Mr. Speaker, I am very proud to rise today to join my friends from Hamilton Centre and Hamilton Mountain in this important debate.
I will be speaking to Bill C-50, as the others have, and in particular the aspects of Bill C-50 concerning employment insurance. One of the most important parts of this debate must include how the unemployment insurance fund came to this end, how it became employment insurance in the first place and what it meant to the working people who had been paying into the fund all of their working lives.
I can recall in the early to mid 1990s the finance minister of the day, the member for LaSalle—Émard, undertook substantial and fundamental changes to the social compact that Canadians held so dear. It was also what we believed was part of the very foundation of why Canada was a great country. It took into account the needs of people when they fell on hard times.
It was during this period that new buzzwords started to appear and it became the language coming from Ottawa, the bubble that is Ottawa. “Downloading” and “offloading” were among the most destructive of the words that I heard used. One may ask why? In the name of deficit fighting, the Liberal government of the day foisted changes in the form of the Canada health and social transfer onto the provinces. The Liberal government systematically began to seriously cut back the funding the federal government was transferring to the provinces, as well as offloading many of their responsibilities.
Included were changes to the Unemployment Insurance Act, which were meant to reorganize the act and begin to focus more on retraining, as we heard the member for Hamilton Mountain speaking about a few moments ago. In my community of Hamilton, workers began a cycle of training, retraining and then some more training, but no one understood what they were training for because there was a serious job crisis at that time. No jobs were available, just this cycle of training and retraining.
In addition, during that period, the theft of some $50 billion of worker and employer contributions was well underway. However, to grow the fund to the unprecedented size of in excess of $50 billion, the Liberal government first had to build up the fund and to do so, changed the eligibility rules. Following the massive rule changes, Canadians found that instead of the benefits they previously could depend on, the benefits that for years they had paid for, more and more Canadians found they did not qualify for the benefits at all or, if they did, they received them for a far shorter time period.
This effectively forced some Canadians onto welfare rolls. These Canadians were offloaded, so to speak, from the more equitable funding available from income tax and shifted over to the less comprehensive programs funded by property tax. That not only hurt those workers, but it added a new burden to the municipalities. We have heard from the FCM how it has the $23 billion deficit in infrastructure in the country, and that is part of the reason it has that. However, municipal governments, especially in hard times, had to raise property taxes and that hurt people on fixed incomes, pensioners or low income earners.
Canada's employment insurance program was significantly undermined by the previous Liberal government. Canadians knew it as one of the strongest programs, which helped working people when they lost their jobs. When they needed bridging to new employment, this program used to provide funding for unemployed workers. Some 80% of unemployed workers used to get EI, or UI as we knew it, to help them through that transition. As a result of the cuts made by the previous Liberal government and other changes to EI, it significantly undermined who would get benefits and the level of those benefits.
Today, about two-thirds of Canadians do not get employment insurance benefits. I still find it impossible to accept that new language. The fact that so few actually get the benefits is shocking. If other insurance companies refuse to allow individuals access to the benefits they have paid into, there would be a huge uproar across the country.
This move to EI and what we have before us today is completely unfair. Working people across Canada and employers, in good faith, have paid into the employment fund for many years, building a huge surplus. The estimates vary but some say it is as high as $57 billion. It now appears the previous government, as well as the present government, used that money to pay down the debt and for other programs. People who have been paying into the fund and who ought to get the benefits are denied those benefits.
This is at a time when the current government's budgets have failed to invest in strengthening our economy and opted instead to reduce social spending in favour of the huge corporate tax breaks to the banks, oil companies and gas companies. Consecutive Liberal and Conservatives governments collected EI premiums and made a conscious decision not to distribute those proceeds to the people who need them.
The jig is up. What will the Conservative government do with this misappropriation of the EI premiums of Canadians? What is its goal? Rather than saying there is an imbalance between the money paid in and the abysmal level of benefits and services available as a result of the inadequacies in the EI program, the Conservatives have decided to write these billions of dollars off Canada's book. To ensure that they never have to repay the money, they are setting up a separate account that will not be accountable to Parliament.
In spite of all the rhetoric we hear day in and day out in election campaigns about accountability, the Conservatives are legislating accountability away in this bill.
This should be unbelievable. Sadly, and equally unbelievable is the Liberals who, in the ultimate act of self-preservation, will sit on their hands, take a walk or somehow allow this stuff to occur. I guess it is understandable when they already were accomplices to the theft or even the masterminds behind so many of the subtleties of the theft that it led to the legislation before us today.
How does this provide fairness and support for unemployed workers across the country?
People in my riding of Hamilton East—Stoney Creek are among the thousands who have lost their manufacturing jobs. These manufacturing jobs paid living wages, provided good benefits and allowed workers to live and retire in dignity with adequate pensions. Unfortunately, these jobs are evaporating, forcing workers into non-standard arrangements. What will the budget do for the workers of Hamilton who are in need?
Clearly, the provision contained in Bill C-50 will legitimize the stealing of billions of dollars from the employment insurance fund, and is done to cover the steep costs of the government's corporate tax breaks, estimated at $14 billion yearly.
The Conservative government is taking the wrong approach on employment insurance, especially by creating a crown corporation for EI, as envisioned in Bill C-50.
With Bill C-50, the Conservatives are ducking their much touted public accountability, and are aiding and abetting the continuation of the fine tradition of previous governments, of stealing the money of Canadians, the tradition of taking billions of dollars in premiums paid by workers and employers and using them to support their own political agenda, rather than providing benefits for those most in need.
The government's creating of the Canada employment insurance financing board as a crown corporation will completely undermine the principle of parliamentary accountability for employment insurance.
The NDP agree that EI should be separated public accounts, but it is the government's job to manage it. It is the government's responsibility to take care of its people, not profit from them.
The government must recognize it owes Canadian workers and their families a $50 billion-plus debt. That money belongs to the workers and their families and it is time to give it back.