Mr. Speaker, let me begin by paying tribute to the front line health care workers, volunteers, advocacy groups such as the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the Canadian Cancer Society, and the home care workers who have done so much to help craft this bill and whose efforts on behalf of sick and disabled Canadians mean so much.
We are here to discuss Bill C-278, presented by my hon. colleague from Sydney—Victoria, in Nova Scotia. This bill aims to extend the maximum period for which EI sickness benefits may be paid from 15 weeks to 50 weeks, in the event of illness, injury or quarantine.
Current legislation allows the claimant to receive up to a maximum of 15 weeks. The time for which a claimant is eligible is determined by a medical certificate from a health care professional attesting to the person's inability to work and stating the probable duration of the illness.
Many of us have had constituents, friends and family members who have experienced financial hardship as they recovered from a debilitating disease or trauma, such as cancer, heart disease, or any other serious illness we face as a nation.
A persistent scenario, however, and one very familiar to many MPs is the reality that there are people who have applied for EI sickness benefits and have received the full 15 weeks but are still unable to return to the workforce within the stipulated period.
When the Employment Insurance Act was adopted in the 1990s, sickness benefits were compassionately paid to people who could not work temporarily because of an illness.
Certainly, this financial support is an incentive to allow individuals to focus on treatment and get well so that they can return to the workforce as soon as possible.
Our Canada pension plan does not have the flexibility to allow people to receive benefits if they are in a position to eventually return to work, if they cannot work for a prolonged period or if they leave the job market and later want to return to work, given the length of their illness.
I hope to present my own bill, now on the order paper, to amend the Canada pension plan, or CPP, so that people who suffer from an episodic illness may receive benefits from the system under the circumstances that I just mentioned.
Many people in this country mistakenly believe that recipients who have exhausted their sickness benefits need only apply for Canada pension plan disability benefits. As I'm sure many of my hon. colleagues know, this system has very strict eligibility criteria. Access to benefits is often refused because the disability is not complete. The few people who do meet the eligibility criteria must go through an application process that takes about three months. Then there is an even longer waiting period before they begin receiving their CPP disability benefits.
Furthermore, most doctors approve CPP applications only if the illness is expected to last more than a year.
Today Canadians encounter three grave and growing threats to their health: cancer, heart disease and stroke. Many of these illnesses which once represented death are now curable or preventable all because of new and constantly emerging technologies.
Let us be clear that the existing system is not doing enough. Because our health system is so weak and wait times are so lengthy, for most individuals waiting for care, 15 weeks is insufficient to cover wait times for diagnostic tests prior to receiving a diagnosis. Then there is a further lengthy period of time before treatment can begin. Therefore, how can we as policy makers expect 15 weeks to include the recovery period when individuals at the end of that time might still be waiting for treatment to begin? Cancer treatment could typically continue over a period of several months.
This can have financial consequences for families, who must bear the costs of uninsured treatments and drugs, travel costs for specialized treatments, costs for special diets and non-prescribed medical supplies.
For example, a 2004 survey of women with breast cancer revealed that at least 76% of respondents had not worked for more than 15 weeks; 75% said that the 15 weeks of employment insurance benefits did not cover the treatment period.
Indulge me while I quote from some of the testimony given by Mr. Kenneth Kyle, the director of public issues at the Canadian Cancer Society, when he attended the legislative committee hearings studying this bill. He said:
For many patients the recovery from the effects of cancer often takes many months. Requiring recovering cancer patients to return to the workforce before they have regained some measure of improved health is to put in jeopardy the patients' and their families' prospects for recovery.
The head of oncology at the Cape Breton Cancer Centre, Dr. Ron MacCormick, is on record as saying that he would be more than willing to testify to the fact that it can take up to one year after treatment for a person who has had cancer to begin to regain his or her energy. In fact, most oncologists will tell us that treatment, surgery, chemotherapy or radiation alone can take up to a year, so we are not even talking about the recovery period.
As decision-makers, we have not yet considered these patients who are forced to work during the current 15-week benefit period, much less the people suffering from chronic illnesses such as sickle-cell anemia, requiring periodic hospitalization, or those who suffer side effects from prescription drugs.
The bill will greatly help people who have had bypass surgery and who cannot return to work during the usual eight to twelve week recovery period. It will also help the many stroke survivors who have moderate or minor disabilities and are not eligible for CPP because they do not have what is considered a serious disability.
The harsh reality is that diseases such as these are striking younger and younger people. Many of them have not had an opportunity to properly begin their careers, establish themselves or invest in RRSPs that they might be able to access in the case of illness. Many of them have the potential and expectations of returning to the workforce to continue their careers.
At the risk of berating the point, we are an aging society. It is therefore even more important to put in place the necessary financial support systems to bridge the gap for those workers who depend solely on employment insurance sick benefits while incapacitated.
According to the 2007 cancer statistics, there is a five year relative survival ratio of 80% which means that people with cancer have an 80% likelihood of living for five years after diagnosis compared to similar people in the general population.
Since I do not have much time left—thank you, Mr. Speaker for the warning—I would like to conclude by saying the following.
I would urge my fellow members to support the bill. It is a bill for our times. EI sickness benefits remain the only viable vehicle to help alleviate the financial burden for individuals suffering from a major illness and for whom 15 weeks is simply not enough to get better and return to work.
The bill will die unless the government brings forward the necessary royal recommendation. The Conservatives appear to be deliberate in their lack of movement on the bill. The way that the Conservatives are behaving, and actions speak louder than words, one can only assume it is their intent to let the bill die.
Again, I call on the government to bring forward a royal recommendation, so that the bill can become law and Canadians can indeed regain the faith they obviously need in knowing that their government cares about their health and well-being, and is not playing petty politics with their lives.
