40th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION
EDITED HANSARD • NUMBER 101
CONTENTS
Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Employment Insurance

Hon. Marlene Jennings (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Lachine, Lib.):

Mr. Speaker, last May 26, I asked a question in the House concerning employment insurance and the regional disparities and discrimination based on eligibility rules that picked out winners and losers.
The Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development went on about some of the changes that had been made to EI benefits but refused to address the issue of regional disparity and in fact regional fairness. I would again like to hear what the government has to say.

A lot of water has gone under the bridge. The Prime Minister and my leader, the Leader of the Opposition, put together a bipartisan working group composed of three Conservatives and three Liberals, and I was one of them, to work over the summer. The only party that put forward any kind of proposal at that particular working group was the Liberal Party.

In their usual manner, the Conservatives came out with figures that inflated the actual cost of the Liberal proposal. Members do not need to take my word for it, but the Parliamentary Budget Officer did an independent assessment of the government's estimate of the Liberal proposal and said that the government had overestimated and that the Liberal proposal for one eligibility rate standard of 360 hours would cost approximately $1.2 billion and not the $4 billion that the government claimed and continues to repeat, notwithstanding that the independent assessment proved it wrong.

The government has now come out with Bill C-50, which would extend benefits anywhere from 5 to 20 weeks but, again, has not addressed the issue of regional fairness.

The government has claimed that Bill C-50 would help approximately 190,000 Canadians. However, the veracity of that particular number has been questioned in the media, by third parties and in committee itself. The bill is now before committee at second reading.

Experts are saying that the figure is not 190,000. In fact, they believe the number of beneficiaries would be as low as 60,000. The government has refused to provide clarity on how it comes up with its figure of 190,000 Canadians who will be assisted by the changes it is proposing in Bill C-50.

How can the government justify throwing numbers out for which there is no basis? It refuses to explain its methodology. It refuses to provide the actual figures. It is doing the same thing with the issue of Bill C-50 and backing up the exact number of Canadians who will actually be assisted by it that it has been doing with the infrastructure and stimulus plan.

The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that the government is providing information in such an obscure manner that it is impossible to independently verify the government's claims.

Mr. Ed Komarnicki (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development and to the Minister of Labour, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, I listened to what the member had to say about the regional variable entrance requirements but I should remind her and her party that that was introduced during their term of office when the unemployment rate was at 8.7%. I might also remind the member that the Liberals tried to balance the budget and the books on the backs of the unemployed by taking approximately $50 billion from the EI fund and using it for general revenue. At the same time, they tried to balance the budget by taking $25 billion and cutting it from the transfer payments to the provinces and municipalities. The member needs to remember where this came from and she needs to look at the larger picture.
We have taken steps under the economic action plan and under the employment insurance program to help those who are unemployed. We have given five extra weeks of benefits across the country to those who require it. We have spent billions of dollars to help people upgrade their skills and their training. We froze the EI premiums for 2010-11 to the same level as they were in 2009 and 2008, the lowest level in a quarter century.
We have assisted employers and employees with work-sharing agreements, allowing people to claim EI and continue to work share. We have helped about 5,000 employers across the country and 167,000 Canadians.
We put the career transition assistance program together, helping about 40,000 long term workers to benefit from training for two years or more. We have put together the bill that the hon. member refers to, Bill C-50, which would bridge that particular program by adding 5 to 20 weeks of benefits to help ensure these long tenured workers who have paid into EI for years, who have not benefited from the system and who now find themselves unemployed through no fault of their own, are able to quality for extra benefits.
I have a hard time understanding how that member, her leader and all members of that party stood in the House and voted against helping approximately 190,000 long tenured workers, a figure that I know she disagrees with. If she had been in committee today, she would know how the 190,000 was justified, but it is a lot of workers who are being helped with 5 to 20 weeks.

How does she sit in the House and face those workers and say that she voted against that bill in the House and voted against every clause? We went through the bill clause by clause today in committee and every member from her party voted against that. On top of all of the other benefits that we are doing for the unemployed, why would they stand in the House and vote against them, except for the purpose of wanting an election. The basis and the premise of their voting against the bill in the first place was self-interest as opposed to the interest of the unemployed who find themselves without work and who need extra benefits.

We are putting a bill before the House that, fortunately, is being supported and will eventually pass through the House. How does the hon. member justify not supporting that? Is that finding solutions? No, it is not. Is it finding solutions for long tenured workers? No, it is not.

We are working to extend benefits to self-employed workers. We are getting Canadians back to work, not only through historic investments, through infrastructure and through the steps we have taken on the economic action plan, but, for those who are not able to do that, we have taken steps to bridge the gap, to be there for them when they need us and we have not done it on their backs. We have not balanced the books, as the Liberal Party did back in the nineties, on the backs of the unemployed, on RNs, on municipalities and on the lack of infrastructure. We are not doing that and we will not do that. We will take steps to stand behind those who need us at this difficult economic time, and that is exactly what we have done.

The member and her party should get behind us and support Bill C-50 that would help approximately 190,000 Canadians who are out of work and would have the benefit of approximately $1 billion over three years. That is something that is significant and substantive and she should support it.

Hon. Marlene Jennings:

Mr. Speaker, I and my party will not support Bill C-50 because we believe that it does not treat Canadian workers equally and fairly, and it does not address the issue of regional fairness.

If we want to talk about a government's record, let us look at the record of the government that took office in 2006 with a $13 billion surplus and has frittered that surplus. One of the first actions the government did was to break a promise that it made during the 2006 election that it would not tax income trusts. It turned around and did that less than a week after it was elected to government.

Let us look at the government that claims it is reducing s taxes and yet, when one reads the budget very carefully, it has a $15 billion payroll tax that will start at the end of 2010, but it claims that it is lowering taxes. That is not lowering taxes.

Under the Liberals, the EI taxes went down every year. That is not happening under the Conservatives. They froze them and now they are going to raise them.

Mr. Ed Komarnicki:

Mr. Speaker, the hon. member cannot have it both ways. She wants to lower premiums and at the same time spend more.

What we will not do is balance the budget on the backs of the unemployed, as the Liberals did. We will not take $50 billion from the EI program and we will not cut transfers to provinces and municipalities by $25 billion. Anyone can balance the budget doing that kind of thing. We will not do that.

Liberals have two ideas, a 360-hour work year or a two-month work year, in which people would work for two months of the year and then collect EI. We will not support that.

Liberals also like to say no. They said no to Bill C-50. They said no to Canadians, they said no to long-tenured workers. What good is saying no to any Canadian, even one Canadian? What does that do for hard-working Canadians who have worked for many years in the automotive industry and find themselves out of work? It does nothing. No will not help them.

What will it do for forestry workers? It will do nothing. It will not help one forestry worker if Liberals vote no on Bill C-50 or any of its clauses. What will it do for manufacturing workers? It will do absolutely nothing. The stand the Liberals are taking will do nothing and that is wrong.

TOP