects the best intentions in the world to protect taxpayers.

Low income taxpayers, who, we are told, often feel singled out by mean taxation officials, might be looking forward to this bill, Bill C-215, with great hope and confidence.

In my opinion, however, Bill C-215, which was introduced by my colleague, the hon. member for Durham, opens the door to too much abuse. This bill calls for two types of measures, both aimed at reducing Revenue Canada's powers and reinforcing taxpayers' rights against taxation authorities.

Of course, one might think that Revenue Canada already has far too much power, that its powers must be reduced, while vulnerable taxpayers need more protection. In principle, this is true. In practice, however, there are ways to protect taxpayers better without leaving the door open to even greater inequities.

As it stands, this bill could lead to some inequities. It would be dangerous to aggravate tax inequities because those who would benefit the most still pay taxes. The worst off are not low income taxpayers who can barely pay their taxes, but those who enjoy good incomes, who already pay a lot of taxes, who would have more opportunities to avoid paying taxes, to circumvent their obligation to pay taxes.

We in Canada have a voluntary taxation system, in that taxpayers voluntarily agree to report their income at the end of every year and to send Revenue Canada their fair and equitable share of taxes. Taxpayers must calculate how much they owe by gathering the

information required in accordance with the law, report all their income, and send the government their share of taxes on this income. Unfortunately, the bill before us would not allow us to adhere to this great principle of fairness for all taxpayers.

I am referring to clauses 2 to 7. These clauses call for the establishment of a taxation ombudsman. This ombudsman would be appointed by the cabinet for a term of seven years and might be appointed for another seven-year term. If we had to appoint an ombudsman for all the departments now in Ottawa, we would be faced with an army of public servants and perhaps even greater injustice than we are already experiencing.

In my opinion, there are other measures that would cost less. The taxation ombudsman suggested here would soon, in my opinion, be swamped with work and complaints, because who would not be tempted, faced with a ruling from the department of revenue, to turn to an ombudsman? There would be no end of claims, complaints lodged with the ombudsman, who, in turn, would have to hire another army of public servants to look into each of the complaints, many of which involve small amounts.

Current procedures allow taxpayers a means of defence. First, there is the initial notice of appeal. If the reassessment, as it is called, is not satisfactory, the taxpayer may appeal to the Tax Court of Canada, which itself suggests two mechanisms for handling complaints: one of a general nature for cases involving large amounts of money, and an informal mechanism for complaints of $12,000 or less. And it costs taxpayers nothing to defend themselves before this court. They can represent themselves, without having to pay a lawyer to do so.

What is needed, in order to meet the hon. member's objectives, is for the public servants now handling our tax problems to take a more humane approach. Most of them are excellent people, who want to perform their duty, to assume their responsibilities. And at a time when jobs are scarce, in their day to day duties these public servants want to acquit themselves properly of their duties.

So, when the Minister of Revenue tells them: "Dear employees, this year your task is to get as much money as possible back from the taxpayer", you can imagine that they do not want to lose their jobs. They take their jobs seriously and they harass and squeeze the taxpayer to get the last drop possible out of them. Then they report to their superiors: "Today, my esteemed superior, I have bagged five taxpayers. Two of them burst into tears, one felt he was having his throat cut, the other, I have his shirt here, and the last has vanished. So, dear boss, I did my best to bag them today. The state is the winner today, because I got many hundreds of dollars from the pockets of those poor taxpayers". But that is not, I think, the object of the exercise.

Sometimes I see taxpayers in my office. For example, I have a man who owed $800 in taxes. Being a small time taxpayer with a low salary, he reaches an agreement with a taxation employee to pay $50 a month until the taxes owing are all paid. Revenue Canada accepts the agreement.

A few months later, Revenue Canada learns that the indebted taxpayer has filed his income tax and is expecting $200 back. So the Department of Revenue goes into hunting mode and tries to stop the $200 refund in order to claim it for itself, on the pretext that the taxpayer owed money to the tax people, despite the agreement that had already been reached. We tend to feel there is abuse in cases such as this on the part of tax officials, and rightly so, no doubt.

What we need, instead of a bill that opens wide the doors to other abuses, is a minister who will direct his officials to use judgement and to treat each case of unpaid taxes a little more humanely, with a little more thought for the taxpayer. When a taxpayer has made an agreement with the department of revenue, the agreement is usually kept. If the department of revenue wants to make sure that more money is coming in, it should first go after those who have the means to avoid paying taxes, to have a host of experts to advise them on how to make use of tax shelters. These are the people they should go after.

I regret having to speak against this bill whose intention is nevertheless, I repeat, excellent and highly laudable. But to support it reminds me of when we were children playing cat and mouse. I do not know whether you remember the game. You stood in a circle, boys and girls together, and held hands. When the mouse was in the middle, you linked arms and bent over to keep the cat from getting in and jumping on the mouse.

Today, the bill lets the cat and the mouse out at the same time. So when the cat and the mouse are left to themselves, the department of revenue goes after the smallest, and you can be sure it catches its prey. What needs to be done is this: rather than pass legislation that will result in further abuse, we should make relations between taxation officials and the taxpayer more humanitarian so that they are more humane, more civilized and more at the level of the ordinary taxpayer.

[Canada Employment Centres, April 25th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, in July 1995, the federal government decided to transfer over 40 public servants from the Canada employment centre located in Joliette to the one in Repentigny.

The Bloc Quebecois condemned this illogical decision, since the CEC in Repentigny had to rent premises to meet the needs of its clientele, while the facilities in Joliette were already owned by the federal government and met the requirements of the Canada employment centre.

In the April 9, 1996 issue of L'Artisan , Public Works Canada asked for the submission of letters of interest regarding the lease of 1,741 square metres of office space for the Canada human resources centre, in Repentigny. Since renting this space will cost about $115 per square metre, taxpayers in the Joliette area will have to shell out about $200,000 more per year for lower quality services.

We have seen better reorganizations that this.

[Petitions, April 22nd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I wish to table a petition signed by almost 250 people who are members or employees of the Association des concessionnaires d'automobiles in Joliette and who are opposed to banks getting into the car leasing business.

The petitioners call upon the government not to amend the Banks Act and to maintain the status quo, that is, to keep banks from getting into the car leasing business, something which would seriously threaten the viability of the majority of automobile dealers and hundreds of jobs related to this business.