Francine Lalonde

[Literacy, November 3rd, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to tell this House about the national family literacy conference now being held in Ottawa, which is organized by the Movement for Canadian Literacy.

Family literacy is a new approach which seeks to provide basic training and development services for adults who have to stay home with pre-school children. Besides meeting the specific literacy needs of adults, this new form of learning creates an environment that encourages children in the family to read and write.

Members of the Bloc Quebecois are happy to support such initiatives and hope to see other projects to improve the basic training of a growing number of Canadians and Quebecers.

[Bankruptcy Act, October 25th, 1994]

They can go back at any time and get all of their supplies back from the businesses.

This is a ludicrous situation that has been going on for years. I worked in labour organizations at one time, a while ago, but in those days, I must tell you I fought hard for the value of employment to be recognized. I will come back to that aspect some other time. For years now, workers have been in a situation where they are thrown out on the streets without notice and with no means of getting paid for salaries owed to them, no pension fund and no vacation pay, compensations they earned by working hard and that are owed to them. They are totally helpless and deprived of everything. Now we say it is because of the banks.

This all powerful House of Commons could certainly give some thought to this issue. I think members here must vote according to their own consciences because we all know this is a matter of principle. It suggests that the government deal with this issue as a priority.

I understood very well the speech made by my friend-I am sorry, I meant my colleague-here besides me and I cannot say I am insensitive to what he said, but I will reply the same way. We cannot let others tell us what to do regarding workers who have earned salaries, small salaries, when we see banks threaten not to finance them.

I am proud of my colleague who is here in the House. Let me explain that the maximum of $9,000 he mentioned when he introduced this bill, would, of course, be an exceptional situation because in most cases, employers pay salaries on a weekly or bi-monthly basis. It is an exceptional situation, but there have been cases where some very substantial amounts have accumulated.

The hon. member also pointed out that if they are protected, employees will be more inclined to take a chance to help a small business through a rough patch, if they have the assurance-as my colleague argued-that they will recover their stakes. This aspect can be extremely important for a small business because, as far as I know, the banks often do not treat them very well and give no warning before they pull the plug, as they say.

Consequently, it is important for small businesses to know that employees will have certain guarantees and will be able to stick with their company, even when times are hard. Today, however, employees bear the brunt of these hard times, while when business is good, they do not get any of the profits.

To me, it is a case of elementary social justice. I think we should look at what we can do to make the banks take this into consideration. In fact, the government has promised it will prepare a plan for small business financing and for dealing with their specific problems. But it should not let the success of small businesses depend on their ability to avoid paying the wages, annual leave and pension benefits to employees who earned them.

I expect the House to vote in favour of this bill. It is a vote that reflects a principle and a commitment and tells the government: Do what governments have been promising all along and what workers now consider to be a running gag. If that is what the unions think, you can imagine what non-union workers are saying.

[Bankruptcy Act, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, even if there are limits to what one can say in this House, I am outraged and shocked at what I just heard. On the one hand, very generous speeches on workers and employees, all those people who make it possible for the big shots to get richer. On the other hand, a

compassionate one on those poor small and medium-sized businesses having serious difficulties, and I agree businesses do experience difficult situations. But who do we want to protect here? The banks? In that case-

[Job Creation, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, how can the government be so smug and proud when there are still

over a million unemployed workers in Canada, not counting all those who have precarious, very short term jobs?

How can the Deputy Prime Minister pretend that her government has restored hope and dignity for the unemployed, when in Quebec alone, 22,000 unemployed workers had to resort to welfare after the 1993 cuts in unemployment insurance, and since then, her government has never stopped forcing those who are no longer eligible for UI benefits to live on welfare?

[Job Creation, October 25th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.

A year after the election of the Liberal government, we have come to realize that its employment strategy simply amounts to setting up an infrastructure program that creates only temporary jobs, reducing access to unemployment insurance and passively benefits from the economic recovery. Considering population growth, we are still over 800,000 jobs short of the pre-recession level.

Does the Deputy Prime Minister realize that her government's approach to job creation is coercive, reducing access to unemployment insurance and UI benefits and to forcing the unemployed to re-enter the labour market and try to find jobs which simply do not exist?

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, on September 19, in this House, I asked a question of the Minister of Finance.

I stressed the fact that, according to Statistics Canada, the unemployment rate had risen by 0.7 per cent in August in Quebec and that it stood at 12.2 per cent. I said that in spite of a slight economic recovery and given the increase in population, Quebec still needed 210,000 jobs to reach its pre-recession level of employment.

Therfore I asked the Minister why did he not decide to create jobs by proposing concrete measures?

That was in September. We are now at the end of October and I must say that unemployment in Quebec is still at 12.2 per cent and the minister replied that 77,000 jobs had been created since the beginning of the year. These figures must be adjusted downwards because 28,000 jobs were lost last month, and 4,000 the month before.

This means that, despite the recovery, and despite the fact that the economic situation of Quebec may seem bright, it does not make any difference for the workers. Unemployment is still officially at 12.2 per cent and there are no forthcoming government initiatives that might help Quebec get out of this difficult situation.

I also asked the Minister of Finance when he would be reducing the UI premiums in order to lighten the burden of small- and medium-sized companies? When? The opposition has been denouncing the increase in UI premiums for over a year now.

The minister said it was an excellent question and that he was going to, but he did not. I will ask him again, and we will keep asking, even more so because he makes Quebec and Quebecers pay a high price in the first phase of the unemployment insurance reform. Billions, we now know it, billions have been accumulating in the unemployment insurance fund. The minister, contrary to what he says, contrary to what we can read in the green book, does not care about job creation, in Quebec at least, since he seems satisfied with the present situation.

I can only repeat my question: When is he going to lower unemployment insurance premiums? We cannot accept any other answer than an agreement to lower them now.

[Social Security Program, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Secretary of State spoke from the heart. The problem is that the reform will primarily affect women and not in a positive way. On the contrary, it will have a negative impact on their situation.

Here are just a few examples. The first ones affected by the two levels for UI purposes will be women who, in many cases, hold insecure term jobs-since these are more recent jobs, as you know. Women will be the first ones affected. They will also be the ones affected by the recommendation that the spouse's salary be taken into account when determining UI benefits. Women are also the ones who will be affected by the cuts to social assistance. Moreover, women will not want to get further into debt to get an education.

So, women are directly affected and, in spite of the very sensitive comments made by the Secretary of State who has a very kind heart, the fact is that the main objective of this reform is to reduce budgets by $15 billion over five years. The government may send invitations and hold countless discussions, the fact is that women are the first victims of that reform. The government helps women in a small way but harms them in a very big way.

[Manpower Training, October 24th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, this past weekend, the daily Le Devoir reminded us of something which, unfortunately, we have known for a long time, namely that Canada has a poor record as regards manpower training. The author of the article even calls Canada the dunce among G-7 countries, as well as the black sheep of OECD.

In his discussion paper, the Minister of Human Resources Development admits that training programs are in a real mess. Quebec came to that conclusion more than five years ago at the forum on employment and asked for the transfer, to its government, of the whole responsibility for training.

The minister's action should be consistent with his findings, and he should announce, at last, that this responsibility will be transferred from the federal to the provincial government.

[Employment, October 20th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has spoken at great length about Canada's generous system of redistributing wealth from one province to another. And yet, in its reform of unemployment insurance in the last budget, the federal government went looking for close to $1.4 billion in the pockets of unemployed workers in Quebec and the Maritimes. Close to 60 per cent of the initial cuts are affecting these regions, which are hard hit by the job crisis.

Now, as a result of social program reform, these regions will again bear the brunt, with cuts in the billions of dollars. Quebecers will not accept a reform whose sole objective is to slash programs. Although opposition to the reform is widespread, Quebec's response to this attack will be quite different. When it attains sovereignty, it will be sure to implement a full employment policy, using its own resources.

[Social Program Reform, October 19th, 1994]

Mr. Speaker, how can the minister announce additional cuts of billions of dollars in social programs without being more specific, when the consultation process on the social policy reform is barely getting underway?