Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise on behalf of my colleagues in the Bloc Québécois on the bill to amend the Employment Insurance Act and increase benefits for certain categories of claimants.
First I want to tell the House and the people listening to us that it is false that the Bloc Québécois is going to engage in demagoguery on the backs of people who get employment insurance benefits. The Bloc Québécois has said—and its leader has repeated ad nauseam—that when bills are introduced by the Conservative government, the Bloc will react like a reasonable, responsible opposition party and will study each bill and each motion that is introduced on a case by case basis, regardless of any background noise related to minority government, pre-election periods or election alerts.
The Bloc Québécois cannot support this bill as it now stands. To avoid all demagoguery from the Conservatives—of the kind only they are really capable of—I will explain why this is so. I want to warn the House, though, that the Conservative big wigs will launch huge media attacks claiming the Bloc Québécois is against unemployed people.
The Bloc Québécois opposes this bill because it does not get to the heart of the problem, that is to say, the ability of the unemployed to access benefits. The problem—as everyone knows—is accessibility. If the government wanted to act in good faith, it would first resolve the accessibility issue. There is no point in having the best of programs if people cannot qualify for them. That does not do any good. This is why we cannot support the bill.
Together with the committees of the unemployed, the mouvement des Sans-Chemise and the labour unions, the Bloc Québécois wants 360 hours in order to qualify for employment insurance. The problem is that when workers who have paid their premiums ask for EI benefits, they are told they do not qualify yet because the do not have enough hours. It is a bit like someone who pays for fire insurance and then suffers a total loss. He goes to his insurer to make a claim and rebuild his house, but the insurer says he failed to read the fine print saying that the insurance does not cover the first total loss, just the second. What would we call this insurer? We would call him a fraud, a thief. That is the big problem.
In my riding of Montmorency—Charlevoix—Haute-Côte-Nord, especially in Côte-de-Beaupré, the Île d'Orléans, the greater Charlevoix area and Upper North Shore, there is a category of workers who are nowhere to be found in this bill. The government could provide 300 weeks of benefits, these workers would still not get anything. I am talking about the situation of seasonal workers.
My colleagues here know very well that seasonal workers face a very unique situation in our regions in Quebec. Even if they wanted to do some planting, some reforestation or silviculture work, I am sorry, but in February when there are four feet of snow in the forest, people cannot go around planting little spruce trees.
Even if we do manage to develop winter tourism in our regions—with Europeans, for example, coming to snowmobile, or dogsled or whatever—there is one fact. Most of our inns in the regions close after Thanksgiving. Our innkeepers are hospitable. They would like to remain open year round. The problem is the lack of business. When you work in an inn and there are no guests, the employer does not pay you to sit around and knit. The employer has to lay people off.
I see my colleague from Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine. In the winter, when the river is locked in snow and ice there is no fishing. Fishermen are another category of seasonal worker. If this government, then, which claims to be sensitive and attentive—let me say that we know how the Conservative government operates—had a single ounce of sensitivity, it would have taken account in its bill of the reality faced by seasonal workers. It has been shown that the EI plan in its current form, with the initial cuts made under the Liberals and more made by the Conservatives, is unacceptable. That is why we say that Liberal or Conservative, it amounts to the same thing.
The plan is unfair to certain categories of workers. I mentioned the seasonal workers. I could say exactly the same thing about women, young people and older workers. The current system is unfair. The government should have taken this into account and really corrected the situation and not made cosmetic changes in order to use the coming week off to say in the media that the Bloc does not support the unemployed. The people in our regions know that the Bloc is the only party defending the unemployed in this House.
The best proof that the Bloc wants to change and improve this bill, which is totally unacceptable as it is written—and this is why we will vote against it—is that we said that, before a vote is taken in the House, the committee should hear from the groups concerned. We should invite the Quebec forestry industry council. We should invite the representatives of committees of the unemployed, unions and the Conseil du patronat du Québec to tell us where the bill is unacceptable and how it could be improved.
That is why this very morning the House leader of the Bloc Québécois sought the unanimous consent of the House to send this bill to committee before second reading so the groups concerned, those directly involved, could inform parliamentarians from all parties and tell them why this bill, as worded, is not acceptable.
The government will tell us that 190,000 unemployed individuals will be eligible for the new program. I am convinced that they examined the eligibility provisions. They apply to workers who have had a job for a long time and find themselves unemployed, but what about the categories I mentioned earlier? One industry in Quebec has been hard hit by layoffs for five years. In my riding, they are still happening, and i am talking about the forestry industry. Those workers will not be eligible for the measures in Bill C-50.
The Globe and Mail, a paper not known for its sovereignist leanings, spoke about the bill. Does the Globe and Mail support sovereignty for Quebec? It pointed out that the bill proposed measures that will apply to workers in the automobile industry.
Which automobile industry is that? It is the one in Ontario, because there is hardly anything left of the auto industry in Quebec.
There was one assembly plant left in Sainte-Thérèse, but it closed. There was a Hyundai plant in Bromont, but it is closed too. We have parts subcontractors, I admit, but the automobile industry is concentrated in Ontario, for the most part. So this bill is custom made for Ontario.
We members of the Bloc proudly representing the regions and workers of Quebec cannot support a bill that provides additional benefits to 190,000 people who are unemployed, but practically nothing to Quebec. It is not designed for our forestry workers.
In conclusion, I would like to thank the two groups in my riding that are working very hard to stand up for the rights of the unemployed. I am thinking of Lyne Sirois of Mouvement Action-Chômage on Haute-Côte-Nord and Danie Harvey, who is behind the Sans-chemise movement in Charlevoix. I am certain that these people agree with the Bloc Québécois position that Bill C-50 does not address the needs of the unemployed in Quebec. For these reasons, the Bloc Québécois cannot support the bill.
The Bloc Québécois invites the other parties—because there are talks under way among the parliamentary leaders—to think seriously about the Bloc's offer to hear from the groups directly affected by this bill, before a vote is held, so that they can give us their perspectives. In light of these presentations, the government might listen to reason and amend its bill.
I repeat that we need real reform of the employment insurance program.
