Anne-Marie Day

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I believe that it is important to come back to a question that was asked in the House last fall with regard to the employment insurance reform.

A few weeks ago, I asked the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development to listen to the public's criticisms of her reform and to understand that it does not make any sense. Since the employment insurance reform was announced at the beginning of the last budget, the government has been completely ignoring the opinions and warnings of experts in the field. Practically all of the stakeholders affected by this reform have spoken out against the changes imposed, as they now stand.

Can the minister explain to Canadians why her government decided to force the implementation of this reform without any consultation? Can the minister admit that the reason why the Conservatives did not want to consult anyone about this reform is that they knew that it would penalize thousands of Canadians and would literally steal from them the benefits to which they are entitled by virtue of the fact that they contributed to the program?

Can the minister tell us why no impact study was conducted and why no reliable scientific data was collected that would support this political decision? Can the minister simply admit that this reform is essentially based on an ideological choice designed to satisfy an electoral base?

When I asked my question last October, people across the country were already speaking out against the changes to employment insurance. Workers feel like they are being treated like criminals, the regions feel abandoned, and seasonal employers are afraid of losing skilled labour. The provinces, which will have to support all these people who will be on social assistance, were not even consulted.

Even now, does the minister not see that tension is rising? What does the government have to say to all these worried workers in the retail, construction, education, forestry, fisheries, agriculture and tourism sectors?

Protests are growing in Quebec, New Brunswick and the rest of the Maritimes. People in our regions are not fools. A simple press release to reassure the unemployed is useless when they have received their last pay cheque and are preparing to face the gap, because you have cut all support and they have nothing left to put on the table.

Will the minister promise to sit down with elected officials in the most affected regions? Will she promise to be open, to listen to what is happening in the regions and to find immediate solutions to help families in the regions?

[Financial Administration Act, February 25th, 2013]

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-473, An Act to amend the Financial Administration Act (balanced representation).

Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in the House today to introduce a bill that will achieve balanced representation of women and men in financial administration.

At present, only 27% of senior positions on boards of directors of our crown corporations are held by women. I believe that it is about time that Canada follow the lead of a number of countries that have already adopted laws and implemented mechanisms to ensure better representation on the boards of directors of their crown corporations.

The bill I am introducing today will make Canada a leader in this area. I would like to build on the exemplary work of my honourable colleague from London—Fanshawe, who began this endeavour last year by proposing that the government ensure gender parity on the boards of directors of its crown corporation within six years.

I hope that all my colleagues in this House will give their enthusiastic support for this initiative.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, on February 1, the Minister of Human Resources said, “There are no individual quotas for employees of HRSDC.”

And yet, documents obtained by Le Devoir prove precisely the opposite.

The truth is that the work of those employees is evaluated based on their ability to cut $485,000 in benefits from the unemployed. It is called “performance objectives”. That is the truth.

We can therefore only conclude that the minister misled the House. We want to know why the minister is not killing this bad policy.

[Employment Insurance, February 14th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Human Resources would probably say unemployed workers, the people who are looking for work and who she singles out as bad guys. But, no, the answer is a senator who works 56 days a year for $132,000.

How can the minister justify the waste in the Senate while cutting employment insurance?

[Employment Insurance, February 14th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, who am I? My lifestyle is very lucrative. I only work a few days a year, no more than three days a week and only if I want to.

The Minister of Human Resources would say—

[Employment Insurance, February 13th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, thanks to the Minister of Veterans' Affairs, we now know that the Conservatives' employment insurance reform was not based on any impact studies. Since they did not do their homework, we will give them some figures. This is called science.

In Saguenay—Lac-Saint-Jean, 101,000 workers will be affected, 56,836 of whom have unstable employment status or work in seasonal industries. Tourism, retail, forestry and several other sectors will be affected.

The minister has impact studies on her reform. Can she table them in this House?

[Employment Insurance, February 11th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, my first question is: where is the job?

I have asked this question in the House before and I will ask it again. What is the Minister waiting for? Will it take the occurrence of serious and regrettable incidents for her to take action and reverse this measure?

Right now, thousands of Canadian families are readying themselves for the spring gap. There is an urgent need to act if we want to avoid catastrophe.

Will the minister take the time necessary to meet with people from the regions?

She needs to go see them. They want to talk to her. She needs to listen to their problems and try to really understand their financial situation.

Given her government's ill-conceived policies, could she, at the very least, show some openness, some willingness to discuss and consult with them? This should have been done from the beginning.

These people are on the cusp of a black hole. They can see it coming. They are about to be swallowed by it.

[Employment Insurance, February 11th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, once again, I rise to speak to a topic that is becoming increasingly urgent as we approach the infamous EI black hole.

Protests have been mounting in recent weeks. Workers are increasingly frustrated and the minister is ignoring the thousands of people across Canada who are denouncing this reform.

She would rather play word games to try to put this issue to rest, but Canadians are not fooled. This is not a clarification of the EI rules. It is a radical reform that poorly conceals a Conservative ideology of attacking our social safety nets and the diversity of our economy. The employment insurance program does not have overall regional economic objectives. There are monthly quotas that the investigators must meet, but that is very different. The investigators did not save $500 million last year by combatting fraud. There were hundreds of millions of dollars saved because there were errors in the system, most often on the Service Canada end.

Statistics even show that less than 1% of employment insurance payments are the result of fraud. A reporting mistake made by a claimant or a Service Canada employee does not necessarily constitute fraud.

Will the minister agree to stop treating all unemployed workers like fraudsters and criminals?

This past fall, I asked the minister why she had decided to end the pilot project that provided five additional weeks of benefits and allowed seasonal workers to get through the infamous spring gap. This pilot project, which the minister herself deemed useful and effective, was used to get through the period where benefits had run out, but income from seasonal work had not yet kicked in. This measure had been in effect since 2004 in those regions of Canada with high unemployment rates. The government decided to implement it across the board as part of its action plan to deal with the most recent recession.

Canadians learned in the last budget that this measure would be eliminated altogether. But what will happen in regions where the unemployment rate is still high? In her answer to my question, the minister told Canadians that the unemployment rate had gone down enough for this measure to be withdrawn.

This pilot project was created to support regional economies that rely on seasonal employment sectors, primarily regions in eastern Canada. Let us therefore follow through on the minister's logic and look at the facts.

Between January 6 and February 9, 2013, the unemployment rate in certain regions was up to 17.3% in Newfoundland and Labrador, 11.2% in Prince Edward Island, 10.9% in western Nova Scotia, 16.2% in eastern Nova Scotia, 13% in Charlottetown, 17.6% in Restigouche, and so on. Although the Canadian unemployment rate is 7% right now, how can the minister not take into account the regional differences, the seasonal nature of work in the regions and the fact that many regions are facing a high unemployment rate, as I just described?

Does the minister believe that those rates are low enough to permanently abolish a pilot project that was helping Canadian families to get through the off-season without starving to death?

[Employment Insurance, February 11th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, in the wake of a number of questions from the NDP, Quebec's employment and social security minister is calling for the immediate withdrawal of the Conservatives' EI reform. The Conservative government in New Brunswick is also demanding an urgent meeting.

Every day, my office receives hundreds of phone calls and emails from discouraged workers who are wondering why the Conservatives are targeting them.

When will the Conservatives understand that gutting the EI program is simply unacceptable and is hurting our economy?

[Employment Insurance, February 7th, 2013]

Mr. Speaker, this morning, we learned that the Minister of Human Resources set a $430 million employment insurance reduction quota across the country. That quota is $120 million in Quebec alone. In 2009, the government cut $200 million across the country.

Why did this amount double? It is because there are quotas and the minister thinks honest job seekers are criminals. The minister's reform is punishing people who are looking for work. When will she reverse her decision?