Robert Aubin

[The Budget, April 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my distinguished colleague for his question. I will respond very simply by saying that, no, it would not be difficult because there are many measures in this budget that are light years away from the interests of the New Democrats, who really do not have the same definition of the middle class as the Liberals do. When a person who makes less than $45,000 a year does not benefit from tax cuts, it shows that the government is already having problems putting the people in greatest need first. We are being told that the child benefit program will compensate for that, but for people who dream of joining the middle class and are not even getting a tax cut, how will the Liberal budget help them, if they have no children? Once again, there are good things in the budget. I mentioned a few of them. I do not have time to mention others, but the budget does not make Canadians a priority, far from it. Once again, the government is taking a piecemeal approach rather than really solving problems.

[The Budget, April 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, 10 minutes is really not enough time to respond to the budget. There are so many things to say. However, to ensure that as many members of the House as possible have the opportunity to participate in the debate and discussion, I have agreed to share my time with the member for Vancouver East.

As members know, all budgets are important, but the first budget of a new government should propose practical measures for making that government's election promises a reality.

When reading this budget, here is the image that comes to mind. Imagine that, during the election campaign, students, seniors and members of the middle class, who were the topic of much discussion, were asked to go to the store and buy a 1,000-piece puzzle. Everyone knows that it takes a lot of time to put a puzzle like that together. Now, imagine how disappointed those people would be when they discovered that there were pieces missing and that the picture on the puzzle did not match the picture on the box. That is kind of how I feel about this budget.

I will focus on two aspects of the budget. First, I will speak about issues that affect my riding and then I will talk about those that relate to my portfolio as a critic.

The pyrrhotite problem is definitely a crucial issue for Trois-Rivières and the entire Mauricie region. Throughout the four-year tenure of the previous government, I spoke out many times on this issue in order to have the federal government acknowledge its share of responsibility in this monumental catastrophe. For four and a half years, the Conservatives went out of their way to try to make us believe that they did not shoulder any of the responsibility. The Liberals remained silent the entire time, despite the fact that they had an MP from the area. While passing through Trois-Rivières, the future prime minister was suddenly gripped by compassion, we hoped, and recognized, when asked by a journalist, that there was an important human and economic tragedy in the Mauricie region and in Trois-Rivières in particular, and that his government would tackle it after the election, if indeed Canadians voted him into office.

I must admit that at first we had a glimmer of hope when the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance was at the table. There was also $30 million in the budget. The initial reaction in Trois-Rivières was that we were finally headed in the right direction. Unfortunately, this is not a step in the right direction because we quickly understood that it was the only step.

They are giving us $30 million, $10 million a year for three years, to deal with a situation costing in the hundreds of millions. The government is telling a few hundred people that if they are lucky enough to be among the first to submit their compensation claims, they may get some money. However, if they are among the 2,000 people who have exactly the same problem but who are too slow, they will get nothing because that avenue is closed.

During a recent visit to the region, both the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance and the Prime Minister said that this was the final offer, which makes no sense. If this human and economic tragedy arouses their sympathy, they should come up with a measure that will help all of the victims, not just some of them.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance said that he talks about pyrrhotite every day with his colleagues and is in weekly contact with the pyrrhotite victims' coalition. Unfortunately, this statement by Alain Gélinas, president of the Coalition d'aide aux victimes de la pyrrhotite, belies his assertion:

I leave him [the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance] messages, but he never calls back. He told the media that he talks to people from the coalition every week, but that is not at all true.

This is far from a comprehensive solution, so, unfortunately, the House can be sure that I will continue to talk about pyrrhotite often.

I also want to talk about employment insurance. This is an issue that affects people in my riding and across the country. There are some good measures here, such as reducing the waiting period from two weeks to one.

I am delighted to learn that the 36% of Canadians who have access to the EI system will have one less week to wait before they receive their benefits. How does this solve anything for everyone else, that is, the 60% of Canadians who do not qualify for benefits when they need EI? The universal eligibility threshold of 360 hours should have been the first measure on the list, but we do not see that anywhere in the budget.

These two examples and others that will follow show that this budget throws money around indiscriminately. It announces some interesting measures in certain areas, but nothing that can really solve any problems. It is as though the Liberals want to give a little bit to everyone, but there is not enough to really make a difference anywhere.

We could also talk about our seniors. In Trois-Rivières, seniors make up 20% of the population. Of that 20%, 60% receive the guaranteed income supplement. This gives some idea of the middle class, for example. The average annual income of those seniors is roughly $18,702. What was the first measure the Liberals introduced? It was a tax break for the wealthy. As we all know, anyone who earns $45,000 a year or less will not benefit from that tax cut.

The median salary in Quebec is around $31,500. That is nowhere near the $85,000 needed to get the highest benefit from these measures. Imagine, then, the reality facing seniors whose annual income is $18,000. Seniors are amongst the most needy people in our society, and they are the ones who built it. They are being told that this is all coming in July, but that is a long way away. The Liberals promised to make this an immediate priority during their campaign.

I could also mention SMEs. Back home, and elsewhere in Quebec and Canada, SMEs are key to job creation. In fact, 78% of jobs are created by SMEs. During the last Parliament, in a rare moment of unanimity, all parties in the House agreed to lower the tax rate for SMEs from 11% to 9%.

The Conservatives wanted to make the change in small increments and drag it out over four years. The Liberals said they wanted to move more quickly. We had the best plan. However, now we are left with the status quo. In the new budget, we see that there is no movement on this. Imagine all the small businesses, such as Volflex back home, which I visited and which is in full expansion, that were counting on this tax cut and now have to completely redo their budgets because of a broken promise.

Let us talk about young people, whose unemployment rate is almost twice as high as the national rate. The budget offers them precious little, except for less money than was announced during the election campaign. There is a shortfall of $365 million over the first two years of the budget, compared to the announcements made during the election campaign.

In Trois-Rivières, the forestry and aerospace industries were also seriously affected. There is nothing in the budget to kick-start the forestry industry.

My time is quickly running out and I would be remiss if I did not spend a minute on international development, because I am the critic for that portfolio. Although we can take some comfort in the budget increase, we must still recognize that it is not enough to make up for the $350 million slashed by the previous government. In other words, we are nowhere near the 0.7% of GDP that would allow us to actively contribute to achieving the 2030 sustainable development goals.

We are encouraged by the government's intention to review all Canadian aid programs. However, we hope that this aid will help reduce poverty, the first objective, that it will be aligned with local poverty reduction strategies, that the government will stop tying international aid to commercial objectives, and that we will finally consider international aid not as a donation to charity, but as an international obligation that we must fulfill.

[Housing, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, during the election campaign, the Prime Minister came to the Mauricie region and promised to make the necessary investments to help the pyrrhotite victims. He acknowledged that this is both a human and economic tragedy. My constituents are desperately waiting for assistance. In the meantime, many of them have had to give up their homes.

The budget will be tabled in 11 days, and my question is very simple: is the Prime Minister going to use that opportunity to keep his promise and provide financial assistance to the pyrrhotite victims?

[International Day of La Francophonie, March 11th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, since the House will not be sitting next week, I would like to take this opportunity to emphasize the importance of celebrating International Day of La Francophonie on March 20.

What exactly is the Francophonie? Beginning with mothers and fathers who sing in French to soothe their children, it is a mother tongue or the home language and the cradle of a culture. As a consistent presence in communities through schools, public services, and organizations that protect and promote it, it plays a part in development and becomes the language in which people work and relate to one another. Internationally, it breathes life into a burgeoning cultural and economic phenomenon.

In keeping with the theme of this year's celebration, it is the duty and pleasure of francophones and francophiles the world over to use and share “the power of words”.

If anyone is looking for a place and a way to celebrate this event, I invite them to join me in Trois-Rivières for the Mauricie region's Journées internationales de la francophonie from March 11 to 20.

Let us show our pride where the Francophonie's roots run deep.

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her wonderful speech. It was illuminating, as always.

It comes as no surprise that the Conservatives will not be supporting us on this motion, but I am a little surprised by the Liberals. During the previous Parliament, they stood by us when we talked about the 360-hour qualifying threshold. They stood by us when we debated the harmful elements of the Conservatives' reform. Now, even though they have not yet said so outright, it looks like the Liberals will not support the motion.

Is the fact that they see no need to protect the employment insurance fund and contributions to ensure that the services provided are self-funded the only thing that sets us apart from the Liberals?

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I am certainly familiar with the process because, in my constituency office, I have spent months, years even, dealing with the process that the former Conservative government brought in.

What I see week after week is that people cannot get answers and then have to wait for an unreasonable period of time. I also see that when people find the courage and the time to jump through the hoops, they sometimes get an adjudication, but they are without benefits that whole time. I would say that, most of the time, we help them put together winning cases. Still, it makes no sense to attack unemployed workers rather than unemployment.

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question.

In her speech, the minister obviously mentioned many things that are still in the works, which we will evaluate when we see them. I mentioned some interesting points, in particular her desire to increase services at Service Canada. This would enable those who want to apply, and hopefully more than 36% will be successful, to get better service, since we know very well that services were slashed under the previous government.

I also said that no one can take exception to improving compassionate care benefits.

However, I think this approach is misguided unless the government puts it in writing that the EI fund belongs to workers and must be used for the purposes set out in the act. Unfortunately, what I deduce from the minister's speech is that, once again, the Liberal government wants to give itself the same leeway to dip into the EI fund as needed for purposes other than those set out in the act.

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, never have I been happier than I am today to have microphones in the House of Commons to carry my voice, because there was no way that I was going to stay silent on an issue as important as standing up for workers. In case my voice gives out, I would like to say right away that I will be sharing my time with the member for Abitibi—Témiscamingue.

During the 41st Parliament, I was lucky enough to be our employment insurance critic and to learn from one of the greatest defenders of EI and workers' rights of all time, the former member for Acadie—Bathurst, Yvon Godin, whom I salute in passing and whom I thank for sharing his passion and above all his knowledge with me for so many years.

The issue before us this morning is extremely important. It is based on three main pillars, which have been neglected by both the Liberals and Conservatives in recent years.

This is evidenced by the fact that every time the EI system has been reformed since its creation, the same two things have happened: it has become harder for people to access the system and the benefit amount has been reduced.

We are talking about employment insurance. It is an insurance plan. That says it all. People contribute to it in order to draw benefits when they need them. In an insurance policy, the criteria are specific and well established.

Imagine if after choosing life insurance, car insurance, or property insurance, we were told how much it would cost and then we were told that there was a 64% chance that we would not be covered when the time came to make a claim. We would probably look for another insurance provider as quickly as possible.

The problem is that when it comes to employment insurance, there is only one plan in Canada, and the employers and employees who contribute to it and keep it going are the least entitled to it.

Oddly, since the beginning of this debate, we have heard all sorts of misleading statements about how the former Conservative government rescued the employment insurance plan by injecting $9 billion into it, but paid itself back afterward. The Conservatives put $9 billion into the plan because they had taken $52 billion out of it. If we take 52 and we subtract nine, then we can see that the plan absolutely had the means to be self-financing. That is the key to the plan.

I would like to recognize another former colleague, Robert Chisholm, who introduced a bill in the 41st Parliament to protect premiums paid by employers and employees into the employment insurance fund and to ensure that every single dollar paid into this fund is used only for the purposes stated in the Employment Insurance Act.

We know that a Supreme Court ruling more or less legalized the misappropriation and use of money from the employment insurance fund by a former Liberal government. Just because something is legal does not make it legitimate. That is why the NDP has been fighting for months and years to protect the fund. No government, regardless of its political stripe, can use this fund for anything other than to support workers.

I will now move on to the second most important point. Oddly enough, when I was the critic, there was a lot of talk about unemployment in Quebec and the Maritimes, whereas the economy was in high gear in western Canada, especially Alberta. I always maintained that it was an insurance program.

I hope that everyone has the good fortune of paying for insurance their whole life and never needing to collect a cent. However, insurance is insurance, and when disaster strikes we have to be able to do something about it.

Now disaster has struck in Alberta and the workers in that province are in exactly the same situation as all the workers in eastern Canada, Quebec, and Ontario, some of whom had to face this type of stress long before them.

The threshold of 360 hours is just the beginning. There is no reason in the world why the stress level of a person who loses a job would differ from one region to another, because job loss is one of the most stressful things that can happen in life. Health insurance would not be offered differentially from one region to another because the rate of health or illness is different. That is absurd. When people get sick, they need health insurance and they get the services they need. When people lose their jobs, they need employment insurance, and if they paid into it, they should have access to it at a set threshold of 360 hours.

For a while now, I have been hearing the same rather short-sighted reasoning from our Conservative friends who are going on and on about how people will only have to work two months to be eligible for EI, as though workers might make a way of life out of doing that. However, for people who work odd hours or who are in a precarious situation with fewer hours of work per week, it does not take two months to accumulate 360 hours of work. It may take six or eight months.

Take for example the closure of all the Target stores in Quebec just a few months ago. Most of the employees who worked there every week were ineligible for employment insurance benefits. Three hundred and sixty hours is not two months of work. It may be many months of work for those who are less wealthy and who really need this little boost.

It is also important to note that employment insurance is commensurate with income. People who work in precarious, part-time jobs earn a lot less than people who work 40 hours a week, as our Conservative friends calculated. It is completely unfair and out of touch with reality to paint these workers as people who only want to work two months out of the year and live off EI the rest of the time. That is completely ridiculous.

The last important point I wanted to make, since I said I had three points, has to do with the vile consequences of the Conservative reform, and yes, I mean vile. Unfortunately, I have too much to say and not enough time, but let us talk about the notion of suitable employment.

We have already heard a former finance minister in this House say that suitable employment is whatever job one can get. Let us imagine for example a teacher with a university education who has developed a particular expertise. In the first few years of his career, as is often the case, he gets laid off at the end of the school year, because there is no guarantee that there will be enough students the next year to guarantee him a job. If this worker were asked to go and pick strawberries, he would have to prove that he is incapable of picking strawberries. I do not know too many people who would not be able to pick strawberries, so that would be considered suitable employment.

It is completely ridiculous to suggest that a teacher, who has developed an expertise and special skill that society needs, will be deprived of his professional work only to be sent to do a job that he never intended to do. That is not the kind of contribution he wants to make to society. Worse still, because the teacher is taking that job in order to fill the gap months, when the time comes to leave the strawberry patch and return to teaching, if he is offered a contract, his departure will be identified as being voluntary and he will not be eligible for EI, should he lose his teaching job. This is the world upside down. There are many details like this that just do not make sense.

I need to stop getting worked up, even though I could go on and on about other topics. However, I am ready to take questions.

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the minister for her speech. I listened to it carefully.

Of course, I acknowledge all of the efforts made by Service Canada, which was gutted pretty badly by the former government, but we will still wait until we see results before we start applauding.

People may be wondering why some of the measures that were announced are not included in the NDP motion. I think that we led the charge on almost every aspect of employment insurance in the previous Parliament. Obviously, I do not think that anyone in this Parliament would take exception to an increase in compassionate care benefits, for example. The crux of today's motion is how we can deal with this urgent situation.

Is it realistic or logical to think that workers who lose their jobs should have to be able to prove that they worked 420 or even up to 700 hours before they are eligible for the employment insurance program that they paid into? That is like telling someone who has health insurance that, even though he is sick, the services he is able to receive will be based on the rate of illness in the region. That does not make any sense.

People need immediate support when they lose their jobs.

[Employment Insurance, February 25th, 2016]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague for her speech.

The employment insurance program has been in place for 75 years. What we have seen over the years is that the reforms have always had the same result. They make access increasingly difficult while benefits shrink.

The 360 hours are a first step, but I would also like to hear my colleague talk about the important changes that we would like to see to the Conservatives' reform. For example, I am thinking of the concept of “suitable employment” and the three categories of employment, which, in my opinion, have dire consequences for the program.