Paul Szabo

[Employment Insurance Act, September 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, let me deal with one more issue of accountability and basically telling the truth.

The parliamentary secretary talked about Liberal members walking out of the EI meetings in the summer that were organized by the leader of the official opposition. At page 5112 of Hansard of September 17, the member for Dartmouth—Cole Harbour went through the full agenda and the activities that took place. I will not read it, but for reference purposes it stated that every time that government members undertook to put information before the committee in advance of the meeting, they did not. They did table drafts, which meant that when we arrived at the meeting we were given something.

Those meetings were intended to look at opportunities to help 500,000 unemployed Canadians. It is projected that unemployment is going to go to almost 10%. Those meetings were meant to help the unemployed, but the reality is that the government continued to play games. Government members continued to say they would do things but then never delivered.

Now the government has come forward with this legislation. The parliamentary secretary says opposition parties are playing around. If the government were serious about this legislation, it would have referred it to committee before second reading. The bill would have been passed and we would have had this legislation much quicker. Things could have been done.

The reason why the Conservatives did not do that is because if we deal with it at second reading, time will be wasted and it will never get passed in time. Once a bill is passed at second reading, substantive changes cannot be made to it. Therefore, we can only tinker with it at committee and parties that want to improve it have no chance. If the government had referred the bill to committee before second reading, we could have made it a better bill.

That member has not been accountable to Canadians.

[Employment Insurance Act, September 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to participate in this debate on Bill C-50, concerning the Employment Insurance Act and potential amendments.

My first reaction was to wonder why, if this was really important, it did not happen last May when numerous employment insurance bills were coming before the House on a regular basis. Why did it not happen during the meetings that were negotiated with the Liberal Party to sit down and work out important changes that could help the unemployed? Five hundred thousand families are living on EI right now. Jobs have been lost.

We have debates going on about a stimulus program, and we are going to get this infrastructure money out, and it is going to be shovel ready. How many people can remember when the government kept talking about shovel ready? In most people's minds all it takes is approving the money and giving the money to the approved project, and it is ready to go.

However, that is not the way it works. In fact, at the end of the last fiscal year, which ended March 31, 2009, there was about $3.5 billion of infrastructure funding that lapsed. It was for approved projects that were ready to go. We knew that the economy was under duress. Unemployment was rising and that is when we needed the investment.

Why did it not happen? Why did that $3.5 billion not get out before the end of the fiscal year? It was because the government wanted to manage the bottom line. It did not want to show a bigger deficit than what it was already going to have, because it had promised to balance the books.

I have raised these points to raise the issues of credibility and accountability. Accountability to me is when one can say “I can explain my actions and my decisions or my words truthfully and honestly and in plain and simple language. I can explain and justify them, and everybody will understand”.

However, what we have had is a lot of fuzz. We have had a lot of code words. The minister responsible for infrastructure will not talk about how many projects money has gone out for. He talks about what the government has announced.

There is a project that got money this past week which was announced six years ago. Therefore when the minister responsible for infrastructure talks about something being announced, it means nothing. It is simply trying to evade the reality that in fact monies have not gone out.

We are faced with an employment insurance problem, and we have a bill that has come forward. I think there has been a fair bit of debate and I do not want to repeat it. However, it is clear that there are many good arguments that this bill for long-tenured workers who have not claimed EI but have paid into the system means they are going to be able to draw benefits for longer periods. However, the benefit period will depend on the industry that the worker comes from, whether it be auto, forestry or the resources. Under the bill, that makes a difference.

I looked at the minister's speech, and I did not see that. The minister boasted that she had called for a briefing. In her speech and in question period that same day, Thursday, September 17, the minister went out of her way to make the point that we had a briefing and not one Liberal member came, and that therefore they do not support these important changes for workers.

I found that really hard to believe, because I did not see anything. It took me a couple of hours to track it all down, and what I found is that the e-mail from the minister's office went to only one Liberal member of Parliament. Then the minister had the gall to get up in the House and say, “not one Liberal member attended the briefing meeting”.

That is not my opinion, that is a fact. Government members can ask for a copy of the emails to prove it.

Other members have said that. The parliamentary secretary said the same thing in a speech. They have said that not one Liberal member showed up. When a notice is sent out to only one member, and if that member's staff happens to miss it or the member cannot make it, what do we do? It is not being accountable. It is not being truthful and plain. It is playing games. It is casting aspersions. If the truth were known, if it was in plain and simple language, it would not be an issue, and it should not be brought up.

If the minister's only argument is that the Liberals do not care, that argument just fell apart. On top of that, her colleagues are parroting the same erroneous facts. That is the reality that we have to live with here.

I raise this accountability issue because the member for Selkirk—Interlake on the Friday we were last here went through a little scenario about employment insurance premiums. He said that when the Liberals were in government, they kept raising employment insurance premiums.

After that but before question period, and the record can be checked, I rose on a point of order with the Speaker because this was clearly not a matter of fact. It was, in fact, the reverse. For 12 years in a row the Liberals reduced employment insurance premiums from the position they were at when we took over from Brian Mulroney. I did not know how to deal with this matter other than to raise it with the Speaker and the Speaker had to rule it as a matter of debate.

We have to think about this. If someone says something that is factually incorrect, not a matter of opinion but just factually incorrect, and another member rises to challenge it, there is no recourse in this place. A member has no recourse when another member gives misinformation that he or she knew or ought to have known was false.

The people of Canada continue to get the same rhetoric, the same misinformation. Suddenly, that misinformation shows up in all the Conservative literature that those members send out to everybody else's ridings. Everybody knows about the $30 million worth of ten percenters sent out to ridings of other members of Parliament--

[Employment Insurance Act, September 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, accountability in this place really gets strained at times. The member will know that the government did not propose any new initiatives at the summer meetings, none. The Conservatives could have suggested the idea of this bill, but they did not. Now the member is somehow suggesting that the Liberals walked out. The Liberals had no meeting to go to. There was no meeting called after the failure to table the documents by the minister.

The other point I want to make is this, and I hope the member will comment on it. It seems that the minister and the member now are making hay over the fact that there was a meeting called to give a briefing on this important bill. They are saying not one Liberal showed up for the meeting. However, if the member would go to the minister's office, or the minister's aide and look at the email that was sent out, he will see that only one Liberal member was given notice of it. If he is complaining that no Liberals attended, it is pretty hard to attend when we do not even get notice. I hope the member will withdraw his criticism of the members who would have liked to attend.

[Criminal Code, September 28th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, the bill seeks to eliminate the long arms registry that was set up by Parliament in law.

Back in 1994, when the issue of the registry was first put forward, one of the things the Conservative members failed to mention was that the crime committed using long arms was actually greater than crime by handguns.

How could it have been greater? When we had a system where there was nothing to require the safe storage, training, registration and so on, all kinds of problems were happening. In fact, long arms were being stored by the front door and if there was a problem they would get the gun and go ahead.

If the mover of the bill says that the registry has done nothing to reduce crime, her own facts say that in fact now long arm crime is away down. Therefore, obviously it worked. Then she concludes that it is not helping to alleviate crime so we should get rid of the long arm registry.

If we follow that logic, then she must also say that we need to get rid of the handgun registry because clearly the registry is expensive, wasteful and does not do anything. That is not the truth. When police officers and public safety officers who have access to the CPIC system go into a situation where they are not sure whether there is a risk, that tool is available to them.

I intend to complete my speech the next time we deal with the bill but I do want to say that the member has raised selective facts. If she wants the bill to be passed, she needs to put it all on the table. It needs to be true, full and plain and the member needs to be accountable for her words. We will see.

[Employment Insurance Act, September 18th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, respectfully, we operate in this place on the presumption of honesty. I know all hon. members try to be correct.

During the hon. member's speech, he indicated, I believe incorrectly, that the Liberals were increasing EI premiums. The record shows 13 years of EI premium decreases.

I wonder if the member would correct the record—

[Employment Insurance Act, September 17th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I heard several times during the debate and questioning references to get this bill to committee so we can make some changes, and of course other matters we can deal with, like other benefits, et cetera.

I think that is very noble to suggest that we could do that. However, I think maybe the deputy House leader for the Conservative Party, as a learned man on these matters, knows about scope of the bill and knows that when a bill passes at second reading and is referred to committee, it is approval in principle for that bill for the purpose for which that bill was set up, which is to deal with long-tenured employees.

As a consequence, it would appear to me, and I am asking the hon. member if he would like to also share his views with the House, that changes or proposed amendments, such as self-employed worker changes and other things that we have talked about, in fact, would be beyond the scope of the bill being referred to the committee and, in fact, would be out of order.

[Employment Insurance Act, September 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I have a simple question for the member regarding this important bill. The minister responsible for the Canada Revenue Agency described the bill as being one more way in which we can add to other things that have been done with EI. It is a very straightforward bill. There was a request for unanimous consent to complete this work by tomorrow. The Bloc recommended that we send the bill to committee immediately before second reading. This would allow for some latitude in terms of the scope of the bill to make substantive amendments at committee stage.

In both instances, the government denied unanimous consent and rejected those proposals. I wonder if the member could explain why.

[Employment Insurance Act, September 17th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, in his speech, the member referred to the Canada EI Financing Board, which was included in the last budget. As I recall, that called for some $2 billion to be transferred to this new board for seed money, then it would administer the ins and outs of the employment insurance program.

My understanding, though, is that the board has not yet been set up and that the $2 billion of seed money has not been provided. It does not exist, so I would hope the member would provide some clarification on why he even raised it.

If that does not exist, then we still have this EI surplus in the notional EI fund, which has a $50 billion-plus surplus. Under the rules, two years of surplus have to be retained for recession purposes and a board would determine the premiums to be set. Therefore, the only way to deal with the excess surplus is either to reduce premiums or to introduce new programs, neither of which have been done because those members ignore the fact that the EI fund actually exists.

Would the member care to clarify whether we have a financing board or whether the EI fund still exists and whether either of these are in fact operational for recession purposes?

[Employment Insurance Act, September 17th, 2009]

Madam Speaker, I have noticed that the debate has morphed into a discussion of more than just what this bill offers but in fact virtually everything to do with addressing the economic needs of Canadians at this time of financial duress.

There were three areas on which I wanted to ask the member for his input.

I, unfortunately, did not get a chance to go to the government's briefing on this thing. The bill was tabled only yesterday after question period. There was not very much time to give notice. I was not even back in my office until late last night. I wonder, since there are so many questions about the computation of how one comes up with $900 million, or almost a billion dollars, for 190,000 people--and I assume the briefing provided the basis for that calculation--if the minister would undertake to table in the House a copy of the calculation so that we could understand where it came from.

The second item on which I would ask for his input is that the member, in his speech, actually did say that this bill is just one more item, that it is just one more thing that they are going to do, that they are not fixing the EI system, that they are not addressing the qualification periods or, as the member for Acadie—Bathurst was concerned about, little technicalities, and that they have a computation of additional benefits for long-term workers who have paid over a longer period but have not claimed.

I wonder if he could explain why the government refused unanimous consent to either send this bill to committee or deal with it at all stages before the end of the week if it is so straightforward and he really supports it.

[Employment Insurance Act, September 17th, 2009]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the minister for bringing Bill C-50 forward.

Opposition parties have been working diligently to provide some relief to the unemployed and particularly those who in this case have contributed over a long period of time and never been claimants et cetera. This is an important initiative that will be well received by those in that case.

The point is, and I ask this question of the minister quite honestly, that a mechanism was set up to discuss and entertain proposals on how we could provide relief to the unemployed. The government agreed to this committee and there were meetings. The government's position was that it would never agree to the changes that were being brought to the table by the Liberal Party.

I want to understand from the minister's perspective, why provisions such as these were not presented to the committee that met during the summer, so that we could have entertained this in a more timely fashion on behalf of the unemployed?