Yvon Godin

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, would the minister agree that the debt has been paid down on the backs of unemployed workers and by means of the EI fund?

The minister gives wonderful statistics with respect to unemployment, saying that it has gone from 11% to 7.8%. However, the government never explains why there has been an increase in the number of food banks in Canada and what the statistics on them are now.

The government never tells us how many 25 and 30 year-olds are obliged to continue to live with their parents and how their parents have to support them.

These are the figures I would like the minister to give us, for these are the figures that really count and that are on the minds of Canadians.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague from Vancouver, who toured the country and who has seen first hand how this government has hurt the homeless.

The EI changes mean that 800,000 Canadians no longer qualify for benefits. How many children go to school hungry? British Columbia has lost $1.8 billion in EI benefits over the last four years.

What impression did my colleague form in touring the country? I would like to know if the comments I heard about employment insurance were similar to those she heard, both from those who no longer qualified for EI benefits and from the homeless.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

True.

[The Budget, March 2nd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, it is pretty hard for me to understand what is going on in the House and across the country. From 1995 to 1998 the federal government cut $22 billion from transfers to the provinces. In the next five years it will invest $12.5 billion. That is half the amount it cut and it will take five years to do it. How can she say that we are in the best position we have ever been in when our parents and our children, when they go to the hospital, are left in the hallways instead of being given a bed? As a Canadian, how could she be proud of that?

[The Budget, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, this budget confirms the Minister of Finance's continuing dependency on the EI fund. He is using the surplus in the EI fund to fill his coffers and line the pockets of millionaires.

While the minister is paying off his debt on the backs of the unemployed, there is nothing in his budget for those who do not qualify for employment insurance.

My question is for the Minister of Finance. What is the amount of the surplus in the EI fund?

[The Budget, February 17th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, with this budget, the Minister of Finance is perpetuating the dependency on employment insurance.

[Division No. 317, February 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, on November 23, 1998, I rose in this House to speak of the 4,000 workers on Prince Edward Island who were forced to wait six weeks to qualify for employment insurance or to receive benefits.

The response by the Minister of Human Resources Development sidestepped the question entirely. He said, and I quote:

What I keep saying is that this reform has been such an important one for Canadians that we as a government will monitor very closely its impact and we will make the right changes when they need to be made, as we did not too long ago with the small weeks to address the concerns of my Atlantic colleagues.

I never said anything about small weeks. I spoke about the 4,000 workers on Prince Edward Island who were forced to wait six weeks before receiving EI benefits. That shows how much the Minister of Human Resources Development is out of touch with the real problems people are facing.

In his response, he also spoke of the “gappers”. I did not say anything about “gappers”. I was speaking about people who have had to wait six weeks for an employment insurance cheque.

Today I got a letter from a lady who wrote “How is a person supposed to manage on a starvation income of $636 a month, when the rent is $400 and then there is the phone and the electricity, not to mention all the little payments that have to be made? Food has to be paid for somehow”. She continues “I often ask God to come and take me away. I wonder what point there is in living, why we are put on earth to live in such misery. Help us. Urgently”.

This is the kind of message I am hearing from all over. Our people are suffering. Canadians are suffering.

The minister referred to “7,000 people in a black hole. Today, there are only 2,000”. Only 2,000 suffering. There are only 2,000 with no money coming in from January to May, whose refrigerators are empty and who are sending letters like those I have received from people telling me they want to kill themselves after 27 years of working in plants. It is a disgrace that they are being treated like this by the Liberal government after 27 years of work.

The members opposite should be ashamed because, when they were in opposition, they spoke out against the Progressive Conservative Party's UI cuts. The hon. member for Saint-Maurice, the Liberal leader, said that the Progressive Conservatives were not attacking the real problem, which was the economy, preferring instead to go after unemployed Canadians.

[Employment Insurance, February 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I have done the job the human resources minister should have done himself. I talked to the unemployed workers across the country.

He turned a deaf ear to Naida in British Columbia who was refused sickness benefits because she was two hours short of eligibility requirements. Naida was a mother who was recovering from a 10-day coma.

Will the minister now do his job and recognize that the reforms have failed and bring in changes to allow EI to respond to the needs of the current labour market?

[Employment Insurance, February 15th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Human Resources Development should think about what becomes of a minister who attacks EI in Canada.

This human resources development minister never agreed to go out in the field and meet the victims of employment insurance reform.

However, last fall, the minister indicated he would be very open to suggestions I might bring back from my national tour on employment insurance.

This morning, I sent his a copy of my report on the human cost of the changes made by the Liberal government to the employment insurance program.

Now that I have done his work for him by talking to workers across the country, will the minister show how open he is by adopting my recommendations?

[Health Care, February 11th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, emergency rooms throughout the country are in a state of crisis because of the cuts imposed by this Liberal government. The situation is critical in Montreal. Patients are waiting 48 hours on stretchers before getting a bed. In Toronto, the Ontario government is contemplating sending sick children to the United States. B.C. immediately invested $10 million, Quebec, $20 million.

Will this Liberal government assume its share of the responsibility and reinvest today? It is today we need money in health care across the country.