Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in the debate on Bill C-50 and the three report stage motions on today's order paper. Substantively, Motions Nos. 2 and 3 are fairly straightforward.
The first motion deals with a royal recommendation as well as a change to the number of weeks. The benefit period that determines the weeks required would be changed from what was originally debated by this place back at second reading before the bill went to committee.
I thought it would be useful to make a couple of comments about Bill C-50 itself. Its genesis was to take into account the fact that extraordinary things happened in certain industries across the country, some more different than others, for instance, the forestry sector.
The forestry sector, because it relies so heavily on seasonal work similar to the fisheries sector, relies on the EI system to complement its working availability. Similarly, the auto industry. If the auto industry needs to retool or rework the factory for new models or for changes in models or whatever, it relies on the employment insurance system to provide a continuity of income under the plan to fulfill its purposes.
The petroleum industry, though, is a bit different. It does not rely on a ready and available workforce because it has down times and up times. The petroleum industry, particularly in the west, has grown enormously. We can see that by the shift in population, the demand for housing, the rise in prices of housing and all kinds of other things that happen. It had a very the stable workforce.
When the crunch came and the price of oil went down, all of a sudden there was this exodus of people from the petroleum industry. These people are the ones who will benefit the most from Bill C-50. Most of them are long service employees. The bill will get them more benefits than they would have otherwise been entitled to receive.
Table 1 in the legislative briefing notes lays out the level of benefits that people could get. Someone in the seven to ten year group would get five weeks. The table goes right up to 12 to 15 years. Someone in that group would get an extension of benefits of about 20 weeks. That is pretty substantial. There are a number of categories but I will not go into them.
This was basically to look at employees who had served for a long period of time, were not regular claimants of EI, and for no reason of their own had been laid off. This would allow a super benefit, as it were, during a certain period. The amendments under report stage Motions Nos. 2 and 3 indicate that the benefit period would begin on January 4. The benefit period would be retroactive to that date rather than when the bill actually received royal assent.
I asked a question earlier of an hon. member about the whole EI discussion. A special task force was established between the official opposition and the government to look at some of these questions.
It really concerns me that there was a void of information coming from the government representatives to the task force as to the kinds of things at which we could look. The task force was looking at the 360 hour eligibility base. If people got 360 hours within the time prescribed, they would qualify for benefits. It also was looking at the costing. It was interesting to note that the 360 hour benefit period was summarily dismissed by the government members of the task force, the minister being one, because they said that the cost of implementing the benefit level was $4.4 billion, and it was just too much.
We would think that the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development, who is responsible for the Employment Insurance Act and who has a full department of people who know much it costs for a certain level, would have the tools and the resources to know approximately how much it would cost if we were to change one of the variables. That was not the case. Subsequently we had some different assumptions. In fact, the cost of it would only be $2.5 billion. That is quite a bit different. That is $1.9 billion less than the Conservatives had said when they summarily dismissed the whole discussion.
Then after we got other third parties involved and the Parliamentary Budget Officer, and that is a whole story in itself, the estimates for introducing that level benefit came down to $1.3 billion compared to what the Conservatives initially said as being $4.4 billion. How can they be more than 300% off the actual cost of introducing those changes, when they are the government, when she is the minister, when she has a whole department and she knows exactly all the variables and how they work?
It leads to a question of credibility, and I know a number of the other members who have been concerned about the bill have been concerned about the equity. We do not have unlimited dollars and we just cannot holus-bolus spread it around. However, the minister had said very clearly, and other members have affirmed this, that this benefit was to be provided for all Canadians. It was estimated that some 190,000 people would benefit.
When the members did their homework and when they started to look at the areas in which there was long service of employment but reliance on employment insurance benefits, some industries were more advantaged and others were not getting a fair share. This is the kind of thing that really concerns Canadians because they cannot trust the government to tell them the truth. It really comes down to that. This is exactly what the bill comes down to.
When I look at the charts and the various gradations, somebody has gone to a lot of work to make this more complicated than it should have been. If the real intent was to assist long-service workers who found themselves all of a sudden out of work for a protracted period of time and they had not been users of the system, there could have been a very simple approach to it, but there was not. It begs the question, why?
I know the premiers were on side to get these changes done, but the summer task force was totally shut down. The member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, who was on the committee, told me what was happening. He said that when the government was ready, it set up a meeting and it was agreed that any of the proposals, any of the information that any party wanted the group to consider would have to be circulated to the members in advance. Not once did not happen. Every time the government members had something to submit, what did they do? They brought it and tabled it when the meeting started. They did not give anybody a chance to really understand what was there.
It shows a lack of good faith, a failure to show that a person could be trusted. It is a sloppy bill that will not help all Canadians. It will only help some and I know who they are.
