Josée Beaudin

[Employment Insurance, September 15th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, it will take more than piecemeal measures to fix an employment insurance system that is full of holes. The system needs to be completely overhauled if it is to meet the needs of workers. For example, the two-week waiting period must be eliminated immediately, the wage replacement rate must be increased from 55% to 60%, and the eligibility threshold must be reduced to 360 hours.

Why is the government refusing to act immediately?

[Employment Insurance, September 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives, like the Liberals, propose the same lame solutions to eliminate the deficit, and once again want to siphon money meant for EI to achieve their goals. While unemployed workers are struggling, the oil companies are pocketing billions of dollars that the government is handing them through tax breaks.

We are in the middle of an economic crisis. How can the government justify giving obscene tax breaks to oil companies that clearly do not need them, and making unjustified attacks on unemployed workers?

[Employment Insurance Act, September 14th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am especially happy, for at least two reasons, to have an opportunity today to rise on Bill C-308, introduced by my colleague from Chambly—Borduas. The first, of course, is that I am deeply concerned about the flaws in the current employment insurance system and the proposals for remedying them. The second is that the Conservatives and Liberals set up a phoney committee to discuss these issues behind closed doors and it is wonderful to finally have a chance to hear the positions of all the parties in the House.

There are many problems with the current system, but we are very familiar with them all because they have been pointed out repeatedly by the various stakeholders. As early as February 2005, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills Development, Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities produced an exhaustive report with no fewer than 28 recommendations to reform employment insurance from top to bottom.

But it remained largely a dead letter. Both the Liberals and Conservatives ignored its conclusions, even though they were very reasonable and appropriate. No one should be surprised, therefore, that we in the Bloc Québécois took a rather jaundiced view of the announcement that a secret committee on employment insurance would be quickly and quietly convened to save face in view of the thousands of unemployed people who would have been able to take immediate advantage of the measures in Bill C-308.

This bill does not reinvent the wheel. All it does is pull together the best proposals for finally improving the accessibility of an employment insurance system that has been strait-jacketed for far too long by the restrictive changes introduced by the same Liberals who say now in public that they are outraged but then vote in favour of a budget that does nothing.

The most shocking thing about this refusal to finally re-open the eligibility requirements is the ideologically driven insistence on seeing all unemployed people as potential cheats. The government’s way of thinking was on display as recently as last Friday in the report from the Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer when it estimated the cost of a standard eligibility requirement of 360 hours.

The government assumes in its calculations that, in addition to the 166,000 existing unemployed, more than 180,000 people would qualify under the new standard and would try to take advantage of it by voluntarily quitting their jobs, with the connivance of their employers, after accumulating enough hours to qualify. As we know, voluntary departures have not been covered for a long time by the current system.

It is only in this way that the government is able to conclude that changing the minimum requirements would cost about $2.5 billion, or more than twice the estimate of the parliamentary budget officer. It is hard to imagine a government with more contempt for its own citizens. It is especially sad to think that this contempt and these suspicions are penalizing people who have had the misfortune of losing their jobs. The government is basically treating 180,000 Canadians, and therefore more than 40,000 Quebeckers, as potential liars and scam artists.

I have a question now for the government. If the intent to commit a crime is just as punishable as the crime itself—as it is in the Canadian Criminal code—perhaps the government thinks that it should rush out and arrest these people who might commit fraud? Let us make no mistake. This is the exact same logic behind the government's imposition of a two week waiting period. The same logic applies to people who do not deal at arm's length with the employer. It is up to them to prove beyond a doubt that they have no intention of defrauding the plan. This does not take into account the fact that the procedure can take a number of months, even a year, before the applicant is deemed to be acting in good faith. All this cynicism is extremely discouraging.

Perhaps we should remind the government of the principle underlying the seven measures proposed in Bill C-308—attempting to help the unemployed by increasing benefits and eligibility does not amount to promoting unemployment. On the contrary, these measures have a single aim—to enable the unemployed to retain some dignity despite the difficult times they face.

Let us review these measures here, one by one. The first, and perhaps one of the most important, is to introduce a standard qualifying period of 360 hours across the board. Despite the claims of the Conservatives, who clearly have not taken the trouble to study our proposal seriously, there is absolutely no question of granting the maximum number of weeks of benefits to anyone who has worked 360 hours. This is misinformation, as my colleague has just said.

One need only consult schedule I of the bill. An individual who has worked 360 hours would be entitled to between 14 and 36 weeks of benefits. Entitlement to 50 weeks, the maximum under this bill, would require over 1,115 hours of work and residence in a region with a level of unemployment over 16%.

If this measure were passed, it would substantially reduce the phenomenon known as the spring gap, the period in which many seasonal workers receive neither income nor benefits.

The second measure in Bill C-308 concerns the weekly benefit rate. At the moment, as everyone knows, the rate is set at 55% of insurable earnings, to a maximum of $41,300 a year. This bill proposes to increase it by 5% to set it at 60%.

Over 166,000 Quebeckers—nearly two thirds of whom are women—earn minimum wage, which is currently $9 an hour. This means that these workers can earn a maximum of $173.25 a week or $9,000 a year. Clearly that is far too little to live on decently.

The third measure in this bill, which perfectly complements the previous one, is to increase the maximum insurable earnings to $41,500 and introduce a guaranteed annual indexing formula. This increase would generate additional revenues and thus fund some of the improvements proposed by this bill. According to the figures of the human resources department, this increase would lead to additional revenues of $420 million and spending of $245 million resulting in a credit balance of $175 million.

Fourth, the bill also proposes finally eliminating the discrimination facing people who are entering or re-entering the workforce—the Liberals put forward that distinction in 1996. Those individuals are unfairly penalized, especially women who often leave the workforce to care for their children. That is why, according to a study by the Fédération des travailleurs du Québec, only 16% of young unemployed workers under 25 years old are receiving EI benefits, while in the early 1990s, that proportion was 52%.

The fifth measure aims to correct the problem I mentioned earlier, namely, the presumption that workers who do not have an arm's length relationship with their employers are basically guilty until proven innocent. Of course, this goes against the presumption of innocence that is pivotal in all modern judicial systems, and enshrined in the Quebec Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms and its Canadian equivalent.

Sixth, Bill C-308 amends the formula used to calculate insurable earnings; the calculation would be based on the 12 best weeks in the 52-week qualifying period.

Lastly, this bill opens the door to the possibility of self-employed workers taking part in the EI system on a voluntary basis. According to the most recent numbers, over 16% of Canadian workers are self-employed at this time, and that number has risen recently particularly because of the recession. It is high time we offered them the opportunity to enjoy some sort of income security.

These seven measures would undoubtedly correct many major deficiencies that exist in the current employment insurance system—first, by improving it, but also by removing certain provisions originally put in place to address the terrible suspicions that successive Liberal and Conservative governments have seemed to harbour against unemployed workers.

In closing, losing one's job is rarely a joyous occasion. Having to prove to the government that one is not trying to cheat the system is even more humiliating. Workers who find themselves in that situation are reduced to begging the government for assistance that they rightly deserve, assistance that they themselves have paid for, day after day, week after week.

That is why I invite all parliamentarians to look at this bill not simply as a way to improve the system, but as a way to correct certain glaring injustices.

[Petitions, June 19th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I am honoured to rise here today to present a petition signed by over 100 students from the École internationale St-Edmond in Greenfield Park and the École primaire des Quatre-saisons in Saint-Hubert. These young people are concerned about the environment. Their petition reads as follows:

We, the undersigned petitioners, are calling on the government to hear what our young voices have to say, and to take concrete, immediate action in order to make responsible policy decisions to leave an environmental legacy that is sustainable for future generations. It is extremely urgent.

[Employment Insurance, June 18th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal-Conservative coalition has chosen to create a phoney committee on employment insurance that will sit for more than two months while everyone agrees on the course of action. The Liberals wanted to resolve this matter before the holidays so the unemployed could have money quickly. They are now agreeing to make them wait another two months.

Why does this coalition not listen to the president of the CLC, who says to forget this phoney committee and implement the necessary changes now, not next winter?

[Maxime Talbot, June 17th, 2009]

I rise today in the House to extend my very warm congratulations to Maxime Talbot, a little guy from Lemoyne in Longueuil, for his great exploit last Friday evening. He brought together the collective efforts of his entire team by scoring the two goals that won the Pittsburgh Penguins the Stanley Cup. In a game that was super exciting from the first minute to the last, Maxime Talbot scored his team's only two goals and took it to a historic, and totally unexpected, win against a club that seemed to be invincible on home ice.

His enthusiasm, his open camaraderie and his determination are what made this young player, once a leading light for the Gatineau Olympiques, so appreciated by all of his team members. May I take this opportunity to congratulate everyone on the Pittsburgh Penguins team, and most particularly the other Quebeckers, whose names will be engraved on the Stanley Cup for posterity.

Our little guy from Lemoyne played a defining role in achieving the impossible dream.

[Employment Insurance Act, June 9th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, once again I have the privilege of taking the floor and speaking on a bill to amend the Employment Insurance Act.

It is common knowledge that the Bloc never lets up on its efforts to make substantial improvements to the employment insurance program, which has become no more than a shadow of its former self. As a result, it unfairly penalizes workers who have faithfully contributed to it their whole working lives.

While definitely necessary, reducing eligibility to 360 hours regardless of region of residence is only the first step, and in no way sufficient on its own. The reform the Bloc Québécois has been urging for ages, along with the NDP, goes a great deal further. Excluding severance pay, retirement pensions and allowances, as well as vacation pay is, in our opinion, an integral part of the reform that should be enacted urgently.

In 1984, during the Progressive Conservative government, then Minister of Finance Hon. Michael Wilson announced as part of his economic update that, in future, benefit calculations would include payments made on termination of employment.

Three years later, in 1987, that same government announced that no benefits would be paid until potential recipients had used up their severance pay, this period being calculated by dividing the amount of severance pay by the salary earned in the last week worked.

For example, a person who earned $500 a week and received $5,000 in severance pay would have no benefits and no income for 10 weeks. Then there would be another two weeks added for the waiting period.

We believe this situation is unfair to workers who have been dismissed, since it their severance was not the result of poor work performance and still less of voluntary separation.

It is obvious that employment insurance is a public insurance program and it must not by compared with private insurance in any way. If we do that, there is a danger of falling into an approach that is contrary to governmental logic, which should focus on the common good and not on supporting mercantile or commercial interests.

Yet that is exactly how one government after another has behaved for the past 15 years.

I would even go further than that: not only have they subverted the social mission of the program, but they have replaced it with a focus on profit, a change in direction that has made it possible for them to stash away $57 billion in profits, at the expense of the unemployed.

The worst, ultimately, was that not only did this system become a government pseudo-corporation operating like the private insurers, but it did worse things that any private insurer would do.

What kind of private insurer would ask its clients who had had a fire, for example, to exhaust their own savings before it would provide the amounts still needed for them to restore their property?

It would be unworthy of a company that is the least bit serious and it is simply shameful of a government. It is indecent when we know that the tiny savings which flow from these measures but have such devastating effects on the unemployed would have been made up a hundred times if the government had not dipped so copiously into what should have been a cumulative reserve employment insurance fund.

Fifty-seven billion dollars: that is an awful lot of money that would have been very useful now that the unemployment rate has reached its highest point in 11 years. More than 400,000 full-time workers have lost their jobs and more than half of them will probably not get any employment insurance.

Fifty-seven billion dollars: that is enough money to eliminate the waiting period for 63 years.

Over the last 20 years, the coverage of the employment insurance system has fallen by half. The beneficiaries to unemployed ratio has fallen from 84% to 44% because the eligibility criteria were considerably tightened, though unjustly so, in the 1990s.

It is high time for the government to finally acknowledge this injustice and do everything in its power to fix it.

The Bloc Québécois and the NDP are not the only ones denouncing it. All labour unions and groups that defend the rights of working people have also been denouncing this injustice, which has led to the perversity of an employment insurance system that does not cover even half of those who are unemployed.

In 2005, the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development and the Status of Persons with Disabilities adopted a report with 28 recommendations that were almost all ignored by the Liberal and Conservative governments. One of these recommendations expressly addressed the issue of excluding from the calculation of people’s benefits all forms of remuneration they receive upon leaving their jobs.

I quote the report.

The Committee recommends that the government amend the Employment Insurance Regulations so as to not consider pension, severance and vacation income in the determination of earnings for benefit purposes.

It must be noted once again that the committee's work was totally ignored. That is wholly deplorable. Nothing justifies this sort of attitude, which reveals the government's alarming indifference to its social mission. The Bloc will remain critical of this indifference so long as it leaves the unemployed in their current, untenable situation.

This is why we have introduced no fewer than four separate bills to make substantial amendments to the employment insurance plan. Thus, we hope to have the program that became a labour tax at the end of the 1990s and in the early 2000s once again become a program that really protects workers by providing them with financial security between jobs, that is, while they are unemployed.

The creation of the Canada employment insurance financing board in February 2008 seemed like a first step in this direction. But the 2009 budget has frozen contribution levels for the next two years. It seems that the Conservatives' sole concern is to have big business make economies of scale on the few cents per $100 that would be needed to improve the rate of coverage of the plan significantly.

They made a choice, that of big business over workers. They chose to drop the thousands of workers who, rather than benefiting from the support of a plan they pay into day in, day out, without skipping the two week waiting period, find themselves penalized because they receive whatever their employer owes them.

It seems, however, that penalization is the leitmotif of the Conservatives—penalization more severe than the crimes, minimum sentences, the two week waiting period penalty before employment insurance benefits are paid and, now, a penalty for workers who are less badly off than others.

If an employer gave laid-off employees a watch in gratitude, I think the Conservative government would take it into account in calculating benefits. By making sure the unemployed face serious economic difficulties, the government hopes they will return to work more quickly. This cynicism is not in keeping with the role of government. This is why my colleagues in the Bloc and I will vote in support of Bill C-279.

[Employment Insurance, June 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the solutions are obvious; what is needed is the will to implement them.

What is this government waiting for to lower the EI eligibility threshold to 360 hours, to eliminate the two week waiting period and to increase benefits from 55% to 60% of insurable income? Those measures would be beneficial not only for unemployed workers, but also for the economy.

[Employment Insurance, June 5th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the number of unemployed workers who receive EI benefits remains ridiculously low, and the government stubbornly maintains that the current employment insurance system does not need any changes.

How can the government continue to ignore the calls for EI reform, when only 44% of unemployed workers are receiving benefits?

[Employment Insurance, June 3rd, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, announcing the same program twice is one thing, but making sure it produces the expected results is another.

The minister prides herself on having put $500 million towards a training program. But more than one week after her program was announced, we still have unanswered questions. The only tangible thing to come out of her announcement is false hope.

What will it take for the minister to realize that, without comprehensive changes to the employment insurance system, all of her short-term solutions will not do?