- Member of Parliament
- Member of the panel of chairs for the legislative committees
- Bloc Québécois
- Thérèse-De Blainville
- Quebec
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $122,743.44
- Government Page
- Apr/29/24 1:34:36 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member why his government is not honouring its commitment to support the unemployed with the EI reform it promised for the summer of 2022. It is 2024. The government is turning its back on workers.
Why will the government not initiate this much-needed reform immediately?
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- Apr/9/24 2:16:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Mouvement Action-Chômage de Montréal, or MAC, is currently running a campaign about EI reform for workers on maternity leave. With this campaign, MAC is demanding that anyone who is on maternity leave and loses their job not be unfairly penalized by an archaic and outdated system.
This is the perfect illustration of the need for EI reform. We must put an end the discrimination women face in accessing this program and address the injustices faced by working women.
This is also why the Bloc Québécois has been pushing for reform for a long time. We have been pushing for equality, we have been pushing for accessibility. It is time for this government to act. There is a budget in the works and it must put an end to this sexist rule and modernize the EI system.
I want to salute the MAC members who are leading this fight. We stand with them.
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- Jun/13/23 3:01:41 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, at the rate the government is going, the trees will grow back before workers get help.
Nothing changes. Every time there is a crisis, six out of 10 workers are abandoned by employment insurance. Somehow, the federal government is surprised every time.
We would not urgently need more flexible measures today if the government had reformed EI as promised. History is repeating itself because of its broken promises.
When will it announce emergency measures for all workers affected by the fires, including those who fall through the cracks?
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- Jun/13/23 3:00:21 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, there are workers who are missing out on weeks of work because of the wildfires. For some, returning to work in the short term is not in the cards. They include seasonal workers employed in forestry, tourism, outfitting, parks and many other sectors.
The federal government says it will fast-track their EI claims. For some, that is good. For all the workers who do not qualify for EI because of the excessively high 700-hour threshold, it is useless.
Is the minister going to ease the requirements to ensure that no worker affected by the wildfires is left behind?
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- Jun/2/23 11:39:56 a.m.
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I would be happy to, Madam Speaker.
On Saturday, it will be two years since all of the parties in the House recommended, in a report, a comprehensive EI reform. All the parties, including the Liberals, made that recommendation. Two years later, absolutely nothing has been done.
However, in that report, all the parties found that the “program no longer reflects the realities of today’s labour market”. In other words, the Liberals have known for two years that they are leaving workers to deal with an outdated system. They admitted as much.
When will they take action?
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- Jun/2/23 11:39:13 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, on Saturday, it will be two years since all of the parties in the House recommended, in a report, a comprehensive EI reform. All the parties, including the Liberals, made that recommendation.
Two years later, absolutely nothing has been done, and yet, in that report, all the parties found that “the EI program no longer reflects the realities”—
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Madam Speaker, even though I do not entirely agree with my colleague's analysis, there is something I will agree with. I agree that workers are struggling at work and I also agree that in other regions of Canada and Quebec there are workers in situations where they lose their job and the EI program does not cover them or just leaves them behind. EI is being referred to as a payroll tax.
Does she not think that, as part of government spending, it would have been important to increase the minimum wage, enhance the employment insurance program and come up with good anti-scab legislation, which does not exist in Canada and denies workers' rights? Is that part of the programs your party is in favour of?
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- Mar/31/23 11:55:35 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, the budget proves that Ottawa has not learned from its mistakes. If there is one lesson to be learned from the pandemic, it is that EI is failing most people who lose their jobs. In spite of that, the government is abandoning the reform it has been promising since 2015. Even today, 60% of people who lose their jobs will be left with nothing, particularly seasonal workers, the self-employed and those in non-standard jobs.
Why does the government still refuse to help people who lose their jobs?
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- Feb/3/23 11:38:41 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, what people are going through with EI right now is a fiasco. It is just like the passport crisis, only this time, the federal government's victims are not waiting to travel, they are waiting to buy groceries. Service Canada is more like “no-service Canada”.
This government is just lurching from one crisis to the next. It is over here putting out one fire while two more are breaking out over there.
When will the minister make sure Service Canada can actually provide services to people?
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- Feb/3/23 11:37:25 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, employment insurance delays are longer than ever. Currently, one-quarter of EI applications take extra time to process, and more than half of those take over 50 days. That means people with no income are waiting 50 days.
Officials even advised people without jobs to use food banks or get their partner to support them. The kicker is that, while all this is going on, the minister has been cutting her employees' hours of work.
When will she do something about this fiasco?
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Mr. Speaker, seriously, with respect to EI reform, apart from nice words and good intentions, nothing is happening. The government had promised it seven years ago. Now, we are hearing nice words about how EI needs to be reformed and adapted, but nothing has been done. The government has had to cobble together some measures from scratch because there are gaps in the system.
It eliminated measures that existed in September and that could have made a big difference for workers in the seasonal industry. This for me is the winter gap. The government will leave workers in limbo for periods of 15 to 17 weeks with no income and no work because it changed the eligibility criteria.
Is that what the Liberal government wants?
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- Oct/31/22 2:55:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, if there were to be a recession with the same employment insurance program we have today, six out of 10 workers would be left behind.
We saw a similar scenario play out during the pandemic. The government had to create CERB because it realized that it could not abandon the 60% of people who lost their jobs.
If there is a recession, there is a risk of repeating the same scenario. That would be embarrassing, given that we saw it coming this time.
Will EI reform be added to the economic update?
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- Oct/31/22 2:54:19 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, three days before the government's economic update, there is every indication that a recession is imminent. The government must remember that in the event of a recession, the best economic stabilizer is employment insurance, provided, of course, that workers who lose their jobs are covered. If nothing changes, six out of 10 workers will not be eligible. Comprehensive reform of EI is urgent, especially if there is a recession.
Will the economic update finally include this reform?
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- Oct/25/22 2:58:44 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this kind of answer is no longer acceptable.
The government promised EI reform last summer. We are still waiting for it. In fact, it is a commitment that goes back to 2015. The government has been making promises for seven years all the while telling us that the reform is coming. The workers are fed up. They no longer have time to be patient only to end up being abandoned.
They are here today on Parliament Hill because they do not even qualify for EI anymore. They are in a vacuum. Will the minister's office at least meet with them?
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- Oct/25/22 2:57:17 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, this is going to be a tough winter for seasonal workers in the regions. They have been abandoned by EI since the recent increase in the eligibility threshold to 700 hours. They are not facing a black hole anymore, they are facing a total vacuum.
That is why the interprovincial alliance of the unemployed is in Ottawa today. We're talking about 20 unions and worker advocacy groups from eastern Quebec and the Maritimes. They have come to tell the government that the comprehensive EI reform it promised cannot wait.
When will the government finally introduce its reform? What is the date? We want a date.
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- Oct/17/22 2:55:46 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would remind the House that the reason the unemployment rate rose during the pandemic was because governments asked companies to close their doors and, consequently, to put their employees out of work. That happened to thousands of workers. It was the right decision, obviously, but it is the government's responsibility to deal with the consequences of that decision.
In terms of CERB, the government is paying off the debt in the consolidated fund. Why is it refusing to take on the EI debt when those benefits were paid out for the same reasons and because of the same pandemic?
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- Oct/17/22 2:54:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, because of the pandemic, the EI fund is short $26 billion, but it is not the contributors' responsibility to pay off that debt by themselves. Neither workers nor businesses are responsible for the pandemic and its fallout. The Canada Employment Insurance Commission itself is concerned about the burden the government is putting on contributors.
Will the government take on the EI debt that has accrued since March 2020 instead of passing on the full cost of the pandemic to workers and businesses?
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- Oct/3/22 2:41:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the pilot projects do nothing to fix the eligibility criteria. By reverting to the old EI rules without any reform, the minister is putting both workers and employers at risk.
This is a recipe for decline in the regions. The first step is to deprive workers of employment insurance, forcing them to change jobs or move. The next step is to deprive business owners of labour, forcing them to close. This is why Quebec's regions are failing to thrive.
Does the minister realize what she is becoming a party to?
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- Oct/3/22 2:39:53 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, Quebec's tourism industry is sounding the alarm. The decision to end temporary EI measures without a comprehensive reform of the system is putting Quebec's regions at risk.
For example, let us take a seasonal worker. Ten days ago they qualified for EI with 420 hours of employment. Suddenly, they must now have 700 hours. We are talking about whole industries in the regions where accumulating more than 500 hours in a season is exceptional. Workers have been betrayed.
Will the Minister of Employment and Workforce Development fix this before it is too late?
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- Sep/22/22 2:41:07 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, by ending the temporary EI benefits before there is any reform, the government is leaving workers with a 1970s-era program. It is a program that abandons mothers who lose their jobs during parental leave because it does not account for women being in the workplace; a program that abandons the sickest workers; a program that completely ignores self-employed workers; and a program that considers the workers to be seasonal, instead of the industries they work in.
Is that really the social safety net that the Prime Minister has to offer Quebeckers?
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