Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise in the House to speak to the NDP motion today, essentially calling on the new Liberal government to act immediately to fix employment insurance for Canadians.
The NDP has always stood up for Canadian workers, workers who depend on a strong social safety net, a safety net they can rely on. That safety net has been under attack in the last few decades. The most vicious attacks were undertaken by past Liberal and Conservative governments, whose actions in the 1990s caused a great deal of harm, particularly to the employment insurance system.
In recent months, we have heard a great number of promises from the government benches on how they plan to fix the EI system, a system that many of their constituents rely on as well, but we have yet to see that kind of support in action. In fact, despite commitments that were made even in the election campaign by the governing party, one commitment that definitely was not made was to stop pillaging billions of dollars from the EI account.
I believe that members of Parliament always have to know their history, so let us look at that history. Let us go back to the 1990s. The Liberal prime minister at the time adopted a series of measures that led to a drastic drop in EI eligibility. The fundamentals of these changes were brought into place as well by the Progressive Conservative government of Brian Mulroney. When the Liberal Party got back into power, it did not miss the opportunity to continue the work of dismantling the employment insurance system.
In 1994, then minister Axworthy proposed a reform of the employment insurance system and the adoption of a new bill in 1996 that radically changed how employment insurance, then called unemployment insurance, worked. It changed the system from an insurance mechanism to something that put more emphasis on individuals' responsibility to sort out their employment situations. The consequences of these measures were dire.
The proportion of unemployed Canadians who received benefits was nearly cut in half between 1990 and 1997. It is not just progressive economists and researchers, but many others, including the Conference Board of Canada, who have made a direct connection between the cuts to employment insurance and the rise of income inequality in our country. The Liberals of the 1990s continued to push forward with their changes and we are still living with the consequences today. Employment insurance is one of the strongest links in our social safety net and it should come as no surprise that its demise has led to skyrocketing inequalities.
Let us look at one of the most dramatic decisions to date when it comes to EI. Some $51 billion in the EI fund was pillaged by the Liberal government. This, as many know, was not government money, but the money of Canadian workers and employers that has been put into this fund. The money was taken from the premiums that employers and workers paid into the system, which should have remained to help workers on an ongoing basis.
Previous Conservative governments went full speed ahead with dangerous reforms that put a huge strain on Canadian workers. Even if only half of unemployed Canadian workers had access to EI in the midst of the Liberal reforms in the 1990s, the Conservatives doubled down on the challenges to create even more barriers to accessing employment insurance. Many of these changes were mean-spirited, forcing workers to take jobs that would be up to one hour away from where they lived, and taking lower-paid jobs at that. We often heard that the Conservatives wanted to match every job opening with Canadians able to do the work, but for seasonal workers in particular they created conditions that required many of them to give up their trades and leave their home communities.
Today, less than four Canadian workers out of 10 facing unemployment have access to EI. In terms of accessibility rates, the unprecedented historic low of 36.5% eligibility was reached while the Conservatives were at the helm.
How did we get here? We got here by repeatedly putting up barriers to accessing employment insurance.
The increase in work hours required to access employment insurance, now between 420 to 700 hours, depending on where one lives, is a considerable barrier to accessing the system. A Canadian living in western Canada might have to work much longer than a Canadian in the east in order to access employment insurance. Having inconsistent access rates between regions has the unintended consequence of the the government not being able to take into account a rapidly changing economic situation in certain parts of the country. This has to be changed. That is why the NDP stands by its proposal, with many other advocates, in supporting the proposal to move to a universal 360 hours threshold for workers, regardless of where they live.
The Alberta government has requested an alleviation of the hours required and demands that the government take into account the rapidly degrading economic situation in its part of the country. Premier Notley said Albertans should be able to enjoy the same access to benefits. We hope that the federal government will act on their needs.
This dramatic shift in the economic situation for the people of Alberta, Saskatchewan, Newfoundland and Labrador, and other parts of the country is one of the reasons we feel it is a priority to present this motion in the House today. The creation of a universal qualifying threshold, regardless of the regional rate of unemployment, should be a priority for the government. The regional threshold never made any sense, but it has been shown in recent months to be an ill-advised approach to administering a critical program.
The bottom line is that employment insurance should be there for every worker who needs it, regardless of where he or she lives, and the system has to take into account the economic condition of various areas in the country so that things can shift quickly. A lower threshold would also allow more Canadians to have access to the regime. We hope the government will take this into account immediately.
We are also proud to introduce a proposal that would repeal other aspects of the harmful Conservative reforms, including the need for Canadians to uproot themselves to find employment. A one-hour commute should not be imposed on Canadians as an eligibility criterion to receive the benefits for which they have paid.
We are also proud to present measures to protect the EI account from political interference and to ensure that what workers and employers pay into the system will only be used for their benefit, and not to fund tax reductions for the richest Canadians or the biggest corporations.
Considering the timing of the motion, we hope that our colleagues in all parties will find that the federal government must take immediate action.
The motion moved by my colleague from Jonquière is very timely. It bears repeating that the previous government's employment insurance reforms must be repealed, and this has the support of many people in Quebec and the Maritimes.
Anyone who has applied for EI knows that the barriers to program access have become insurmountable for too many workers.
In fact, more than six out of 10 Canadians who lose their jobs are deprived of their benefits. This means that a majority of Canadians who lose their jobs can find themselves without any income when their professional situation deteriorates.
As I mentioned, this is the result of a series of both Conservative and Liberal reforms that have dismantled this important component of our social security program.
This work must be carried out in a meaningful way, and we hope that, together with civil society and the unemployed, we will keep up pressure on the government so that it puts together a social safety net that meets workers' needs.
The motion in front of us today is fundamentally about justice, a principle that ought to guide all of us as Canadian parliamentarians, the need to achieve justice for Canadian workers and the need to achieve justice for Canadian families. Let us fix employment insurance.
