Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the chance to join in the debate on behalf of my constituents in Hamilton Centre.
I want to touch on three things in the short time that I have.
First, I want to talk a bit about how the system was unfair to my home province of Ontario, even prior to the budget bill coming forward.
Second, I want to talk about the $54 billion, much in line with the question I asked my colleague from Hamilton East—Stoney Creek in terms of all that money being paid for one specific purpose and what it means to see it diverted into other things and not being there when it is needed.
Third, I want to enunciate the absolute unfairness, which is such a mild word, that over 60% of the people who paid EI premiums are not eligible to receive benefits.
With respect to the first item, Ontario loses, I would like to put on the record some of the remarks that are contained in a Toronto Star editorial dated February 10, 2008. Its headline reads, “Benefit rules cheat Ontario's jobless”. It reads in part as follows:
Workers in Canada have no choice whether to pay Employment Insurance...premiums. No matter where they live, they must pay, and in that sense they are all treated alike.
But they are certainly are not treated equally when it comes to collecting EI benefits. While nearly 80 per cent of workers in Newfoundland qualify for benefits when they lose a job, the figure in Ontario is closer to 25 per cent. And for the minority who are eligible in Ontario, benefits run out much sooner than they do elsewhere in Canada.
According to Premier Dalton McGuinty, here is what this unfair treatment means: “Last year, the average unemployed worker in Ontario received $5,110 in regular EI benefits, while the average unemployed person in the rest of Canada received $9,070.” That difference cost Ontario's unemployed $1.7 billion
Because of that built-in unfairness, introduced through a series of “reforms” by the Chrétien government in 1996, EI in Ontario can hardly be called an insurance program when barely a quarter of workers can count on benefits if they lose their jobs.
In setting a higher bar for Ontarians to qualify for benefits, Ottawa ignored the fact that Ontarians who lose their jobs need EI support while hunting for a new job, just like the unemployed in any other region. But far too many Ontarians never get even that limited support.
The article closes with this paragraph:
Ottawa needs to straighten out this mess and restore fairness to all Canadians. The time to do it is in the upcoming budget, before Ontarians feel the full brunt of the spillover of a recession in the U.S.
Unfortunately, as members know and as the rest of the country now knows, the government did not fix this unfairness in Ontario.
Mr. Speaker, as you would know, as you have been here longer than anyone else in this House, it is not historically easy for Ontario MPs to stand and talk about what they are getting in fairness because Ontario used to be so big, population wise and in its strength of economy compared to the rest of the country, but that has changed significantly.
The Toronto Star was right to point this out. Ontario MPs will continue to raise the issue of unfairness because I suspect that the newfangled machinery being created by the government will still not address this problem, in addition to all the new problems that will be created. We will not stand by, particularly as Ontario gets massacred in the number of jobs that are pouring out of Ontario and out of Canada.
Second, with respect to the $54 billion, I am glad the CLC is taking the action it is taking in terms of making a claim. This is not like any other fund under the purview of the finance minister. As we all know, there is a virtual consolidated revenue fund. Everything goes into one fund so there is one bank account and then on paper we break down how much is allocated for each of the various departments' activities. There is one collective chequing account into which everything gets deposited and then the breakdown is provided on paper and then within that the accountability on how it was spent and so on.
As my friend pointed out, EI used to be unemployment insurance, which I am still not happy with, but the EI fund is different because it is not general revenue. It is money that workers pay, in part, and employers pay, in part, to ensure money is available to support workers and their families in the transition from one job to another. It is not to pay any other bills, buy anything else or to pay for other programs. It is to help unemployed workers.
The former Liberal government ignored that mandate and used that money to pay for the great economic miracle, which it likes to talk about, in the nineties that it performed because it balanced the budget. Balancing a budget is no big deal. It is not that difficult. If that is one's only purpose, then just slash all one's spending. The balancing, in and of itself, is not the answer, especially when we find out that it was able to do that balancing act on the back of the unemployed workers' fund. Even without this change into an arm's length agency, Canadian workers have every right to demand that every penny be put back into that fund for workers who may need it in the future.
Do members want to know why we are so incensed about this budget? Do members want to know why we are dragging this out as long as we can? It is because of the damage that is being done to people, such as workers and others, in that budget.
Unfortunately, the government listens but it does not hear. Whether I am loud or not, I really do not care whether that bothers government or not. When people are unemployed for months and they do not have the money to buy their kids the shoes they need or put food on the table, the government would be hearing a lot louder from those workers than it would be hearing from me today.
The fact is that this new fund would wipe out the $54 billion in one move. It would be gone and it would start over with $2 billion.
Let us understand what is going on. Two important things are going on, or three if we consider the fact that the Conservatives have left inequities in place, like those that are hurting my fellow Ontarians.
The first thing the government is doing is trying to eliminate that moral debt. CLC will argue that it is a legal debt in court, but certainly one can make an argument that it is a moral debt, that the money is owed to the people for whom it was put into that account in the first place. However, this game plan is meant to take that $54 billion and just sort of pave it over and permanently ignore the debt that is owed to unemployed workers in this province, and, instead, it puts in $2 billion.
What happens if there is a major downturn or if the downturn continues? What happens if that $2 billion runs out? Will the money be there or not? Will we run a deficit and start to make it look like unemployed workers are the cause of some kind of economic drain on this country when they have done absolutely nothing wrong?
The other thing it does is it makes it much more difficult for ordinary members in this House to get accountability because, it is true, ministers will stand and say that they did not make the decision, that they had nothing to do with it, that it was arm's length making all the decisions so they should be blamed.
Workers in this country have heard “blame them over there” for long enough. This budget bill hurts unemployed workers. Every worker who is not unemployed who might be listening and who thinks he or she does not need to worry about this should understand that they are one pink slip away from being a part of this catastrophe.
Let us remember that we all know the difference between a recession and a depression. A recession is when it happens to our neighbours. A depression is when it happens to us.
