Yvon Godin

[2003 Canada Winter Games, February 10th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the Chaleurs and Restigouche regions of New Brunswick have been selected to host the 2003 Canada Winter Games.

This announcement was made possible by the relentless work of the local 2003 Canada Winter Games bid committee. The efforts of the committee, chaired by Brian Theede, bore fruit last night with the confirmation of the 2003 Winter Games being awarded to our region.

The economic fallout from the Games, estimated at $30 million, will be most welcome in our area. The publicity generated by an activity of such scope will have major long-term economic impacts on the region.

I am sure the region will exhibit its usual hospitality, and that the experience will be an unforgettable one. We look forward to seeing everyone there in the year 2003.

[Human Resources Development Canada, February 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, quotas, targets, the Minister of Human Resources Development can play with words but the facts remain. Employees are threatened with layoffs if they do not cut enough workers off UI. This is not human management. This is the government depending on the UI fund.

Will the human resources minister stop the threats and give instructions so that civil servants can work in the best interests of the unemployed Canadians?

[Human Resources Development Canada, February 4th, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, when I was touring the country, an unemployed woman in Gaspé, Mireille Arsenault, told me: “It is hellish having to deal with the people at Unemployment. I am outraged by their lack of compassion”.

If they are putting aside their compassion, it is because the government is threatening them with job losses if there are not enough unemployed people taken off benefits. The workers are not abusing the system; the government is abusing the workers.

My question is for the Minister of Human Resources Development: When will the government put the “humanity” back into “human resources”, and help this country's unemployed?

[Tax On Financial Transactions, February 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, on September 29, 1998, I asked a question in the House on employment insurance.

I asked the Prime Minister the following question:

—when he was Leader of the Opposition, the Prime Minister wrote—

—and I quote: “By lowering premiums and increasing the penalties for those who voluntarily leave their job, it is obvious that the government is not very concerned about the victims of the economic crisis. Instead of getting at the root of the problem, it targets the unemployed”.

This is from a letter written by the then leader of the opposition and now Prime Minister.

Today in the House we talked about a letter that was sent to the Department of Human Resources Development. Let me now quote this letter from the government of this former leader of the opposition who is now the head of this government, whose praises the Liberal member from P.E.I. was singing. This letter is addressed to the director of an HRDC employment centre in P.E.I. and reads as follows:

“The P.E.I. region has shown some improvement in performance this year but it still appears likely that the regional savings objective will not be met. In order for the target to be met, considerable improvement will have to be made in clerical and ICO performance as they are both significantly below national averages”.

The federal government imposes quotas on HRDC offices and forces people to do an inhuman job.

The employees themselves phone to tell me that the job they have to do is awful. Even the UN has condemned Canada because of its changes to the employment insurance program. It went to the trouble of condemning our wonderful country, while the government brags about doing a good job from a human point of view, at a time when 800,000 Canadian workers cannot qualify for EI benefits because of the cuts. In the riding of the Minister of Human Resources Development, lost benefits amount to $38 million per year. I wonder what his constituents think of him.

In my own riding, these lost benefits total $69 million. It is ordinary people who have been deprived of that money, people who have lost their jobs.

What about the number of children who leave for school in the morning without having had breakfast, this because of the government? These same Liberals were opposed to the changes made to the EI program by the Conservatives in 1993, on the grounds that those changes were inhuman.

I personally toured the country and I heard horror stories. Some people, including women, related how they were treated by the Department of Human Resources Development, and how their families are suffering as a result.

I hope the federal government will soon make changes to employment insurance, so as to help Canadian families.

[Employment Insurance, February 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, a mother with cancer was asked to repay $3,000 in EI benefits. Ever since she passed away, Revenue Canada has been harassing her young children, demanding that they pay up. By going after children who have lost their mother, this government shows it will stop at nothing to take money away from the unemployed. The unemployed are not the ones who depend on EI, the government is.

Will the Minister of Human Resources Development stop targeting workers and chasing after money?

[Employment Insurance, February 3rd, 1999]

This is an insurance program. Why is the government trying to cut more people off EI benefits and treat them like criminals?

[Employment Insurance, February 3rd, 1999]

Mr. Speaker, in a leaked document an HRDC official is bragging that the disqualification rates increased from 14% in 1997 to what he called a reasonable 33%. He bragged about millions being cut from the Canadian economy. Acadie—Bathurst has lost $69 million a year. Marystown, Newfoundland, has lost $81 million a year.

My question is for the Minister of Human Resources. This is an insurance program. Why are you trying to cut more people off EI benefits—

[Energy Efficiency Strategy, December 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, I have already asked a question in the House on this issue concerning women in my region.

They have crewed for their husbands for the past 8 years and have always qualified for employment insurance. In recent weeks, the Department of Human Resources Development has refused employment insurance benefits to 40 of these women because of the arm's length provisions.

There is cause for concern about the way the Department of Human Resources Development interprets the arm's length provisions when it comes to people working for a family member.

As I said, these women have fished for their husbands for eight years. They got up at 4 in the morning, and put in their day of fishing, for 8 years. Suddenly the government decided to look into the situation and said “This is a matter of arm's length”. It was the same last year, and the year before that. Then they ask them to repay $15,000 or $20,000.

Even today I asked a question in the House, during Oral Question Period. The government keeps giving us the same answer, that 78% of Canadian workers qualify for employment insurance. In the House they say things that are not true.

It is not true for the simple reason that only 38% of people paying into employment insurance qualify for it. That is unfair. That is why when I asked my question I had asked whether the government had something against women. Is this now discrimination against women?

They not only checked women married to fishermen, but the daughters of fishermen in certain cases. They did not check boys, sons working for their fathers. Why do it for a daughter working for her father? Why only the daughter or the mother?

This does not only occur in New Brunswick. In the Magdalen Islands, a lot of women work with their husbands. I find it really discriminatory to take it out on women the way they did. Even the investigators were saying it is a matter of time. Very soon, not one woman working for her husband now will get employment insurance.

Fishing is essentially a family business. Is the department telling fishermen they do not have the right to hire their wives?

I find the way the government is going after these people completely intolerable. They get up at 4 a.m. and head out fishing. They stay out until 2, 3 or 4 p.m., and fishing is not easy.

There is one investigator who told a woman that she had not been out fishing on the morning in question, but never went to talk with her at the time. How could he know whether it was a woman or a man under all that fishing gear? How can they base a decision on someone telephoning them to say that the woman had not been out fishing, or whatever, without any proof?

The government should conduct another investigation and allow these women to collect EI.

[Employment, December 8th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Finance says that he has the strongest balance sheet. On whose back? On the backs of the unemployed people. His government can deny it, but the UN specifically blamed the government's UI reform for the dramatic drop in the proportion of unemployed workers receiving benefits. In 1994, soon after the Liberals were elected, 61% of the unemployed got benefits. That number has dropped to 38%.

My question is for the deputy prime minister. Will the government do what the UN asks and provide adequate coverage for all the unemployed workers in this country?

[Employment Insurance, December 7th, 1998]

Mr. Speaker, the United Nations committee made it clear on Friday that the Canadian government does not take good care of the disadvantaged members of its society. The UN committee recommends a reform of employment insurance.

Will the minister finally carry out the employment insurance reform the UN committee is calling for, as are the Canadians I have met in my travels across the country to gather information on employment insurance, or has his titled changed to Minister of Human Resource Impoverishment?