44th Parl. 1st Sess.
March 29, 2023 02:00PM
- Mar/29/23 2:35:20 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we know that Canada's EI system is complex, and that is why we are focused on improving it. Budget 2023 invests in seasonal workers so that they have five additional weeks of coverage, for a total of 45 weeks. Also, in budget 2023, we propose establishing a new independent tripartite board of appeal, to hear cases regarding employment insurance claims.
In the past two years, the minister has led more than 35 national and regional round tables with workers, employers and academics. EI reform is a priority. We are on it and we will get it done.
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- Mar/29/23 2:44:27 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to hear the member make the connection with the major investments announced by the Prime Minister on February 6 and confirmed in the budget tabled yesterday by the Minister of Finance. These investments will support hundreds of thousands of Canadians, patients and workers across Quebec. In addition, the dental insurance program that will be implemented in the coming years and months will also help millions of Quebeckers take better care of their oral health.
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Madam Speaker, I wish I could say that I am pleased to be speaking tonight, but that is not really the case. I would have liked to have seen my colleague's bill, or my own bill, which was introduced in the last Parliament, passed by the House to allow sick workers to fight their illness, get healthy again and get back to work. Unfortunately, that is not what is happening. I am here again tonight, and I think this is my third or fourth speech on the issue of sick workers.
We are talking about seriously ill workers who have paid into EI their whole lives. That means that there is a deduction, an EI premium, on their paycheque. That means that the employer has also paid contributions. It is an insurance program. Currently, sick workers are entitled to only 26 weeks of EI sickness benefits. We know very well that is not enough.
I believe I have repeatedly asked whether this government is a heartless one. There is a story I would like to tell. We talk a lot about statistics and data and documentation, but tonight I am going to talk about one particular person who called me last week. He asked me to speak on his behalf tonight.
I am talking about one of my constituents, Normand Chevalier, who lives in Saint‑Polycarpe. He is a worker and has been working for 50 years. I think this is the first time in his life that he has had to apply for unemployment. He is not applying for it because he does not have a job. On the contrary, he had a very good job. Quite honestly, even at 65 years old, he would have liked to continue working.
Normand Chevalier called me last week and said to me, “Mrs. DeBellefeuille, I have tonsil cancer.” It is a serious cancer. He has been undergoing treatment for 15 weeks now, and it is costing him a lot of money. He lives in the country. Saint‑Polycarpe is a rural town in the Soulanges area of my riding. There is no public transportation to the hospitals in Montreal, so he has to drive himself. He told me that he has worked his entire life and this is the first time he needed help. He has been going to radiation treatments for 15 weeks now, and he has to keep going because it is not over. If he wants to have a chance to survive, he has to continue his treatments.
He said, “You know Mrs. DeBellefeuille, I've used up my benefits.” He thought that with the government's top-up, he would be entitled to 26 weeks, but that is not the case. He began his treatments before December 18, 2022, and is not entitled to 26 weeks. He is among those who believed that because the number of weeks was increased from 15 to 26, they would at least be entitled to the additional weeks of EI sickness benefits to continue their treatments, to fight and, above all, not to worry about how they would pay their rent.
Last week, this gentleman told me that he was a driver at a company in Soulanges, that he was well liked and that he could hardly wait to get better so he could return to work. However, he was very worried because he did not know how he was going to pay his rent next month. Everyone has a story. Mr. Chevalier lives with his 16-year-old granddaughter. She, too, does not understand what is happening. Why is her grandfather, who is sick, hard-working and brave, not entitled to 26 weeks?
The bill we are debating this evening calls for 50 weeks and we support that. Some cancers require 37 to 40 weeks of treatment to get better and to beat the illness. That has been documented.
Mr. Chevalier told me that he was calling because he was so angry and he found the government to be heartless. When the minister increased the number of weeks from 15 to 26, why did she not decide that anyone who was already undergoing treatment would be entitled to 26 weeks? He said, “I thought that was how it was going to work, Mrs. DeBellefeuille.” However, he realized that the exact opposite was true.
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Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Lévis—Lotbinière for introducing this bill, which would extend workers' benefit period for illness or injury to 52 weeks.
This change is long overdue. It will have a significant impact on the lives of Canadian workers who have an illness or are injured, who are willing to work hard but unable to do so because of a condition beyond their control. I think this change would show compassion, as my colleague said. Moreover, the workers are paying for this. They want to know that they have some insurance if they lose their paycheque because of illness or injury.
For a long time, the New Democrats have been advocating for an extension of the EI sickness benefit. We know the difference it will make in the lives of Canadians who are suffering from all sorts of conditions, not least of which is cancer. People cannot go to work when they are sick with cancer, and we want them to be able to take the time they need. In many cases, courses of treatment for cancer go well in excess of 26 weeks, so we are setting people up to fail by telling them there is a sickness benefit for them when they need it that we know very well is not long enough to take them through the course of their treatment. It is heartbreaking to hear of workers who lose their home because they are not able to work and do not have an income when their EI sickness benefit runs out. This is something we know the government can do, something it should do and something we have been calling on it for a long time to do, and I think it is about time.
I am grateful to the member for Lévis—Lotbinière for having presented the bill. However, I also want to take a moment to comment on what I think we also need, which is a larger reform of employment insurance.
It is nice that there is a private member's bill coming from a Conservative member in respect of EI. I note that we just heard the leader of the official opposition speak about the budget. He made a reference to EI, but I think people might have missed it because he used a euphemism, not the actual term for employment insurance. He talked about payroll taxes, and that is the only time we will hear him talk about employment insurance.
The leader of the official opposition only refers to EI as a payroll tax, when in fact it is a premium that workers pay to be insured against loss of work so that when they lose their job, they do not lose their home. EI premiums are actually lower now than they were under the Conservative government, but the only words he has to say about EI are about payroll taxes. I say shame on him for that, because we need far more widespread employment insurance reform as the country faces a recession and as we come out of a pandemic. It was made very clear that our system prepandemic was inadequate, and now we have the same system all over again, with not a whit of difference. The entire lesson of the pandemic was forgotten overnight last September when the Liberals cancelled the temporary employment insurance measures.
It is hard to believe that this is more than a sporadic fit of compassion coming from a Conservative member given the Conservatives do not talk about the need for meaningful employment insurance reform. The only mention they make of employment insurance outside of the bill is as a payroll tax. We will not be able to support the employment insurance system well unless we talk about how we pay for it. That is part of the important conversation we will have over modernization.
There are folks who believe, as the NDP does, that the government ought to come back to the table as a funding partner in employment insurance in order to provide more training opportunities. Now, that is less about folks who are sick, and hopefully when they recover, as we hope they will, they will be able to return to the job they had before. However, for many people, when they lose their job, sometimes that job is not available anymore. Sometimes the industry has changed and they need retraining to be a good fit for another employer, possibly in a different industry.
People on employment insurance are not well supported, just like the many people who were on CERB or the CRB who saw their industries, like tourism, devastated by the pandemic, industries that are still struggling postpandemic. There were no training offers from government. It did not say it would train people off CERB to meet the employment demand of employers who are complaining they cannot find qualified people; rather, it wanted to starve them off the CERB. It cut it off and then expected them, when they had no income to pay their rents or buy their groceries, to go out and learn new jobs at the same time.
Guess what happened. It did not work. The government ended the CERB program with very little notice and a lot of support from the Conservatives. Did it help with the labour shortage? It did not, because it was never a plan; it was just a cruel assumption that somehow people were staying at home sitting on their hands, uninterested in working, when in fact a lot of them did not have jobs to go back to because they came out of industries like tourism and hospitality, which are still struggling to recover from the days of the pandemic.
Therefore, I appreciate a Conservative MP's bringing forward what I think is a decent proposal for one aspect of the employment insurance system, but if government really wants to do right by Canadian workers, it is going to take a hell of a lot more than this, even just with respect to employment insurance.
I hope that when the Liberals are having conversations internally about this bill, they will start to talk about the larger employment insurance system and how it is not simply a payroll tax but an important insurance product that helps Canadians transition from industry to industry, job to job or, in an industry like mine, construction, when there is a slowdown in work. We are always working ourselves out of a job in construction. Eventually we finish the job. That is good. We want projects finished on schedule and on budget, but that sometimes means there is a pause between one project and the next one, and employment insurance has to be there for people so their families are not on the line while they are looking for that next project to build.
Let us have a far more fulsome discussion in this place about employment insurance than this bill represents on its own, even as we vote to make this bill law.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak to this bill. I really do appreciate the comments from the member for Elmwood—Transcona prior to me in regard to the manner in which Conservatives often refer to employment insurance as a payroll tax. It is not a payroll tax. It is a program that is funded by both the employer and the employee, and it is a program that is used as an insurance mechanism to take care of individuals when they reach a point in their working career when they need to access that employment insurance. It is a critical program, and I am pleased to have the opportunity to speak to this bill.
I would remind the House that this is not the first time this bill has come forward. This bill came forward in another form previously. I believe it was Bill C-265. Unfortunately, at the stage after debate on the bill in its previous form, it ended up not being able to proceed because it did not have the royal recommendation required in order to proceed.
Members might know that royal recommendation is required for any private member's bill in Private Members' Business that comes forward that is expending money on behalf of the government. One cannot do that within a private member's bill. It requires a royal recommendation from cabinet in order to proceed. The reality is that very few bills that come from Private Members' Business actually get that royal recommendation.
As a matter of fact, early in my time in this House, in 2016, I brought in a bill related to employment insurance as well, which required royal recommendation. It did not get that royal recommendation. I was not able to convince the government to do that, even as a member of the governing party. Luckily, I was able to allow it to continue to pass at various stages with the assistance of all the opposition parties and the majority of the backbench on our caucus, but the reality is that one will eventually get to a point where one cannot proceed any further.
I think it is important to do that. If it was not done, then every single bill that came forward would be a bill authorizing the government to spend money, and one cannot do that through Private Members' Business.
The only difference, in my understanding, between this bill and the previous version is that it has added two more weeks to it. The previous version talked about 50 weeks of employment insurance, and this one talks about 52 weeks.
I find it unfortunate that the sponsor of this bill, despite the fact that it is a well-intentioned, well-meaning bill that warrants serious consideration, is doing the same thing that was previously done. Ultimately, when tabling this bill, the sponsor must have known the outcome of it and how the Speaker ruled on it the first time.
I understand that there was also, if I recall correctly, an opposition day motion from the Bloc Québécois on the exact same issue. We have seen the issue come forward several times, and we have ended up in the exact same place every time.
Having said that, I think it does warrant real consideration. As we modernize our employment insurance system, we should be looking at opportunities where we can improve. I think it is worth pointing out that we have, as a government, improved those EI benefits, for starters, on maternity leave. This is something I was targeting in my private member's bill.
It used to be that the only people in the skilled trades were men, but now we are seeing more women enter the trades. The reality is that if a woman is a welder, for example, as in the case that inspired my bill, and if she were to become pregnant, she would not have the ability to take leave and still get paid, still have that income.
If a woman is pregnant, she is not sick, but she might still have barriers to work. The employer that Melody had was a very reputable company in my riding of Kingston and the Islands, but it was just not large enough to sustain a full-time employee who was off on leave. She looked for ways to use EI, but she was unsuccessful in doing that. At the time, I was able to convince the government through the issue. Even though it would not give royal recommendation, it did agree to extend the number of weeks so that if an individual was in the same circumstance as Melody in my riding, EI benefits would apply long enough for her to get to full term with her pregnancy.
That is just one way that we have expanded the EI sickness benefits, extending it from 15 to 26 weeks, to fulfill our 2019 platform commitment. We know that this extension will benefit approximately 169,000 Canadians every year. It is part of our long-term plan for EI modernization, and I believe that together, we will continue to build an inclusive, flexible EI system that all Canadians will benefit from, particularly those who need to access it, for years to come.
I admire the resiliency of those who keep bringing this issue forward. It is unfortunate that the government will not be able to support it given the fact that it requires royal recommendation. I should not even phrase it like that. It is unfortunate that it will not even get to the place where we can have another vote on it. Since the precedent has been set for the exact same bill, the Speaker will most likely turn it down based on the requirement for royal recommendation. However, as I have previously indicated, royal recommendation is very seldom, if ever, given to private members' legislation. Nobody knows that better than I do. I brought forward a bill on EI specifically in the very early years of my time here, the first year in which royal recommendation was required. Given that fact, my bill was not able to continue down the necessary path.
I encourage members to continue to talk to the ministers responsible about this issue and see if we can move in a direction that helps to modernize EI. We know that the labour force is changing. I only gave one small example, that of more women working in trades and the different requirements they might have when it comes to taking time off as a result of becoming pregnant, in the example of my bill. We need to continue to modernize our employment insurance system, and input from all members is very important in that regard. Therefore, I encourage those who are passionate about this issue, as I am, to continue speaking about it.
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Madam Speaker, I wanted to speak to Bill C-215, sponsored by my colleague from Lévis—Lotbinière, because I have had experience with some really difficult situations involving the duration of EI sickness benefits. The people I know, as well as the people who came to my office, did not ask to have to deal with these terrible illnesses one day. I am mainly going to speak about cancer because that is what most of these people were dealing with.
These people never expected that one day, they might have to choose between focusing their full attention on healing and slowly dying while trying to heal because they could no longer afford their treatment. For some, the treatments are very long.
I was listening to the speech given by my colleague, who had a lot of empathy and compassion for people in such situations. Unfortunately, the government could have granted a royal recommendation and allowed this bill to be voted on so it could finally be passed after many years of trying. I will have the opportunity to speak to that in my speech.
The fight to help people with these serious illnesses get access to money from employment insurance has been going on for years. Most of these people contributed their entire lives to a system that is supposed to be there to protect them. Unfortunately, when the time comes for some people to be able to benefit from it, the system simply does not meet their expectations.
I wanted to commend my Bloc Québécois colleague from Salaberry—Suroît, because she has worked very hard on this file. She talked about Normand Chevalier, who was listening to her speech and may have been patient enough to listen to the other parliamentarians until my speech. I want to say hello to him. I can tell him that there are people working very hard on this issue, as my colleague from Lévis—Lotbinière has been doing ever since he had the opportunity to introduce this bill. There are people working very hard to change things. Unfortunately, as we have seen, things are not changing.
I am directly and indirectly involved in the Relay for Life. Every time I participate in a Relay for Life event, I am always amazed to see that a town as small as Plessisville has the largest Relay for Life in Canada. This shows how willing people are to support cancer patients and survivors.
It is heartbreaking to walk the Relay for Life route and see the thousands of little luminaries lit for people who have cancer or survived cancer, or for families and people who have lost a loved one to cancer. Everyone should come to Plessisville to see how big this event really is. Luminaries line the entire two-kilometre route, creating a mosaic of light, and each and every one of those luminaries is dedicated to someone. How many of these people had to make a difficult choice between treatments and work?
The answer is too many. I do not want to get into a fight over numbers. We do not need to argue about whether it is 23% or 30%. Either way, it is too much. Nobody knows how long treatment will take. Nobody knows how to cure each of these diseases. Nobody knows how each person is going to respond to treatment.
One thing is certain. These people are forced to choose between devoting themselves 100% to their recovery or devoting themselves 50% to their recovery and 50% to their work, because they have no income and they cannot go through such an ordeal without income. This can affect young people, but it often affects women or men, mothers or fathers. It can affect people who have a family to support, whether they are men or women. There are not many Quebeckers or Canadians who can afford to go an entire year without earning a cent.
That is why I think the right thing to do would have been for all parliamentarians to finally pass Bill C-215. The government had promised on several occasions to agree to this request, which came in particular from two people whom I would like to salute today.
Marie‑Hélène Dubé started a petition that was presented here in the House. It was signed by over 600,000 people and calls on parliamentarians to set aside their differences and partisanship and finally recognize the needs of people with cancer who have to undergo treatment so that they can focus on getting well. Ms. Dubé has helped draft many bills. She herself has had cancer several times and she has never given up, but I think that she is a bit discouraged that parliamentarians have not yet found a solution. I have never spoken to her, but I saw her in the media. I looked at her website. I saw everything she has been doing to try to convince parliamentarians.
There is always a parliamentarian who is ready to take up the torch. When one party is unable to introduce the bill because of the way the lottery draw for private members' bills goes, someone else takes up the torch. This time, it was my colleague from Lévis—Lotbinière. He and the member for Salaberry—Suroît both worked very hard on this bill. I want to recognize the work of Ms. Dubé, who has not given up, even though she may be a bit discouraged. Today, I read her most recent post on the website 15weeks.ca. I will read it even though it is not that recent.
We are currently on the 14th bill to amend the act to increase benefits to more than 50 weeks, after 13 years of vigorous campaigning. If you can believe it, this campaign that I have been waging by myself since 2009 has been going on so long that I have qualified for my first FADOQ card. That's crazy! I was 38 years old when I gathered the first of the 619,000 signatures… I am honestly so exhausted, but I could never abandon you.
My colleagues are applauding her and I think she deserves it.
How far will we have to go? How long will we have to wait? There have been committee studies and unanimous motions adopted in the House, where all parliamentarians said they agree with the principle of 50 weeks. However, no government has made a move to change things. It is not a matter of money, because we can make it happen by using the EI fund. It is not a matter of politics, because everyone knows someone, like a family member or a friend of a friend, who has had to go through a difficult situation because of EI benefits.
I know there is not much time left, about 15 minutes, but perhaps someone on the government side will hear this final appeal from Ms. Dubé, from my colleagues and from all those who have championed this bill and its previous versions. I hope that the bill will finally receive a royal recommendation so that these people can focus on their recovery. It will send a message of hope to their loved ones. Let us send hope to all those who have had this disease and survived and to the many others who will one day have to deal with this terrible disease.
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Madam Speaker, I too will speak to Bill C‑215, which is being debated today in the House.
Bill C‑215 seeks to make a change to employment insurance. I am getting tired of having debates on employment insurance. I wonder why we are talking about employment insurance in the Canadian federal Parliament.
In 1867, when Canada was founded, there was a division of powers set up. The federal government took care of the money, the army, international border contacts and customs, but all the social affairs fell under the responsibility of the provinces. The reason employment insurance is a federal jurisdiction is that someone pulled a fast one in 1940. The economic crisis in 1929 was still having ill effects, the Second World War had just started and, in the meantime, there was a Liberal premier in Quebec, Mr. Godbout, who did not necessarily want independence for Quebec and let it drop. That is why the federal government is responsible for employment insurance today.
I would like to use an analogy about the federal government. I have a five-year-old son. Sometimes when a few children are playing together, we often see one of them go over to a friend who is playing with toys and snatch the toy away from them. He will go over to another friend who is playing with a toy and snatch that away. He will want all the toys that his friends are playing with. He will take them all, he will not be able to hold on to any more toys, but he will still try to take some more. That is classic behaviour. Eventually, the toys will quite simply gather dust. He will no longer play or be interested in them.
That is more or less how the federal government operates. It tries to take on all the responsibilities, keeps taking a few more here and there, but then neglects them. That is happening with EI.
Employment insurance is not working. The federal government is not working, and I believe that there is no desire to see it working. That is sad.
That is not just for employment insurance; there have been problems with passports and the Phoenix pay system. The problems keep piling up. This sort of thing is always happening with the federal government, but that does not stop it from wanting even more responsibility. It tries to tell us how we should be running our hospitals. It decides to launch all kinds of programs that it should not be launching. Meanwhile, the EI system is not working. The government is not carrying out the reform that people have been calling for for years.
That is unfortunate, because every time there is an election the Liberals promise to reform the EI system. They hold consultations and then more consultations and in the end they do nothing to reform the system.
As a result, right now, only about half of unemployed workers are covered. That means that one out of every two people who lose their job is not covered by EI even though it is an insurance plan and they should be eligible. The federal government was even siphoning money off the fund, which ran surpluses for years. From 1996 to 2009, $60 billion were siphoned off the EI fund. Both the Liberals and the Conservatives put unemployed workers' money directly into their pockets and left workers in the lurch.
Today we are talking about Bill C‑215, which seeks to amend employment insurance, more specifically sick leave. Sick leave is another thing that is not working. A person who gets sick gets only 15 weeks and that is it. It is a season, nothing more. They can spend the summer recovering, but if they are not better at the end of the summer, then they do not get any more money.
It is sad because if someone loses their job and is the one person in two who is covered, they can usually get quite a few weeks of benefits, maybe even up to 50 weeks. I do not remember exactly how many weeks are available these days, but it is somewhere around there. A person can go about a year with that. However, if that person gets cancer and has to stop working, they are entitled to only 15 weeks. That is an inequity that does not work. The purpose of Bill C‑215 is to correct this inequity. This is not the first crack at this.
My colleague, the member for Salaberry—Suroît, introduced a bill in the House during the last Parliament to fix this. In her case, it was not about getting to 52 weeks, it was about going from 15 weeks to 50 weeks. If it were 52 weeks, that would be even better. We could applaud that. We support this initiative, obviously.
However, this shows how hard she worked at the time. Her bill was even known as the Émilie Sansfaçon act. Émilie Sansfaçon was a woman who was on sick leave. It is called a leave of absence, but really, it is a forced resignation due to illness. She was on EI for too short a time and eventually passed away. She did not live to see Bill C-265, introduced by my colleague from Salaberry—Suroît, pass.
It is sad, because her father, who supported the Bloc Québécois, later ran for the Bloc Québécois and hoped that this bill would eventually pass. My colleague from Salaberry—Suroît worked hard. The bill passed first and second reading, was sent to committee and returned to the House for third reading. It went through all the stages. What was missing? Royal assent was missing. It just needed the government to say yes, nothing else.
That did not happen, which is sad. The Senate could have helped, too. It is sad, especially when we look at all the people who have supported this over the years. My colleague from Salaberry—Suroît, who introduced the bill, was not the first to come up with this idea. Yves Lessard, a Bloc Québécois member for the Belœil region, had already introduced a similar bill. Paul Crête, a Bloc Québécois member for the Bas-du-Fleuve region, had also already tabled a bill on this subject. Robert Carrier, a Bloc Québécois member for the Laval region, had already introduced a bill on this subject. Jean-François Fortin, a member of Parliament from eastern Quebec, had also introduced a bill on this subject.
The Bloc Québécois has repeatedly called for this problem to be fixed, for sick leave to be given to people who fall ill and for them to be supported during this difficult time. It is not a luxury for them to be able to eat, pay their rent and receive 50% of their pay, if not less, because it is 50% of the eligible amount. All we have been asking for is support to get them through a difficult time. By not giving them the money they need to heal, the government is adding to the stress they are under. It is sad.
I spoke about the members of the Bloc Québécois who worked on this, namely MPs Lessard, Crête, Carrier and Fortin, but there were also members from other parties. I must admit that we are not the only ones who had this idea. I could talk about the NDP MP Dawn Black, who introduced a bill three times to remedy the problem with sickness benefits and to provide more support for these workers. There was Fin Donnelly, a member who introduced a bill to resolve the issue four times. The next person that I name should certainly help the government understand that it needs to support this bill. Denis Coderre, a Liberal Party MP, once introduced a bill to resolve the issue with sickness benefits.
It is fascinating to see that members from all political parties have introduced bills year after year. This has been going on for what must be over 20 years now, maybe even 30. This is a problem that members are trying to solve. Unfortunately, they are not succeeding, either because their bills do not receive royal assent or because the party in power decides not to support them.
What we have now is a bill introduced by the member for Lévis—Lotbinière. It is important to highlight that it is his bill. We are at a point where this is coming from a Conservative member. We have reached a point where the Conservatives are also saying that the problem must be fixed. When everyone says that the problem must be fixed, there is no reason why it should not be fixed. It would be truly sad if the Liberals did not want to fix it. That would make the Liberals look more right wing than the Conservatives, more heartless than the Conservatives. I find that hard to believe. I hope that is not what happens.
Deep down, no one wants to leave sick people in the lurch. No one thinks it is okay for sick people to be in a position where they cannot afford to buy food, pay for groceries, be able to take the transportation they need, put gas—or electricity, I hope soon—in their car, so they can get where they need to go to receive care. It is sad. I hope that once the debate on Bill C‑215 is over, things will not end there. I hope we will finally find a solution and manage to do something positive for these people.
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