Mr. Speaker, may I say that you look very comfortable and proper in that chair. You are doing a good job in recognizing those of us in the opposition parties who would like to add to the debate.
I will begin my remarks by registering a grievance of sorts. In the short period of time that I have been a member of parliament more often than not when I get up to speak it is during a time allocation situation. I am not saying that all bills which go through the House of Commons end up with some form of closure or time allocation but, by some bizarre freak of nature, every time I want to speak it is under the circumstances that there has been time allocation imposed. Frankly, it is starting to jade my world view of the House.
I want to register as a grievance to the federal government that my experience in the House is being warped by its abuse of the system and by its stamping all over the democratic process by once again implementing time allocation.
Speaking, with what time I have, to Bill C-2, let me point out that I and the NDP caucus believe that Bill C-2 is fundamentally flawed, not because of what is in the bill, because there are elements we support within the bill, but because of what the bill fails to do.
Bill C-2 fails to recognize the real problem with the EI system, which is that nobody qualifies any more. It is not an employment insurance program if unemployed people do not get any insurance benefits out of it. The very name has become a misnomer. Those who need the benefits that the EI system is supposed to provide do not get them.
We are starting from a very dangerous premise here. We have this revenue generating cash cow for the federal government that is failing to meet the needs of unemployed workers. We then have the government ramming this through before substantial changes can be made to address the real flaws and errors within the program.
What really bothers me is that even the amendments do not find their origins in any real desire on the part of the federal government to meet the needs of unemployed workers. Most of what we see in Bill C-2 and in any EI reform in the past 10 years seems to find its origins in this underlying position that there are lazy people who would rather sit on EI than take part in the workforce. The government has decided therefore to use some kind of a tough love policy against these people to kickstart them into the workforce no matter what their circumstances. The whole thing finds its origins in the attitude that people would rather be unemployed and on EI than taking part in the workforce.
I remember the hysteria and fear in the mid-seventies, when UIC was available, about the UIC ski team of teenagers in Banff cheating UIC. During that period of time the government made a nationwide survey on the issue of UIC fraud and abuse. It found that there were actually more federal government Tory cabinet ministers guilty of fraud on a ratio and proportion basis than there were UIC recipients guilty of fraud.
Every year approximately 200 EI recipients are called to task for some kind of abuse of the system. During the Mulroney years approximately 30% of federal Tory cabinet ministers were guilty of fraud compared to an infinitesimal, an amount almost too small to count, of EI recipients who were called to task on fraud. The attitude that there is widespread abuse of the system bothers me when I know, because I deal with people who use the EI system frequently, that simply is not true.
I began my speech today by saying that Bill C-2 is flawed because of what it fails to do. It fails to deal with the eligibility issue. The fact that less than 40% of unemployed people qualify for unemployment insurance should strike people as somehow being wrong? It actually gets worse when we deal with unemployed women. There is a real gender issue here. Less than 25% of unemployed women qualify for any benefit whatsoever. Less than 15% of unemployed youth under the age of 25 qualify for any benefit whatsoever. How can we even call this an insurance system when virtually nobody qualifies?
Eligibility is the first issue. The rules should state that when we are unemployed and need income maintenance, the benefits will be there. When we are forced to pay premiums it is only fair that we have a reasonable expectation of collecting the benefit.
The second fundamental flaw is the way the government arrives at what our benefits will be. Even if we are lucky enough to be one of those 40% of unemployed Canadians who qualify for benefits, the way that the government calculates the benefit is so wrong that we end up collecting far less per week than we used to under the old rules.
To get any benefits whatsoever is a Herculean task. Once we do qualify for benefits, the way that the government calculates our benefits we end up getting far less money. There are fewer people collecting and those who are collecting, collect less money. It is no wonder there is a surplus.
The surplus is the third thing I would like to address. I have said this in the House before and I need to keep saying it over and over again until it sinks in with the Canadian people just how badly the program is being abused and milked by the Liberal government and being used as some kind of cash cow. The surplus is $750 million per month. There is more money going into the program than is being paid out in benefits. That is $7 billion to $8 billion per year.
Now we find ourselves in a budgetary surplus situation. Let us look at the sources of the revenue that the government now calls its surplus: $35 billion to $43 billion surplus accumulated out of the EI system alone; $35 billion cut out of programs through the health and social transfer; and a further $30 billion surplus that everybody seems to have forgotten about, the public service pension plan by legislation, by act of parliament, was taken away from those workers last year.
It is no coincidence that when we add those three up, $35 billion, $35 billion and $30 billion, all on the backs of the unemployed, working people and those who need social programs, it adds up to $100 billion, which is exactly what the Minister of Finance gave in tax cuts to the wealthy and to corporations. I do not think it is any coincidence that those figures are identical. I just wanted to point that out.
The last few minutes that I have, I want to point out another shortcoming in Bill C-2 that is very close to my own personal experience. The apprenticeship system has suffered terribly under the changes to EI and, in Bill C-2, the government has chosen not to correct it. This is something for which there is almost unanimous support. Virtually every industry, academic and economist we have spoken to has agreed that this is wrong, yet it has not been addressed in Bill C-2. The two week waiting period that unemployed workers must wait before getting their first benefits is applied to apprentices when they are going through the trade school component of the apprenticeship.
In other words, they are being treated as if they are unemployed when they are not. They are apprentices. They are employed and have an attachment to the workforce. They are simply going through the annually scheduled eight week training period in community college and yet are being penalized with the two week waiting period at the front end.
This is a new change that was made in 1995-96. It has had the effect of driving people away from apprenticeship programs. A lot of young people simply cannot afford to be without income for that period of time and are choosing not to attend the eight week scheduled apprenticeship training in community college. Gradually a four year apprenticeship turns into a seven year apprenticeship and many simply are dropping out.
It is having a dilatory effect on the apprenticeship system and on industry because of what I believe is a miserly point of view on behalf of the Liberal government, using the EI system as a revenue generating cash cow instead of providing income maintenance to unemployed workers, and in this case, providing trade school apprenticeship training to people in the skilled trades.
