I hear the jeers coming from across the floor. I would appeal to members of the House to listen to reasoned debate. If every member would listen to the issues at stake in the bill and each vote according to his or her conscience, I believe the result would be very different from voting along purely party lines.
It is essential to look at the issues. I have heard the description of the problem but there are some options the government has refused to consider. That is why I oppose the bill. I will speak to it and give the reasons for opposing it.
I will say right now, and I will say it openly, that the Liberals just do not get it. Canadians are sick and tired of governments that spend more than they take in. Canadian taxpayers are sick of members of Parliament who are more concerned about paying unemployment insurance claimants to sit on juries than they are about them looking for work.
I listened to the hon. member's intervention. It reminds me of somebody who looks at his bicycle and sees that one tire does not look the same as the other. One is flat and one is not. He decides he is going to make them both look the same and punches a hole in the one that looks good. Then they both look the same. That is the Liberal way of solving some of these problems. If we have a problem with the justice system we do not fix it with the UI system. It is that simple. We are creating inequities. I am getting ahead of myself. Let me get into this reasoned debate that the members need to listen to.
The hon. member for Restigouche-Chaleur quite rightly identifies the problem with the poor compensation that provinces pay citizens to sit on juries. Rather than doing something about the specific problem, he attempts to avoid the real problem by giving jurors a handout from the unemployment insurance program.
Do you think it will ever be properly solved once you do this? The answer is obvious, no. Once we start going along this path, it will not be properly solved in the justice system where the solution should take place.
In this bill the hon. member proposes to break the fundamental insurance principle that all UI claimants should be available for work in order to collect UI benefits. The government has strayed so far from the rules of a true insurance program that many Canadians already think that unemployment insurance is a social program, and that is a fundamental mistake.
I am here to remind the hon. member, the Liberal government and all taxpayers in Canada that unemployment insurance is an insurance program, not a social program.
When the Reform Party forms the next government we will put an end to all this social engineering nonsense and return the UI program to its original purpose, an employer-employee funded and administered program to provide temporary income in the event of unexpected job loss. That was the original intent.
The hon. member says that this non-insurance measure will only cost $2 million or $3 million. Does he really think that voters want their government to spend $2 million or $3 million more to pay UI claimants in this way? Has he asked the voters in his constituency if they had $2 million or $3 million to spend if this would be their priority?
I do not think this member would get this support if he had gone to his constituents. I do not think they would support the direction of this government and the way it is heading with this bill.
He gets several individual complaints. I have talked to the member. People are giving comments across here, but I have talked to him directly and he has received several complaints. This is not a big push from across the country, believe me.
Here we are in the midst of the most serious financial crisis the country has ever faced and the best bill that this member can come up with is a bill that would spend $2 million or $3 million more. If we eliminated all the special handouts like the one proposed by the hon. member which the Liberal government has added to this UI program since 1971 we would save billions of dollars.
Why has this government got its priorities so mixed up? Again, I say it just does not get it. Taxpayers do not want to spend more. They want to spend less. Workers and employers do not want high UI premiums. They want lower premiums. This will force them up.
What kind of petitions has this member received in his office? Has he received any petitions? How many hundreds of letters has this member received complaining about this issue? Has any MP received even one petition concerning this? I receive petitions and letters complaining about the government's gun control proposals and I receive many petitions and letters opposing the government's plan to include sexual orientation in the Canadian Human Rights Act. I receive many petitions to balance the budget and not raise taxes. Is this hon. member saying that he has received these petitions? I doubt it.
If he is I have to question the hon. member on his priorities in bringing this bill before Parliament. Who supports this bill besides some Liberals who have their thinking locked into the 1970s?
The senior officials at unemployment insurance certainly do not think it is a good idea. Talk to the people there. They know it goes against their own insurance guidelines and they were opposed to it until it went to the standing committee.
Their claims adjudication guidelines state:
As a general rule, a UI claimant who is on jury duty is not considered to be available for work during a trial. The unemployment insurance plan was not designed to provide compensation for lost wages in such circumstances.
The experts at unemployment insurance add that the problem is not with the UI rules on availability but rather the poor compensation provided for jurors. Reformers agree.
There is the problem. That is where it should be solved, not with the unemployment insurance plan. The research branch of the Library of Parliament also concurs with us:
The primary issue in this matter seems to be that adequate remuneration for jury duty is the responsibility of the provinces rather than that of the employers and employees who contribute to the unemployment insurance program.
Those are the experts in the Library of Parliament.
If the government actually gave the employers and employees who pay for the UI program a real say in how their money was being spent, I do not think they would agree to provide benefits to claimants while they are serving on a jury.
If the voters are not clamouring for this change, if the experts at unemployment insurance say it goes against insurance principles, if the researchers at the Library of Parliament agree it is the responsibility of the provinces, and if the workers and employers who pay UI premiums are not asking for it, who is? Only the hon. member for Restigouche-Chaleur and his misguided supporters in the Liberal caucus can answer that.
The law is simple. If UI claimants are serving on a jury, they are not available for work. If they are not available for work, they are not entitled to unemployment insurance. Fix the system where it is broken.
UI claimants are supposed to be looking for work while they are receiving benefits. If they are serving on a jury, they cannot be actively looking for work. Unemployment insurance is not a guaranteed annual income and should not be treated as such.
Everyone collecting unemployment insurance must be actively looking for work and ready, willing and able to accept a job immediately. If the Liberals compromise the insurance principle of availability to allow jurors to collect UI, who is the next group they will designate as deserving special treatment and special status? They opened the door and they are going to have to accept other people with similar excuses.
Reformers say the UI program must be returned to a true insurance program. In order to do this all of the special programs, exemptions and exceptions, including the discriminatory elements such as variable entrance requirements and regional extended benefits, have to be eliminated.
If unemployment insurance ran like a true insurance program, anyone who collects UI repeatedly would have to pay higher premiums. Any employer who regularly lays off workers would also have to pay higher premiums. This private member's bill takes us in the opposite direction to where Reformers want to take unemployment insurance. This is the main reason we cannot support this bill, but not the only reason.
I hope everyone is listening carefully to this next point, because for a government that claims to be the champion of equality, it goes against that basic principle. If this bill were adopted even the principle of equality would be jeopardized. An
employed person is expected to take time off work for jury duty. Often they are not compensated for their lost pay.
Now we have the situation with a worker sitting on a jury, losing money because he or she is doing public duty. Beside him is someone being paid by the public purse, a UI claimant getting paid by the government to do the same job.
No one I have heard speak from the other side or even from the Bloc has addressed these two problems. Fix the system where it is broken. Fix the justice system. What are they going to do about the inequities they create with this kind of system?
That answer has not been forthcoming. It should be answered before he supports this bill. The hon. member raises the point that often employers pay their employees while they are serving on a jury and that it is unfair to UI claimants to have their benefits cut off.
If this charge were allowed to pass, what does the member think will happen? If a worker is called to do jury duty, the employer will lay him off so that he can go on UI and collect payments. In other words, one is opening the floodgates to have many people collect UI who normally would not be able to do so because they are laid off by their employers when they have to serve on a jury.
Those members are creating a problem. They are not solving a problem. They are making two flat tires instead of fixing the system where it is broken. This would undoubtedly lead to an increase in UI claims for people serving on juries and therefore an increase in cost to the UI program, which is already billions in debt.
While there may be a problem of fair compensation to all persons who serve on a jury regardless of their employment status, we do not believe that tinkering with the Unemployment Insurance Act and intruding into this area of provincial jurisdiction is the way to solve it.
A simpler solution we propose is for judges to use their discretion to excuse UI claimants from jury duty, as has been done in the past, or else have the provinces deal with the problem. It is their problem.
In closing, it is obvious that jurors are not fairly compensated and on this point my hon. friend and I agree. It is inexcusable that jurors are asked to work for days, weeks and in some cases months for $15 or $20 a day.
The Reform Party was founded on the principles of equality, fairness and common sense. That is lacking in this bill. We find that this is an area that needs to be addressed, but this is an area of provincial jurisdiction. Reformers believe the federal government should not be interfering in areas that are clearly a provincial matter.
The flawed logic behind this type of thinking has this country $550 billion in debt. Every time there is a problem, they do not fix it where it is broken. They simply throw more money at it. This type of thinking costs us $40 billion in interest payments every year; it is this type of thinking, this debt and the interest payments that are the biggest threat to the future of most of our social programs.
Canada cannot afford to make these kinds of decisions with our hearts instead of our heads. Reformers will vote against this bill.