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That's the problem in politics: it's always in the short term and shortsighted. That's why our popularity ratings are very weak. Four percent of our fellow citizens trust politicians and the most optimistic polling goes as high as 20%. There's a major problem, a crisis of confidence. It's all tied in to concrete acts, concrete actions, irresponsible speeches like promising to do away with the GST and finally not doing it, knowing all the while in advance that it wouldn't be done. It's hard to sound credible after that.

The same thing goes for unemployment insurance. The conservatives undertook two successive reforms towards the end of their mandate. I wasn't a member then, I was on the outside, but I don't remember hearing the Liberal Party being favourable to them. Maybe my TV was broadcasting the wrong pictures and my newspapers weren't a reflection of reality, but it seems to me there were rather noisy debates here and even within the Conservative Party. Back home, Guy Saint-Julien, the conservative MP, opposed his own government and was part of the demonstrations. I don't remember him saying that the liberals supported the conservative reform. He certainly would have mentioned it a few times. Which means that people might possibly wonder about our credibility.

To get back to what I was saying, because I am drifting away from my friend Keynes and his approach to public finance. How can we get out of this ditch? That's a legitimate question. But what we're saying now is: Whose fault is it? The unemployed are costing us an arm and a leg and we're going to cut them off. Same thing for the people on welfare and so on. There's targeting going on and a lot of divisiveness. We're just making sure that the people with work become intolerant with those who are not working by making them out to be lazy.

I was giving the government's documents another look. It's as though people chose to become unemployed. It may very be that some people are making a career move or, because of personal reasons it's better to quit your job and reorient your career because some jobs are really not a lot of fun. What really motivated me to pursue my studies were my summer jobs. When I worked in a saw mill piling boards from morning until night, I complained a lot less when I went back to school. The bottom end of the semesters were always hard, of course, but it was a lot easier than piling boards 50 hours a week. So some people do quit those jobs to get out of the rut and try something else.

Then they're pointed out for abusing the system. While we're pushing pencils, shuffling paper, passing laws and taking ourselves seriously, there are people working in this value-added economy at salaries lower than what you have in the public service, that was put on a pedestal over the years, and they're the ones who are going to be the most affected. Manual labour has been depreciated, higher value has been put on "intellectual" work, and on top of that you are going to "give them the works" with unemployment insurance.

Look at the people who are demonstrating today. Generally speaking, they are fisheries, forest and mine workers, labourers and plant workers. Those people are already doing a lot for our economic system, and I'm not sure that the salary they get in real life is a reflection of the real value of their contribution to society, but they're going to be the most heavily penalized. It's already a big concern because at some point they're going to react. We're lucky there were only 5,000 of them at Rivière-du-Loup and that there weren't 50,000 of them in front of the Parliament buildings all night.

People are tolerant. They know that an extraordinary effort has to be made to steer our public finance in the right direction. What they have problems accepting is being the only target. Over the last few years, unemployment insurance has been reformed time and again. There were several reforms.

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In one document, it is said that stability had to be ensured for people to be able to do some kind of financial planning. Try and do that when the government is changing the Unemployment Insurance Act every year. From one year to the next, you never know what your social safety net that's already full of holes is going to be, because it's being seriously challenged. It's not necessarily unfair, because there does have to be some debate, but those people are having problems getting any kind of security. The federal government's new slogan is social security and security from every point of view. Those people are feeling less and less secure and you just won't have much credibility.

Is it the fault of the people who aren't working if we have a deficit problem? I don't think so. Here's an example. What really caused it? Is it our too generous unemployment insurance plan? I'll tell you about something that's a real scandal and that you never hear so much about as unemployment insurance. Why? I wonder. Capital gains were tax exempt. The first $500,000 were tax exempt. You bought the shares of a company, you invested, and because you were encouraging the economy with your capital gains, those gains were tax exempt. People used that to the max, the people with money, of course. Some used it a little. After a number of people had used it, it was said that it made no sense, that it was too generous, that the exemption would be brought down to $100,000. Those who had already used the $500,000 didn't really care if it was down to $100,000. Now the first $100,000 of capital gains are exempt. Who makes that kind of capital gain? Our laid-off workers aren't making much in the way of capital gains. Apparently, they're going to be reduced to zero. After years of this going on, all of a sudden we hear it doesn't make sense. How much did these capital gains exemptions cost year after year? The government certainly never looked at that matter or never said anything publicly. Run some estimates. It's easy. Every year, Revenue Canada tells us how many people claimed a capital gains exemption or set aside amounts that exempted them from capital gains taxes. It's too late now to go back. Didn't those people profit from the flexibility of the state while people with much less might draw a few thousand dollars in unemployment insurance or from a few of the programs flowing from it? That's the question we have to ask.

The rich contribute to our economy. I'm not from the extreme left of the spectrum. You say that the rich contribute to our economy and they shouldn't be affected. It's as though someone drawing unemployment insurance didn't buy groceries or act like a consumer. It's as though that money didn't have a positive spin on the economy. Of course, they're not walking around in suits and ties, and they're not working with a laptop computer, but those people contribute to our economy in their way in their own communities. Very often they belong to a rural community that lives in a very different way. Those people are players and important contributors involved in social activities. They coach your minor hockey league, they're involved in figure skating and all kinds of other things. But what do you care? You've decided it's not valuable. You can't sell it on Bay Street. That's a very arrogant attitude for the government to take.

You mentioned lawyers. What kind of value-added do you get from that industry? The ratio of lawyers-engineers here is reversed as compared to developing industrialized countries. But here, we've got regulations and paperwork and we do our best to make life miserable for the real economic players.

I'd like to get back to the human aspect, because it's about time I did. I still have a lot to say and all of it is either interesting or engrossing. It's certainly more interesting than a computer poker game!

And how about our youth, in all that? Politically speaking, I had a certain number of objectives. When I was on the outside, it always made me laugh, no matter what the political party. They just wanted to get the youths on their side with their promises. Here is what we'll do for our youth! We're not in that debate. We can't share our visions and views with you.

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I decided to come on board and I'm happy that my colleague from Lac-Saint-Jean got into politics to share a point of view.

An honourable member: We want to hear about our youth.

Mr. Brien: Absolutely, absolutely and I'm getting there. I'll even do a link up with sovereignty, if you want and I'll be happy to do it. You'll learn all kinds of things tonight. Stay tuned, you're going to have fun.

It's already hard for our young people to find a first job. The previous generation is more plentiful in numbers and has its own preoccupations and concerns, it was there before and there is nothing mean or machiavelic in this but it just naturally happened and it's the one defining the government's priorities and will continue to do it because that's what its demographic weight allows it to do. That means that it's very difficult for our young people to get access to jobs right now. It's hard to find full-time jobs. Hope is more limited.

Can any young person today think of having a career in the public service? That young person had better get up early if the goal is a good job in the public service.

When you are a student and looking at the situation, you can see that there are only contracts out there. You'll go from one contract to the next waiting for a whole generation to get out of the labour market. When you're between jobs, you seriously wonder if anything will be there to help you get through it. The objective of a program like unemployment insurance is to help with transition and allow people to level out their income.

You're not giving them much hope and I'm not saying that the only ambition of our young people is to be unemployed. On the contrary, they all want jobs.

That said, we fully realize that the job market is tight right now. Why come up with measures that are going to penalize us? One example is part-time work. Some friends going to university and cegep are working 12 hours a week in restaurants at minimum wage. That's not a lot of money.

They weren't paying unemployment insurance premiums, but they're going to now. Count the number of weeks that they are going to have to work to become eligible for unemployment insurance and you'll see that they don't have much of a chance. Often they study during one or two sessions and go back home during the summer. They work on government projects and they're not allowed to draw unemployment insurance while they're studying. Those people won't benefit from the new plans; they're going to be penalized. They're going to have even thinner pay checks than before. They'll be able to get part of it back when they file their income tax return, but the fact remains that the pay cheque is going to be thinner.

Same thing for women. Tonight, here, there's a majority of men. Men are also a majority in the political world. The reality for women on the labour market is different from ours and always will be a little for the good and simple reason that unless there are any major changes, the women will still be having the babies. That means they have a problem to adapt to the labour market if the government doesn't make it easier to adapt the labour market to the reality of the second millennium. Women want to be part of the labour market and are making a significant contribution to society through their contribution in that area.

Adjustments will have to be made and we can't feel that in this unemployment insurance scheme. There isn't very much in there adapted to this new reality.

The people in temporary and part-time jobs will also be the hardest hit. I remember the first comments when the unemployment insurance document was tabled. They were saying the seasonal workers would be hardest hit. But women and youth will actually be in that position.

Please don't begrudge me a sip of water, Mr. Chairman. My colleagues will be able to speak later on and I'll be more than happy to give them the floor but I still have a few thoughts to express in my preamble.

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Mr. Crête: Most interesting.

Mr. Brien: Thank you. I'm happy to see you're listening. I don't need any help; I can speak all night without any help and without any problem. I have so much to say. I could tell you what the people in my riding are thinking, but I'll stick to the main points.

I was talking about women, but also about the human aspect of this whole question. Just think of these people's day to day life. Tonight, a few of us are mumbling because they're going to have to spend the whole night at it, but what's that compared to what's going to happen to some of those people when the unemployment insurance plan become a highway to welfare? Imagine what those people think about before going to bed. They probably don't have much sympathy for few parliamentarians who are going to spend all night working. They'll say that it's going to be good for them to work a little and that maybe they'll be more considerate afterwards.

There's one reality that is much overlooked in this whole unemployment insurance reform. You can reform social programs in a positive way and that's what we're hoping for. That means we'd have to look at at least one important problem amongst many. You have firing, massive lay-offs, businesses that are modernizing and restructuring. Every day, one of those cases makes the headlines in our newspapers and that creates a very downcast atmosphere because emphasis is being put on that far more than on the positive aspects of our economy.

But in any case, this is reality. In the Kenworth plant, in Quebec, you have people between 40 and 50 years of age losing the jobs that they've held for 10, 15 or 20 years. They're told to recycle themselves in all kinds of areas where there are going to be jobs tomorrow but it's not easy for those people. When you've been doing the same job for 15 or 20 years, that you've become used to a certain way of life and if you haven't gone very far in school, you've lost your ability to learn. The heavier you iron a pleat in the shirt, the more difficult it is to get it out afterwards. That's life.

There are a lot of our relatives that are going to have a lot of problems getting back on their feet. Losing you job when you're 47 and knowing that pensions are only kicking in at 55 or 60... You have ten years to go and you wonder how you're going to manage to last that long, not just financially, because work isn't just a financial thing. When you've been working every day for 20 years, living in a certain environment, doing things, getting involved... Okay, so you gripe every now and then, but your work means something to you and you give something back to your community.

Now, you're left looking on. It's very frustrating for those people. And then we wonder why we have ever higher social costs in health, more and more frequent mental health problems and suicide problems which, today, no longer just affect youth. In my region, there was a recent series of suicides of people between 40 and 50 years of age. They were, for the most part people who had never adjusted to the fact that they had lost their job. There were certainly other factors, but still...

Why aren't we able to innovate, to imagine? The only way to innovate is on a yellow orange book where Innovations: The Key to a Modern Economy is written. I can't wait to see the book called Innovation: The Key to the Success of our Political System. We spent an hour in the House voting just now, and someone asked our new MP why we weren't voting electronically with a board. Our institutions are outdated, and our way of thinking is also outdated, unable to adjust to the real changes we should be making. We take a pencil and come up with $4 billion. We cut, it is an accounting exercise, without any human considerations, and without any vision above all. There are other costs which will come up sooner or later. The economists suggest short-term savings, and the politicians recover money saying that they're doing it for the young. I can't wait to see what we inherit. If we improve the public finance situation, but corrode the social climate, I'm not sure we'll have come out ahead.

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People trust politicians and the political system in general at a rate of about 3 or 4%. The people that I see in my riding tell me that they like me well enough, that I do well enough, but the others, always a bit anonymous in their criticism, say that... In the end, you see that it's the system they hate the most and they end up hating us when we play the system's game. When you see an MP who tries to live up to his election promises gets thrown out of his party, it's quite extraordinary. The person wants to say to people that we will do what he promised, but he's thrown out in the name of the party line.

If an MP broke party ranks to go against his commitment, they'd understand more easily. But that isn't the case. A person has been thrown out who remained true to his promises or who wanted to remain true. It wasn't a Minister and he didn't have the means to do so, but...

So there's a sad reality to be faced by people 40 to 50 years of age. In the bill, there are very few provisions that concern them directly, which lead to some hope. It's true that there is restructuring, but these people should be able to feel that the government is there to help them, to do something for them. Not only is there nothing for them in the bill, but what little there is will be limited to five minutes of discussion per intervention to make sure that the parliamentarians don't dwell on it, the minister having probably told the committee to do things quietly and as quickly as possible.

It's quite surprising. At the Committee on Public Accounts, where there was a very lively debate recently, a government colleague said that it was very worrisome, but that we shouldn't worry too much, because he was sure that they would be there; their whip said to be there and even told them how to vote.

I would have like him to put that into his next householder mailing, to inform his constituents that he was a moveable green plant, that he was being moved around and that he did as he was told.

People may be cynical about politics and they may be even more cynical when they feel that the party in power, midway in its first mandate, is proven to be arrogant, has lost any critical judgement and is already far removed from the reality of the people.

This government had managed to find slogans that were close to that reality. The slogans about jobs were good election campaign slogans. It was believed that there was a bit of juice in that, that there was some truth, that there were ideas. Even if we had not heard them during the campaign, perhaps they hadn't said everything in order to keep some room to manoeuvre so as to launch new initiatives. This ended up being limited to a very banal infrastructure program. Once again, they reinvented the wheel. Infrastructures is a classic.

I feel that there's some used up politicians in this government, that it has run out of imagination, and that the Prime Minister is not displaying any innovative political leadership. That's very worrisome, it doesn't give us much hope.

I was just saying earlier that youths, women, people between 40 and 50 who lose their jobs don't have much reason to rejoice about this bill.

I didn't talk about the fundamental reasons that has led me to such dissatisfaction. Our government accounting is so confused and foggy that I wouldn't be surprised if government MPs were fast asleep.

With regard to unemployment insurance, premiums from employers and employees are taken and sent to the Consolidated Revenue Fund, which is the government's big joint account. Everyone can contribute to it. They take income taxes, other taxes, excise taxes which are constantly diminishing in this wave of liberalization with more fees and more customs tariffs.

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Therefore, the Consolidated Revenue Fund is made up of all these forms of revenue, including unemployment insurance revenue, and that money is used to spend. Afterwards, expenditures are accounted for in budgetary documents, various categories and expenditures are added up and in the end it's impossible to figure out what's what. This is very far from the ``transparency'', a word which I may remind you was so important in the Liberal Party red book. That word must appear in the book about 50 times. We need more transparency.

If the unemployment insurance fund was a separate account, Mr. Chairman, we would see that in the fiscal year 1995, once premiums and expenditures were accounted for, there would be $5 billion surplus left in that account. Fiscal 1995 generated a surplus of $5 billion in unemployment insurance, and the same will be true in the fiscal year 1996.

We're not talking about an unemployment insurance fund that has any kind of problems? Of course, when we put the question to the Minister of Finance, his initial reaction was to say that the account had accumulated deficits in the past. And when we put the same question to the former minister of Human Resources Development as well as to the current minister, they both answered that the account had been in a deficit position in the past and that we needed a few years of surplus to recover from those deficits.

Let's examine the fund in its current form. Every year, premiums are deposited in the same account that is used to pay expenses with a line of credit, because there was a deficit the first years.

But last year, the unemployment insurance fund accumulated a surplus which totalled $1 billion, and this year as well as next, we're heading towards surpluses of $5 billion.

If you add up those figures, in two years we will end up with $11 million accumulated in the unemployment insurance account. And there there's a problem. How can we cut this system in such a scandalous manner when it is clearly self financing? Moreover, this system is set up in such a say that even if there was a recession tomorrow morning, there would be no deficit and the fund would be balanced at about zero. This is obvious, when premium revenue are lower and expenditures are higher, the account would balance out to zero.

Essentially, it's a tax on employment. You have to call a spade a spade. If unemployment insurance premiums are recovered to reduce the deficit, the government is stealing - we musn't mince words - the unemployment insurance surplus for use in reducing the deficit. It's therefore a tax on employment paid for by employees and employers.

You may not know that the government does not spent a single penny on this system and employers and employees finance it in its entirety. It is their system and it's being administered half hazardly, with a chain saw, which leads to situations that will lead to problems sooner or later, while exerting a great deal of pressure on provincial governments.

I would not like to talk about seasonal workers that that government seems to be targeting. I would like to point out that maple syrup does not flow all year round. There are sectors in which you cannot work year round. People only work during a certain period of time which may be six or eight months.

And then we have winter here in Canada. There are winter industries and summer industries. Many companies try to find complimentary activities, but you know that it's now always easy to have a labour force that can perform well for a certain type of product produced in the winter and another produced in summer.

There's no doubt that entrepreneurs have a profit motive. If they could find other cost-effective activities they would do so. But it's not easy, because we have not invested a great deal in training in the past few decades.

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We have a problem today because we invested in training and in the education systems, but not in occupational training nor in continuing education training.

Are we to say, as the government has led us to understand, that seasonal workers who are on unemployment insurance during that part of the year where they don't work are exploiting the system? If memory serves, the Prime Minister had even called them beer drinkers. That's a bit much! I'm convinced that certain members of the government drink beer as well. I don't have any statistics about that, but I'd be curious to see whether it's only the unemployed and welfare recipients who consume this kind of product. All this is part of reality.

Personally, I live in the Abitibi-Témiscamingue region, where there are a lot of mines and forest workers. As a matter of fact, that's the case in most regions of Quebec. What we call a region in Quebec is different than what is called a region in Ottawa, where Quebec is considered a region. I would like to point out that to us, regions are the lower St. Lawrence Valley, the Gaspé, the Saguenay, Lac St. Jean, Abitibi, Témiscamingue. In most of these regions that are far from the major centres, the economy is made up of seasonal workers as a general rule.

Since this is a system paid for by employers and employees, the vast majority of workers start from the principle that income must be levelled over the whole year, which means that workers would not end up having income for six months and none for another six months. It would allow workers to plan their expenditures. It may be a little more encouraging for people who want to start a family to know that they won't be spending six months without any income. All these factors have led to our regional economies learning how to integrate this in their whole way of operating.

Now we're announcing major cuts just like that, without planning any kind of transition. The government only provides for transitional period when it feels like it or when it suits it. For example, when you want to have the Maritimes swallow this bitter pill, you provide for a $1 billion compensation in the GST reform, hoping that this will make people shut up. You know it full well.

How come the consequences of the reform weren't planned earlier and why was there no provision to tell the regions that we would try to find new ways to help them boost their economy? Your election slogan was about jobs. All your documents, with all their colours, whether the cover page was yellow, green, orange, purple or grey had one common theme: programs, jobs and growth. If this had been done by a private enterprise, we could have sued them for false advertising.

All these plans are aimed at cutbacks. We're not talking about job growth, but rather job cuts and a reduction in growth. Perhaps there were words missing or maybe I didn't understand. Maybe there's a trap here. If we don't generate more growth and employment, we'll never get out of this mess. We're in a downward spiral and I thought you'd understood that.

There was a wide ideological difference between liberals and conservatives. I say ``there was'', because now there is none anymore. You're right, there is none. They're all the same! You changed seats, and all of a sudden the colour changed and your discourse changed. To my mind, the speeches are in the desks on the other side. We didn't know that. We should check it out.

At the risk of repeating myself, I'll come back to the fact that we mustn't forget that limiting debate, ensuring that people can't express themselves too much and speak for as short a time as possible is an attitude that is not unique to this government, but exists in all governments. It's probably the leadership that it bothers the most.

The question we have to ask and that people are asking themselves - although they gave us the answer when we asked - is who is running things. What real power do you have? Up to what point are Members of Parliament on this committee, on the government's side, truly capable of changing things? I'm asking the question and I have no proof, that since I arrived here, government members are able to influence government decisions or even less change them.

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As a matter of fact, I don't think I will obtain this evidence of your real power tonight, with the unemployment insurance issue.

It must be relatively frustrating to figure out that you have no influence whatsoever over government decisions, that you can only obey orders, and that you're just a puppet whose strings are being pulled.

This is in fact a conservative bill that was served up again. And it goes even further and faster.

I imagine that the upper echelons of the federal bureaucracy with all these dear mandarins at the helm were able to make you swallow all this. We must be aware that people know that we have no influence and they end up becoming sceptical. They know it and they tell us!

If we conducted a survey of the people in the upper echelons of power other than politicians, they wouldn't be anymore popular than we are.

That brings us to a situation like this, where we do work that is more or less connected to reality and very far removed from our election campaign commitments, but which will take shape anyway, because those who lead us have decided that that would be the case.

We are therefore forced to observe that it is not government members who have made a decision. I hope that all this doesn't leave you indifferent and that somewhere in the bottom of your heart you are saying that it's true, that it's those people we have to attack.

Remember what I said in my introduction. Your main targets since you took office have been unemployment insurance and transfer payments. You mustn't forget that, because that's where you achieved your real savings and reduce spending. It was almost exclusively in those areas.

Within a year or two, a number of spending cuts will have been made in the public service, in defence and in subsidies to business. That's being done now. The savings that you've achieved up until now were done in the two areas that I just mentioned.

I would now like to discuss transfer payments to provinces. In the Red book, you had made a commitment to ensure stable and predictable funding to the provinces.

Part of the provinces revenue is made up of transfer payments. You're saying that in order to help them plan, they have to be assured a stable revenue. You created a new Canada social transfer. You gathered together all the provincial transfer programs concerning health care, education and social assistance under the new term ``Canada social transfer''. But this year, you're saying that the anticipated floor is $11 billion. That's another nice Liberal promise that's being kept!

What a farce! We'll cut back on unemployment insurance and we'll increase social assistance spending in the provinces. Social assistance spending is increasing in the provinces. How can they then plan in a stable way and balance their budgets?

This is a farce! You're not respecting your commitment. It's an illusion of respecting one's commitments. It's like the GST. It's the same thing. You may have known that it wasn't possible, but you misled the public.

Let me present a hypothetical situation and I imagine that you will correct me if you think I am wrong and you can explain your viewpoint. Either you admit that you knew you were misleading the public, or you are going back on your commitments today. It's only one or the other and it can't be both. In any event, you can't get out of it.

I must say that all this has led to a rather unhealthy climate in this country which is already besieged with a number of constitutional problems. The fact that you're constantly tripping up the provinces certainly won't help improve federal-provincial relations.

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In fact, this generally affects Quebec more, because Quebec is relatively more autonomous in program management and through the years, it has developed its own state which intervenes in a number of areas, with its own vision of things, but in part with financial resources that are slipping from it because they're administered here in Ottawa.

I can't really discuss this without talking a little bit about the hodge podge of unemployment insurance and social assistance benefits.

What I find most discouraging is that citizens don't always see the difference between federal and provincial jurisdictions, especially since there is so much overlap and duplication. We can't even find our way through all this. We can't blame them if they can't figure it out.

For example, let's take a person who doesn't have a job. He can decide on his own to go and take a training course somewhere. There is an add in the newspaper that says that the Canada or Quebec employment centre is offering courses. But that's where the problems start. There are in fact various categories of people who can take these courses. If the person is getting unemployment insurance benefits, he will probably not be eligible for courses given under the auspices of the Quebec government. If the person is not receiving unemployment insurance benefits, he or she will not be eligible for federal government courses. That person is therefore right and left in the ping-pong game of the unemployed. The person ends up at our office, but we can't do anything for them save send them to their provincial MNA. But then the person comes back to see us because the provincial MNA couldn't help them either, and then they tell us that it's an insane system. One of my colleagues, the member for Saint-Sauveur, likes to call these people ``Asterix in the land of the bureaucrats''. We have to admit it's rather complicated!

But the logic is simple, because it's political logic. According to the financial statements, we can see that in the past, the federal government paid for social assistance - which we shared half and half - and for unemployment insurance by contributing to the unemployment insurance fund. Whether someone received social assistance or unemployment insurance benefits, it still used to cost the federal government money.

But now, the federal government has changed the rules of the game and gives less and less in transfer payments for social assistance. Therefore, if someone is on welfare, it costs the federal government less than if that person was on unemployment insurance. In fact, in our financial statements, the unemployed, revenues, employer and employee premiums as well as unemployment insurance spending is accounted.

From a federal standpoint, we're trying to have the fewest problems as possible with spending and revenue. And to achieve that, there are two solutions. Either you fix things so that these people are employed and you help them get back into the job market, or else you withdraw their benefits and put them on welfare. It would seem that in this case, the government has chosen the latter solution, that is withdrawing benefits and sending people on welfare.

Provincial governments are realizing the situation, and I can tell you that they won't sit on their hands. They will watch this carefully and create programs for 900 or 1,000 hours of work or perhaps 800 hours. They will take these people who are on welfare, who will work for 800 hours on various projects and then they'll get back on unemployment insurance. It's a logical way of doing things because on their books, these people are welfare recipients that have to get out of this situation either by getting back in the job market or by being sent back to unemployment insurance.

We're talking about inconsistency and ineffectiveness caused by the fact that there are two players on the field. When I only have a few minutes to explain to people why we are in favour of sovereignty, I simply tell them that this way, they won't have two governments anymore who are constantly fighting in order to end up with this kind of insanity. There will only be one government and if it doesn't do its job properly, they can kick it out. That government cannot lead them from one financial statement to another because there will only be one financial statement. Whether you're in one section or the other, you'll be part of the same set of problems. Here, this is not the case.

Right now, we're not attacking the real problem. One can wonder how come we're incapable of reducing unemployment to a lower level. That's the real problem. If the government cannot find a solution on its own, why doesn't it asks us to think about it together? It would be better if the government had the courage to realize its limitations, rather than have us believe that it can do something when in fact it's incapable of doing anything.

Earlier, I was looking at a statistical graph on unemployment in the past 40 years. There is an increase, and it's a line with a few zig-zags. But we noticed that what is called an economic permanent unemployment has increased considerably. Therefore there's a problem.

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We can say that after every recession, there a number of people who lose their jobs and never re-enter the labour force. We know this, but we don't say it because we're afraid of the truth and especially because we don't have any solutions.

Perhaps if the government was capable of admitting that it doesn't hold the absolute truth or have innate knowledge, people would trust it more, would participate more and could influence us in a real way. Members of parliament would then have a more important role to play. But the bureaucratic machinery is incapable of admitting failure. That goes against its principles.

However, in actual fact, we aren't able to. This is very worrisome. What will the situation be one or two recessions from now? Will permanent unemployment reach 10, 12, 13%? And will we have to accept it?

The unemployment insurance system that we have presently was set up to function at an unemployment rate of about 7%. But as it is no longer at that level, we tell ourselves we must change it, given the permanent unemployment rate of about 10%. Then, in five years, it will be said that it has to be changed again to deal with a rate of 12 or 13%. There will therefore be further cuts to accommodate a permanent jobless rate of 12 or 13%.

We can't just give up like this and throw up our arms and say it's acceptable, even if we have a public finance problem, even if we have 56,000 reasons, even if there's a globalization of the economy!

But don't be fooled. I support free trade. We must also improve the state of our public finances, which shouldn't keep us from being intelligent enough to look into the job market problem and trying to adjust, not only through training but also through other means.

The role of the government is also called into question in this debate. What is its true role in today's economy. It is said that it can't do much and that that is the private sector's concern. Our role, therefore, would be more in the redistribution of wealth.

Unemployment insurance is a bit of that. To reach its present goal, if we want to lower premiums or recover surpluses, we must find some leeway because some people contribute too much, or not enough, compared to others. But who are the others? They are the wealthy that my friend was speaking of before, the high-income earners. You also have to wonder what is happening to real social solidarity. Where is our sense of solidarity?

I had an amusing talk with the chairman of a Chamber of commerce in Calgary during a sitting of the Finance Committee. He told me that if we took measures to get high-income earners to contribute more, they would move to the United States, just as people in professions would take up practice there. I must say that at the beginning, he attacked my Canadian patriotism. As for me, I wonder about his. Those people aren't able to say that they will contribute to the effort to reduce deficit, that they will do their part and that they won't move. They won't do it because they can move their capital. We can't reach those people who change the rules of the game to suit themselves.

In the same vein, I'll tell you about companies with satellite operations. What are these companies, you ask? They're companies that invest in different countries and have subsidiaries in certain other countries. The branch in the country with the lowest tax rate makes the most profit.

How is this possible? Because firms buy, amongst themselves, products from the different subsidiaries at prices they set themselves. The price transfers mean that they are sure that the profits are made by the subsidiary in the country with the lowest tax rate. Here, they will borrow because the interest expenses are deductible. So they borrow in our system and turn a profit in another system. They transfer products from one branch to another. There would have to be an international agreement to stop this. There aren't many other solutions to this. Unfortunately, it is in some countries' interest to cheat. We are therefore unable to avoid this problem, but we don't dare say so. We also don't dare say that this leads to a significant loss of growth revenue for the government, and we do nothing.

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How is it that we don't find another way to catch these people? I wonder if they are more patriotic than I, Mr. Chairman. I seriously wonder.

But I'll come back to unemployment insurance, because in Quebec, there is a strong consensus in favour of repatriating job training. The Conseil du patronat goes even further, stating that employment centres agree with this repatriation. We want to manage it ourselves to avoid the ping-pong game I mentioned to you before.

The federal government is fighting tooth and nail against this. Why? Because federal MPs and the federal machine like to set up small programs where you can play around a bit with unemployment insurance funds. Small programs are invented that MPs approve in their ridings, and notices and pictures are published in the local paper.

And what if the federal government no longer managed the unemployment insurance fund? We are ready to accept that, but there'd be no more pictures in the paper. It would no longer be possible to set up little political programs and play politics with the money of employees and employers. That is the basic reason the government is against the transfer of job training to Quebec.

It wants to keep the political spin-offs gained from fiddling around with the money of employees and employers. It's scandalous! The more we explain this to people, the more you'll have trouble campaigning in Quebec on any issue. I'd just like to remind you, by the way, that it's been a long time since Quebeckers voted for the Liberal Party. And soon, it'll be Canadians turn. This is what we hope for. They would gain from it.

Mr. Chairman, before closing, there are still a few points I'd like to bring up - I see you're following this with great interest - because I can't let some other measures pass by without saying something.

I'll tell you about a measure that shocks me. Give me a good reason for lowering the limit of insurable earnings from 42,000 to 39,000. What would be the result of this, in actual fact? First of all, the government loses $900 million, because people earning between $39,000 and $42,000 had to pay premiums. What is much more important, is that we're going against another emerging consensus, in Quebec although maybe not outside of it, concerning job sharing.

If we really want to share the wealth, we will one day have to consider job sharing. How do you do job share? Not by philosophizing and shooting the breeze. There has to be tangible achievements. You have to do exactly the opposite of what you're doing. As of a certain number of hours worked or a certain level of income, earnings are no longer insurable from the unemployment insurance point of view. I'll put myself in the place of an employer and give you an example. When my employee has worked 40 and some hours per week and reached an annual income that will go beyond the $39 000 ceiling, he'll no longer pay premiums, and I won't either. What will I do? If I have the choice of making him do overtime or hiring a new employee who, from the very first hour, will pay premiums - just as I will as an employer - , what will I do? I'll have people work more overtime because it costs me less. That's how the employer reasons.

It's not because you're going to send him a letter, with the MP's stamp on the bottom, to tell him to share the job market that he will do so. Maybe in the mid-term, people will see that amongst employees who work a little less, there are fewer work accidents and the costs tied to these accidents are therefore lesser. Why not do the opposite, increase the unemployment insurance premiums paid as of a certain number of hours, even if it means lowering them for the very first hours? I can't believe that this is technically impossible. Worst things than that have been done here.

If we move that way, wouldn't employers recognize that it costs them less as of a certain number of hours and they would hire other people, which would lead to a greater sharing of the job market, as much amongst individuals as amongst employers? I think that could be a new direction to the future.

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But no, here we are completely out of touch and it's as if job-sharing didn't exist. It is thrown into a speech from time to time, but in actual fact there is no thought given to how to do it. I am at a loss to understand it. It's the technical measure that I understand the least, because we're losing money. It's completely counterproductive and it goes against common sense, and yet it still exists. When the Minister said, at a certain point, that he was going to bring in some amendments, I told myself that he had noticed that it didn't make sense, but unfortunately, that wasn't what he was talking about.

Concerning the new Minister I have to mention his attack against Bob White. Outside of the House, the Minister took part in what is commonly known as a scrum to attack Bob White and the activists who encouraged the demonstrations.

But this same government accepts that people in suits and ties, who make even more money than Bob White, lobby to change technical rules in the Income Tax Act and to influence the Bank Act Review. He doesn't consider those people as activists, oh no! Quite the contrary, it is considered noble compared to those who encourage people to stand up to show their opposition and to charge! Moreover, they say that Bob White earns a lot of money. Do you think that the Minister is doing volunteer work? Do you think that the Liberal Party's advisors, the senior government officials and lobbyists are volunteer workers working on development initiatives, which are known as PDE in our ridings? Not at all. But you can attack a union leader, yes, particularly in a place where he won't necessarily be very popular. You can beat him up even more, without any social conscience, without any perspective. There is no problem, no holds barred, Mr. Chairman. Away we go.

Mr. Chairman, when I further learned that there is a committee debate at the Promenade building, I wondered why this committee, given the importance of this debate, was sitting here and not in the Centre block, to carry out this debate before the TV cameras, so that people could see their MP's position in this debate. What are the stakes? Are we afraid of getting more people out in the streets during the next demonstrations? Are you afraid to tell people that you're doing absolutely nothing for them? It might bring up the ratings of the parliamentary channel. It might almost give you the idea of privatizing it. In fact, I don't know what motivates you, because I'm not very familiar with this committee, but it seems clear to me that your objective is to make sure that the debate is as invisible as possible and that the demonstrations cease once and for all so that the chain saw could do its work thoroughly and so that we can pass and implement this bill. It's very unfortunate.

Before giving the floor to others, I'd like to sum up some of the points I brought up before. I know that some of my colleagues had to leave for very legitimate reasons and came back for the end.

I started by saying that only granting five minutes per clause - 190 clauses, that's 950 minutes - after some fundamental objections were made, and gagging the opposition, shows a lack of respect for democracy. Those aren't quite the words I used, but in my closing remarks, that is how I would sum them up.

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I also spoke about our economic system. I repeated many times that we have to really come to grips with job creation, job recovery and improving our employment system. I know that it's more difficult than reading the sports pages of a newspaper, but that's why we have been elected and why people vote for or against us, Mr. Chairman. It's because they think we are able to find solutions to modern problems and not just look at the statistics of players we've bought up so that the team could make more money.

Imagine if tomorrow morning, when the daily papers come out, it stated that we didn't pay much attention to these problems! We'll be in trouble.

You'll deepen the bad mood of Quebeckers who will turn towards unemployment insurance because they lost their hockey team, eliminated from the series. You'll have to be careful. People could turn their bad temper against you, but I hope that our hockey team isn't eliminated because people need a safety valve in leisure activities, which allows them to forget about the nonsense of politics.

I was saying, therefore, that we had to rethink these matters. Today's economic thinkers, and I say this in a very critical way, have no imagination. They take up bits of theories here and there and try to do a little patchwork, as they say in highway maintenance, in order to help the government recover a bit. It must be said, however, that our economists have a little trouble being critical concerning their own theories. I'm therefore hoping for the emergence of a new economic school of thought, more modern and better adapted to today's world.

In my introduction, I spoke of Keynesian theories, dealing with the multiplier effect of productive aspects of government interventions, but which also set a certain number of limits, and which have not been borne in mind by the different governments whose policy was liberal nonetheless. I didn't speak of this, but I wonder under which government our public finance problems started. They started at the beginning of the 70's with our favourite ghost, Pierre Elliot Trudeau, and our present Prime Minister, Jean Chrétien, who was then Minister of Finance, which is saying something! Then we wonder why we have problems. And I was going to forget Marc Lalonde. Yes, today, we wonder why we have such problems.

When the Conservatives came to power, they were caught in a spiral where they couldn't even meet the interest payments on the debt.

Mr. Chairman, I don't want to compare the government and my taste in food, although I'd really like to. Liberals are in a large part responsible for the problem. The unemployed, people on social assistance, the jobless are not responsible for it. You sanctioned visions. Perhaps you had different kinds of visions when you allowed it to happen, and everything was fine. I have no trouble believing that it was a lovely party, but the time has come to act responsibly, not only concerning public finance, but also concerning social solidarity which must be our duty.

Don't tell me that we who are around this table aren't able to contribute more to the fight against the deficit. Ask yourselves honestly if you can do more. If you tell me you can't I'll be very surprised. I'm able to contribute more, I can. No, we aren't contributing too much, particularly not those who benefitted from this entire system. You'll never give as much as you got. Never! Never in your entire life will you give as much as you've gotten from the government. The government will have given you a lot more.

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When we speak of leaving a legacy to the young, we'd do well to remember that some people certainly took advantage of the $600 billion ``party''! Are they the unemployed? I don't think so. We want to change the system, update it? We must, and we must also make it more efficient and better tailored to reality. Why not, for instance, allow for very long periods of unemployment insurance if the person is involved in a more useful training process, in a more adjusted system? Of course, our training programs have not quite yet been adapted to the modern world. We've been led to believe many things on that topic and a lot of money has been spent, but the system isn't any more efficient.

There would have to be more flexibility, a greater reshaping of programs, and that would mean transferring job training to Quebec. Why are you against that? You were scared to death on October 30th last, you were afraid of losing your country as it is drawn up today, but you aren't even able to send a sign of hope to Quebeckers concerning job training. You're unable to tell them that you'll give them the control and responsibility for its management. I would have thought that some Liberal MPs would move amendments to support Quebec's claims, saying that it was the federal advisors, ministers and apparatchiks who were against them. But they've said nothing. They refuse to face this fact.

I can't end without bringing up the human aspects that I mentioned before. I know that there are Liberal MPs who are not happy to be here. Do you think that people are happy to be unemployed? Do you think they find it fun to see that we're lowering the criteria and pushing them towards social assistance? There are psychological limits, too. When you lose your job and you're on unemployment insurance, you feel you're in transition because you think you still have the ability to get back in. When, finally, you end up on welfare - which I would wish on some of you so that you'd become more aware - , you live through quite an upset on a human level. The man or woman who loses his or her job and who, in the end, ends up on welfare... It could happen to MPs, but you can't collect unemployment insurance.

Mr. Crête: You don't pay for it either.

Mr. Brien: That's it. So you could go directly to welfare. It's in our interest to be careful because that's what could happen. It's more than a matter of income; it's a matter of self-respect, of everything you can bring to society, of personal contributions, and that affects everyone.

You aren't able to think of the situation of those people that we're going to push more quickly onto welfare, in this final straight line heading directly towards the passage of this bill. You may believe you're stimulating employment and call it employment insurance, I can't say the words going through my head, because they're not very parliamentary. It would be utter nonsense. As I was saying before, this is a highway to welfare. It's not funny.

Moreover, as I was saying before, you cut your contribution to welfare. The provincial systems are less and less generous concerning welfare because they see where things are going. In Ottawa, now, we no longer talk about transfer payments to provinces concerning health, education, post-secondary education and welfare, but rather about the Canadian Health and Social Transfer. I have a lot of respect for the MP for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce because he dared to speak up against the Canadian Health and Social Transfer and because he saw this would lead to the destruction of social programs.

.0110

He understood, because he has a lot of parliamentary experience and knows the machine and all its reflexes well. He knew this would lead to the destruction of our present social programs and the long-term corrosion of the social climate. He doesn't say so, but I imagine he must have thought about it. In any case, I'm saying it. And where will the deterioration of the social climate lead us?

Last week I was at a CEGEP - I can't finish without telling you about this - with a group of students and, afterwards, I went to talk with some teachers. The CEGEP had just carried out cuts and therefore the number of teachers was down. The teachers told me that the upshot of all this was tragic. They asked me if I knew what it was.

They continued by telling me that all the young educators had been pushed aside because their positions were the most precarious. This means that, amongst the educators, there is no longer the energy of new teachers with new ideas, with new approaches. Those people, with their BAs, MAs or even PHDs, are twiddling their thumbs and aren't able to contribute to society because they can't get into the system and work.

Moreover, this keeps us from putting the necessary pressure on older teachers to take up new ideas, new approaches. It's a problem. And everything that keeps us from dealing in a realistic way with our employment problem will only emphasize that trend.

Personally, I don't feel there is anything, anything at all in the present bill which really deals with the employment problem. It isn't employment insurance. The name is all show. The new name is not catching on. And I think you've noticed that. People continue to use, quite rightly, the term unemployment insurance rather than employment insurance. People don't feel they are more insured in the job market.

To conclude, I'd like to remind you that the unemployment insurance fund has a $5 billion surplus this year. To remain credible, we should at least cut premiums. You haven't announced anything yet, and that isn't even part of the present bill. Why?

It's true that on occasion, ministers say that this should be looked into, that this can't go on much longer. You've created confusion. The former Minister of Labour, now Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, Ms Robillard, even said in the House: ``For unemployment insurance, there is a separate account managed separately''. I grant you she's new here, but there's a limit!

If what she's saying is true, in two years, with the election deadline coming up - unless you decide to call elections earlier because you're afraid of things collapsing - with the $1 billion accumulated last year and the $5 billion of this year and next year's amount, there will be a magic fund with $11 billion in it. Is that what was meant? Speak to her, or you'll have a credibility problem. Ms Robillard won't go very far with that idea, or else she'll cause you a lot of trouble at some point.

That's government: different signals, creating confusion, making things as incomprehensible as possible. Remember that one of the Red Book's themes was transparency. The Liberals said that people would be more intelligent if given the best information to judge the government.

The Auditor General reminded you of this a bit, concerning public finance. He found the indicators insufficiently clear and the targets poorly defined. He'll come back to that. That's what he said today before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts.

You should be open, you should tell people that you are stealing the surplus from the unemployment insurance fund. Tell them straight: ``We're stealing the UI fund surplus''. Then people will say you are honest. I'm convinced that if you take that approach, you will go up in people's esteem, even though you're stealing from them.

Mr. Crête: You won't go up in the polls, but you will go up in their esteem.

Mr. Brien: Yes, in their esteem. The polls are a different kettle of fish. The Liberals' honeymoon is over. That's history. But it never really amounted to much in Quebec in any case.

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So, I would remind you that I've spoken to young people, to women, to people between age 40 and 50 about the role of the government and about Asterix in the Land of the Public Servants. We are playing ping-pong with welfare recipients and the unemployed, because we have statistics on them. We need to show some imagination.

You're entitled to tell people that you made a mistake about UI, that you are not headed in the right direction and that you will start all over again. In Quebec, we held a socio-economic summit a few weeks ago. It brought together... When I say ``we'', I am not including myself because I was not involved in that, but rather the Quebec government, together with its partners from labour, management, community and student groups. The purpose was to reach agreement on a financial framework, including objectives, but also to achieve agreement on the timetables for dealing with the province's employment and financial problems. The participants achieved a consensus. They said they knew there were budgetary constraints and that everyone had to pull together.

We will be seeing them soon, because the consensus on manpower training was renewed at that summit. We will be seeing business people here soon. They themselves offered to come and apply pressure on Jean Chrétien. Those who were hand-in-hand with you at the time of the referendum will now be coming to Ottawa to demand that responsibility for manpower training be transferred to Quebec. What more do you need? Do we have to bring all 7 million Quebeckers to Parliament Hill? What does it take to convince you? I just don't know.

Some federalists say they believed in this for a long time, but that there are certain limits. Of course, after a discussion on manpower, there may be one on other issues, and perhaps consensus could be achieved on other matters. Quebec is heading to an ever-increasing autonomy, but it is in touch with the current market context. That is something you still don't understand. You and your actions are the best assets Quebec has for the next referendum. With bills such as this one, you are a help to us. I'm just giving you a friendly piece of advice here. You are helping us out. If you believe in your cause, you should change your approach.

I'd like to come back to the socio-economic summit. Why have you been unable to achieve, at the Canadian level, a consensus, involving a number of objectives, similar to the one achieved there? Your major mistake was that you have not defined the context. You were working from what you thought was good, and you find yourself in a process in which you are encountering increasing resistance. This is going to cause problems.

You might perhaps say that you realize that you made a mistake about unemployment insurance, and that you will start over and reform and modernize our social programs. Or you could say that you are going to set up the least costly system possible, while exploring other avenues. Are there any such avenues? There definitely are some.

I spoke about this earlier, with reference to the fact that you reduced the maximum insurable earnings from $42,000 to $39,000. That is an example where you should have done the opposite. You made a mistake. There are approaches to be explored and this would not be that costly. In fact, it might even cost nothing. I've already made some suggestions along these lines. We need a proactive approach to getting people into the labour market.

We ran into a systematic refusal to consider anything. You won't even agree to spending more than five minutes on each clause. You're afraid of ideas, afraid of the unknown, and afraid that people other than yourselves may have some good ideas. All that is very problematic for you.

Mr. Chairman, I will stop there for the time being, but I would like to remind you that people expect certain things of their Members of Parliament. People expect that we be more than house plants that can be watered on occasion, but rather players that can have a real influence on the issues being debated.

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I can't believe that in the Liberal Party of Canada, there aren't a few progressive individuals with some ideas that they will someday state publicly. Our parliamentary process is such that they are first expressed within the caucus, and...

I think you have gone as far you can go. The party has made its bed, and knows it has to lie in it. Some more independent-minded Members of Parliament have some good ideas, but it will be impossible to implement them.

The time has come for them to come out of the shadow, to stand up and join us tonight, if they wish, or in the days ahead, and to tell the government that it is not headed in the right direction.

[English]

An hon. member: That's why we have a separatist party. We're not in a good direction.

[Translation]

Mr. Brien: Mr. Chairman, the member says that the separatist party is not headed in the right direction. I would just like to remind him that we were elected by a majority of voters. Most of the Bloc Québécois members here... When were you elected?

I'm pleased to hear you say that we were elected in another country, to see that you are already getting used to the idea that Quebec is going to become sovereign.

But you were elected on the basis... How many referendums, you say? There are so many questions. I love this, and I can answer the questions. Let them ask me questions, and I will be pleased to answer them.

They ask how many referendums there will be in Quebec. My answer is that there will be referendums as long as the federal system is incapable of recognizing the existence of two peoples, of the Quebec people, and of giving it the tools it needs to grow and develop its language, culture and institutions. And there will be governments elected with the mandate to hold referendums. The Quebec government has been very clear. It has been elected and will ask for a mandate to hold a referendum. There will no referendum before the next election. The Quebec government will get a democratic mandate to hold a referendum, just as it did the last time.

I'm pleased to see that all of a sudden some people are coming to life. What we're doing is a much more open and transparent democratic exercise than your little committee.

We've consulted the people, we've travelled around Quebec and held regional and national commission hearings and talked to people. The percentage of the population who voted in the referendum was extraordinary - 93%. Democracy is in excellent health in Quebec. You will see how strong it is at the next federal election.

I hear some people are getting worked up about the people who voted no.

Rather than coming to demonstrate your love for Quebec in Montreal, do it in front of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa. Give us manpower training, give people something concrete, prove that your statements of love for Quebeckers were not just for show.

You like it when we're quiet, when we stay in our places, when we don't engage in any real debate. Democracy is in good health in Quebec, very good health. We count the no votes, but we count the yes votes as well. We will not count them...

Mr. Crête: On a point of order, Mr. Chairman. The speaker has a right to state his views. Someone on the other side of the table is constantly shouting, making sarcastic and other disrupting remarks. I can't even pay full attention to what my colleague is saying. I would ask you to call the member opposite to order.

[English]

The Acting Chairman (Mr. McCormick): Has the hon. member about wrapped up? Did you say you have finished?

[Translation]

Mr. Brien: No, I haven't finished. It's worth having three, because you're having trouble understanding the first one and the second one. I could have a fourth one, and then we would have four balls to first base. We can use what we like. You should practice what you preach.

Having said that, Mr. Chairman, our colleagues almost start slobbering when they rant on against sovereignty.

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We're talking about a democratic choice that people will make when they want to, when they're ready to. We respect their wishes. This time, the people voted no; consequently, we are still part of the present system. We too were elected to be part of this Parliament, and we will defend our people as long as we have their trust.

In addition, we were not elected by deluding, by promising: ``Jobs, jobs, jobs'', ``we will abolish the GST'', or ``we will created jobs''. You are fulminating against Montreal. You are responsible for the lack of development in Montreal. Throughout the world you are saying that all sorts of things are going on in Montreal. When people meet us in person, we the sovereignists, they see how progressive, open and modern we are. They wonder to what extent they've been misinformed by you. In the end, your credibility will suffer, once the truth is known.

Your attitude toward Montreal is to do nothing. You are not doing anything to create jobs in Montreal.

[English]

Mr. Allmand: Mr. Chairman, I have a point of order. I came here to listen to arguments with respect to the motion before the committee, which I believe deals with unemployment insurance. But I didn't come prepared to discuss the question of sovereignty in Quebec and the referendum. I would ask that the hon. member stick to the subject that's before the committee.

The Acting Chairman (Mr. McCormick): Mr. Allmand, I certainly almost hesitate to ask the member to tie it in. But proceed, Mr. Member.

[Translation]

Mr. Brien: I refer to sovereignty because we need to make a connection here. I explained it earlier. If the member didn't understand, I can repeat what I said. Unemployment insurance included manpower training. In Quebec, there is a consensus, even among some federalists, and your bill runs counter to that. Some of your lukewarm supporters tell you that this bill does not respect the Quebec consensus on manpower training.

That is where we make a connection, Mr. Chairman. These people will become disillusioned. What will they decide to do? The conclusion is obvious; they will say that this system cannot be changed. Not only is there no bureaucratic will to do so, but even Members of Parliament are not making the slightest effort to try to make some changes. When I refer to Members of Parliament, I'm talking about those on the government side. This is the connection I was talking about.

I came here initially because I thought it was scandalous that the government was not permitting a real discussion of each clause of the bill. Government is trampling the rights of Members of Parliament by passing gag orders when it doesn't want to hear about a particular subject. When the government decides that a certain bill has to be passed by a certain date, it takes extreme measures, and gags Parliament. The government is distorting the real role parliamentarians.

I find it strange that these actions are being sanctioned by elected Members of Parliament on the government side. It is truly scandalous. That's the reason I came here tonight.

Yes, there are connections with the issues being debated in Quebec. The unemployed are already affected by this situation, by this bill, and expect us to discuss the problem. They expect us to give them some hope, to come up with some new ideas.

My conclusion is that we must be innovative. As I said at the outset, innovation is the key to a modern economy. I hope innovation will become a fact of life, and not just something that appears on the cover of certain brochures. I hope we will see innovation in political terms as well. I hope that when we talk about genuine innovation and we look for ways of sharing the labour market, to avoid painful situations in which people lose their jobs and never go back to the labour market, to avoid increasingly high structural unemployment rates, to avoid having the poorest members of society pay for past mistakes.

I hope we will be innovative with respect to the labour market, in our attack on the deficit, in our way of doing politics, and in the way our institutions work. If we were to be successful in some of these areas, we would do more to win back people's confidence in us.

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Outside of sovereignty and federalism, at the moment, we all have a job to do, namely, to win back people's confidence in us. Imagine the day when people say that it's not really worthwhile to vote. You do hear people say that. There's a change of government, but things never really change, whether the Tories or the Grits in power. We said that during the last campaign, and it really hit home. Nothing really changes. You are demonstrating that fact.

So governments change, but they really don't present anything different. What's going to happen to these voters? How long will they continue to take part in our democratic procedures. The danger at the moment is that the government does a token consultation and then it tells people that they've been consulted, as they requested. It's simply not true. The general policy thrust has been decided before the consultations happened. Members of Parliament are used and manipulated. The departments are in control.

I'm convinced that you weren't even involved in drafting the bill. It comes directly from the department. The Department of Human Resources Development and the Department of Finance are a real circus. We have to put an end to that. Show a little courage, stand up for yourselves, show a little dignity, and let's start over again using a new approach.

That's what I would like to see, Mr. Chairman. I will stay here for some time yet to listen to my colleagues. I'm not ruling out the possibility of speaking again later on, because there are some ideas I have not yet stated. I know there are others who want to speak, and I will turn the floor over to them.

I thank you, because I noticed that you listened to my remarks carefully. Knowing that you were listening was a motivation for me, unlike some of your colleagues, who only listened when I was talking about sovereignty. They say they're concerned about jobs, but they only listened to the parts of my comments that dealt with sovereignty and federalism.

So I will conclude there, Mr. Chairman. You see, now they're waking up. The groundhogs are coming out of their holes. The key word is innovation. We must be innovative. Let's start over, and let's take an innovative approach to UI reform. Thank you.

[English]

The Acting Chairman (Mr. McCormick): Can we call the question?

[Translation]

Mr. Crête: I asked for the floor, Mr. Chairman. My name is on your list, in fact.

[English]

The Acting Chairman (Mr. McCormick): Yes, Mr. Crête.

[Translation]

Mr. Crête: I'm taking the floor in this debate to remind people why we have not been talking about the substantive issue for several hours now. The Liberals decided to prevent us from speaking about the subject matter of the bill. They presented a motion to limit debate, and since then, we've been trying to convince them that this is not a good idea. The surprising thing is that the majority has not put forward any arguments. I have not heard any speakers to defend, in a systematic way, the Liberal motion. The Liberals have not said anything about it.

I'm going to start by giving a mathematical example of the situation that has been imposed on us. If we were to pass the Liberal motion, we would debate each clause for five minutes. If twelve members wanted to speak, that would mean they would each be entitled to 25 seconds. They would have 25 seconds to state their views about a clause, about its validity and about any amendments they might wish to put forward.

This little calculation speaks for itself, and anyone listening to us today will understand just how absurd the proposal is. They will realize that it certainly does not do justice to the debate.

I'm going to adopt a different attitude to try to convince the Liberal members that our arguments are valid. I will demonstrate how complex a number of the clauses are, and show that they require an in-depth analysis. We should have all the time we need to debate them. Consequently, the motion put forward by the Liberals should be set aside, so that we can come back to the substance of the issue.

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I will be referring to clause 3, which deals with the Commission's power to monitor and assess, and to clause 4, which is about the maximum insurable earnings. I will also be discussing clauses 57, 58 and 59, which discuss the national employment service and various employment programs. There's also clause 72, which deals with the unemployment insurance fund. It will be a fine example to show the complexity of the fund, so that citizens understand clearly that it is important that we take the necessary time to analyze this bill.

The wording of the clause on the UI fund shows very clearly that there is no protection for people who contribute to it. Any surplus will be lost in the accumulated surplus account. Well, well, well! We've just lost many savings there were in the fund without knowing exactly where they went. I will come back to this later in more detail.

I will also be talking about clause 109, which talks about the pilot projects that could be set up; about clause 115, on appeal procedures, which is very relevant; about clause 142, which talks about direct reporting; and also about clause 165, which refers to fisheries regulations. We could look at how the Fisheries Act works and why some people asked us to take fisheries out of the UI program while others asked that it remain there. We have to understand the underlying reasons for this.

In addition, there is a table on page 129, which could perhaps be amended to take into account the amendment put forward by Mr. Regan regarding the divisor credit.

I will begin with clause 3. How could we debate it for five minutes, if there were ten speakers speaking for a maximum of 30 seconds each? I will read subclause 1 to give you an idea of what it is about:

3.(1) The Commission shall monitor and assess how individuals, communities and the economy are adjusting to the changes made by this Act to the insurance and employment assistance programs under the Unemployment Insurance Act...

I won't read each clause in full, because that would be rather tedious. I will simply mention the main points.

We should be looking at this clause closely, because it provides that the Commission, because of all the insecurity caused by the reforms... What we're talking about is a new system, which is unique in the world. No one else has set up a system based on hours of work. We have nothing against innovation, as the previous speaker said very clearly, but we must be able to ensure some follow-up. We need a control panel to enable us to manage and see how things are going.

The fact that this clause was included is interesting in itself. We must wonder why the Commission must report by December 31, 1998 at the latest, after the program has been in place for almost two full years. We could find there are some real surprises, and we would be too late to deal with some tragic human situations. After the fact, all we will be able to do is acknowledge that they exist. This clause must be corrected to make it more realistic.

There is another aspect to this clause. It states that the Commission shall report to the Minister and that the Minister shall lay the report before Parliament. Wouldn't it be a good idea to discuss this proposal and amend it to have the report tabled in Parliament directly? Wouldn't the Commission feel much better if it tables the report directly in the House of Commons? That would make it much more independent of the government and allow it make more objective recommendations, which in turn would give greater power to members of Parliament.

As a member of Parliament, I alone have more than five minutes of comments to make and questions to ask about clause 3. I want to know what is going on, I want to know what the real objectives are, I want to know what the economic implications are. I would like to ask the departmental officials some questions, to see whether our understanding of the clause is the same. I would also like to refer to the definition set out in clause 2. There are many points contained in this single clause and, clearly, it would take more than three minutes to talk about it.

I will now use the same example, but this time I will refer to clause 4, which is particularly important, and not because of its length.

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The importance of a clause is not necessarily determined by its length. We should take all the time we need to explain this clause.

Clause 4 talks about maximum insurable earnings. This is a hitch in the proposed reform. Under this clause, the maximum insurable earnings would be reduced to $39,000 for the years 1997 to 2000. I don't need to repeat the debate on this point. It's not necessary to explain again that under this provision, the government has voluntarily sacrificed 900 million dollars that it will take out of the pockets of people who formerly did not pay unemployment insurance premiums, by making unemployment insurance beneficiaries pay contributions starting with their first hour of work.

This will have a negative impact, and it's important that we have the time to talk about it. This will encourage businesses to pay high wage earners even more, and to pay overtime rather than hiring more people.

After $39,000, people stop paying unemployment insurance contributions. Hence, it is in the employer's interest to have employees do overtime to increase their earnings to $43,000, $45,000 or $50,000, rather than to hire another person. That is a flagrant example of how the bill will destroy jobs even though it is supposed to be an Employment Insurance Bill.

That's quite a decision. Under the employment insurance scheme, there will be fewer jobs. Businesses won't bother themselves with this matter. They will say: ``How much is it costing me? Do I have to pay my people more in overtime or will it cost me more to hire new workers and train them?'' The fact that the employers no longer have to pay contributions will incline them to make their employees work overtime.

But this is not a new argument. I would rather talk about subclause (b), which I think is very relevant.

Subclause 4(b) states:

(b) for each subsequent year,

after the year 2000

an amount to be set by the Commission

to determine the maximum

with the approval of the Governor in Council on the recommendation of the Minister and the Minister of Finance.

We're already seeing what this means. Last Friday, the Minister of Human Resources Development said, and his message was quite clear: ``The Minister of Finance is in charge of the unemployment insurance fund. Personally, I think the surplus may be too high, and that the contributions should be reduced. However, it is up to the Minister of Finance to make this decision''.

Is the wording we have here an improvement over the situation we have at the moment, or is it merely an acknowledgement of the fact that the Minister of Human Resources Development has his say, that the Commission has its say, but that in the end, the Minister of Finance makes a decision? We need an in-depth debate on this issue, because that has been the crux of the whole problem from the beginning.

Since cuts were imposed from the outset, we are facing a situation in which even if we know that the fund has a surplus, the people who contribute to it couldn't manage the program differently. The requirement of the Minister of Finance be involved means that steps will be taken that have a significant harmful impact on people. It also means that we'll be hearing things like: ``If you are a seasonal worker, you are taking advantage of the system. So we are going to penalize you.''

On the day the government agrees to change this principle, to change those financial rules, it will arrive at a far more balanced judgement on seasonal work and admit that, if additional jobs were available, seasonal workers would be very happy to take them.

Give a job to the 5,000 people who were in Rivière-du-Loup on the week-end. Give them a job in October, give them a job in November, give them a chance for an extra five or six months of work during the year, and don't worry about it. Except for a very few, every single one of those people would take the job. And you'll find the same thing at all levels of society.

I've tried to use clause 5, which deals with insurable employment, as an example, but since I've already spent a lot of time on this, and I don't want to repeat myself, I won't quote clause 5 as one of those we have to focus on. However, clause 5 is very complex and takes up four to five pages of the Act. It takes more than five minutes just to read the five pages.

I'd rather move towards sections that we have not yet discussed. It may be interesting to take a look at them, so that we see just how important it is for us to take the time to discuss them.

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Clause 57 is in the part on employment benefits and national employment service, because the national employment service is an important element of this bill. It's the part that had the minister all puffed up with pride when he tabled this bill. He said that we would have an excellent national employment service, a service that would make it possible for us to match up the million of unemployed looking for work and the 500,000 jobs available. So let's take a good look at this, it's important.

Let me read clause 56:

56. The purpose of this part is to help maintain a sustainable employment insurance system through the establishment of employment benefits for insured participants and the maintenance of a national employment service.

Now we have to see whether this system will give results.

On page 48, line 18, we read:

...the Commission shall work in concert with the government of each province in which employment benefits and support measures are to be implemented in designing the benefits and measures, determining how they are to be implemented and establishing a framework for evaluating their success.

The mechanism through which the Commission will work with the provinces needs close scrutiny. Wanting to work in concert with a province is fine, but how exactly will it be done? Under what obligation will the Commission be to succeed? Will there be any way of including in the bill concrete objectives that will lead to successful results?

Further down, the bill stipulates that:

(3) The Commission shall invite the government of each province to enter into agreement for the purposes of subsection (2) or any other agreement authorized by this part.

So the Commission will invite the government of each province to come to some agreement, but is the Commission itself under any obligation to enter into an agreement, and under what jurisdiction? Shouldn't there be some amendment to the Act indicating that the Commission will respect provincial jurisdiction in the areas of training and manpower?

Indicating that clearly in the Act would be a major step forward. We might then be able to arrive at some consensus, and through this committee settle the old dispute with Quebec, among other provinces. This original proposal would represent a very significant contribution, making it possible to eliminate an irritant that has been there for some years. In Quebec, federalists, as well as sovereignists, employers, unions and educational organizations are systematically asking for this. We could come up with a solution, and the liberal majority would have a chance to demonstrate good faith and to correct the situation. But here again, this section requires much more time - time that this format does not give us. So we have to arrive at some conclusion that will help us avoid this situation.

Let me give you another example. Clause 59 is a very important part of the bill. It deals with five kinds of employment benefits designed to help insured participants get a job. Encouraging employers to hire them is already a good start. Through the SEA program, they will receive help in starting businesses and becoming self-employed. They will be provided with employment opportunities through which they can gain work experience to improve their long-term employment prospects.

We should look closely at subclause 59(d). This is a measure to increase employability. But perhaps the committee should be listening to what experts at the OECD say: increasing employability does not increase employment, it's just a way of increasing competition between workers to get jobs. This clause therefore warrants much more in-depth study than it's had so far.

There are two clauses I will be spending more time on so I'm sure we understand each other. I think that these are the clauses people need the most information about.

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I'm talking about clauses 71 and 72, which deal with the employment insurance account. These clauses stipulate that an employment insurance account will be established, amounts will be paid into the Consolidated Revenue fund, the employment insurance account will be credited and the Consolidated Revenue Fund debited. Amounts credited to the employment insurance account will be charged to the Consolidated Revenue Fund. That's how it will work. So when the bill was read, we realized that there was no guarantee that the employment insurance fund will be used to help those who contribute to it. There is a whole debate we should engage in on clauses 71 and 72. Five minutes certainly aren't enough. We need a day or two to ensure that these clauses are appropriately worded and mean what we want them to.

The minister has said it may be time for a ceiling to be established and for dues to come down. That is best achieved by the people who are directly affected. They would probably take care of the problem better than anyone else. This would be a good place for an amendment. But we need the right to talk about it first. If our time is limited so that the report gets to the House as quickly as possible, we're simply going to continue defending ourselves and insisting that it makes no sense.

Let's not forget that this bill was not debated at second reading, and that the government decided to refer it directly to committee. There is a false impression being given. There was no chance to debate the fundamental principles of the bill in the House, so we have to do that here, in committee, in order to study the issue properly. If we don't study it in depth, we'll be told at report stage that we had our chance in committee. But we're not talking about principles anymore, we're talking about passage.

Amendments have been moved and passed. I'm sure you have other amendments, but they will not challenge the bill as a whole. So we must spend a great deal of time on this employment insurance account. Whenever I have consulted people, I have heard them tell me about their personal situations and the way in which they would be affected, but there was one thing that bothered them a lot: money from the fund is money from their own pockets and from their employers' pockets, but neither they nor their employers have any say in how it's spent. They refuse to accept that, and if we don't do everything we can to come up with some solution to this, we'll be told that we haven't done our job. Members must make every effort to come up with a viable solution. I think we need some time to look at the whole insurance account issue.

Here's another example. Clause 109, on page 84, deals with pilot projects. It reads:

109. Notwithstanding anything in this Act, the Commission may ... make such regulations as it deems necessary respecting the establishment and operation of pilot projects for testing whether or which possible amendments to this Act or the regulations would make this Act or the regulations more consistent with current industry employment practices, trends or patterns or would improve service to the public, including regulations

(a) respecting the time and manner in which employers are to supply their employees ... with information on their employment history;

This is a very dynamic process. The government is giving itself room to manoeuvre to set up pilot projects and perhaps speed up the bureaucratic process.

This provision must be dealt with in depth. In subclause (c), it says there will be regulations providing for the application of pilot projects in respect of prescribed employers or groups or classes of employers... Take a look, it's important. There may be regulations providing for such projects in prescribed areas. This could be the cornerstone of something really constructive. If we knew exactly what the regulations were and how they worked, we might be able to say that they represented a key for the development of economic diversification. But before we can do that we have to deal with the clause. We have to see if there is a real possibility of implementing economic diversification programs.

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Where jobs are seasonal, a variety of initiatives could be developed in the winter, for example tourism, industry, an Internet network, etc. There are still some things we have to examine before we can determine whether the pilot projects are indeed a useful tool. The regulations will then establish eligibility criteria for prescribed areas.

Will prescribed areas be areas with the highest unemployment rate? Will they be areas where the communities have seen their best and brightest leave? We have to know exactly what's being proposed with these pilot projects. If I had a chance to give clause 109 the attention it deserved, rest assured that I would put in the time.

There are other important clauses to discuss. Clause 110, for example, states that:

110. Regulations made under this Part that are not repealed -

these are regulations concerning prescribed areas -

cease to have effect three years after they come into force.

Are three years enough? Are three years enough to diversify the economy? We should perhaps discuss that. Regulations should perhaps remain for five years, or ten years, to ensure there is time to make things better. It's important to spend time on this.

There is another clause I consider extremely important. As a former CEGEP personnel manager, I had a chance to see the advantages of an appeal process in collective agreement conflicts and arbitration from the standpoint of an employer.

I didn't always win, but in many cases the very fact that a solid appeal process existed obliged parties to come up with a sounder and fairer arrangement. The Employment Insurance Act might provide for a fundamental principle that reverses the current principle under the Unemployment Insurance Act: guilty until proven innocent.

Our practices in this area are very different from those of British common law. They are more in the style of French civil law which rests on the premise that the accused is guilty until proven innocent. Yet in our labour relations practices, it's the reverse. The bill provides for a great deal of cumbersome red tape, and there are many people who will really have no power in relation to the bureaucratic process.

Some organizations depend on public charity. In my area, for example, the Action Chômage Kamouraska fund is an excellent organization with one permanent employee. It knows every in and out of the legislation, but has to operate with budgets of 12, 13, 14 or $15,000 a year, out of which it has to support one employee and several points of service. If there was a reliable appeal process through which those who appealed would be granted sound and fair decisions, fewer first-line arbitrary decisions might be made, and the cost of appeals would therefore drop.

This is therefore a clause that has to be considered in substance. We have to see how umpires work, what will constitute an appropriate appeal process, and what will constitute an appropriate appeal structure. There is work to be done here. These details are not necessarily in the Act, and they should be discussed so that we can benefit from the expertise of various committee members.

We've got as far as clause 115. Now, I'll give you a concrete example of what I have found in this bill. It's on page 93, about the affidavit.

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