Presented by Ken Georgetti on Tuesday, 20 October 2009

(Check Against Delivery)

On behalf of the 3.2 million members of the Canadian Labour Congress, I want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to present our views on Bill C-50.

Members of the Committee, I am not here today to provide you with our thoughts on the technical aspects of Bill C-50, or whether there should be amendments to improve this Bill.

I'm here with only one message.

Pass Bill C-50 quickly so that people like Rosalie Washington, who is here with me today, can get the help they need now.

They deserve no less from you and your colleagues in the House of Commons.

And once you finish that, get back to work to help the other equally-deserving unemployed people in this country who are struggling daily and don't qualify for this help.

People have run out of, or are running out of benefits and have no prospects for work. That’s why there was a declining number of people receiving EI benefits in August.

We spoke to workers in seven communities across Canada this past summer and what we found was a picture of increasing despair and crisis.

The people I am describing to you are real, and so are their experiences.

I am thinking of people like Tom, from New Brunswick.

He wrote me earlier this year looking for help.

He was laid off from his job on October 31, 2008.

He did everything right.

He took a part-time job, thinking he'd quickly find another full-time job.

That didn't happen and eventually he was laid off from that part-time job too.

When he applied for EI, he learned that he was 60 hours short of the hours he needed to qualify.

Another young man from Northern Ontario wrote to me about being deeply in debt because he could not find full-time work, and he had resorted to using credit cards to buy necessities like food.

“When I needed it most, I was denied EI benefits, forcing me to seek low-paying jobs to compensate for what was required and now my own credit has been destroyed,” he told me.

I am thinking of people like Tammy from Oshawa – a single mother of three who worked midnights in a paint shop.

“Bankruptcy is the next thing that's in order for me,” Tammy said when the Canadian Labour Congress spoke to her.

Are these people living beyond their means?

Of course not.

A woman named Shannon, from Simcoe, told us, “Have I lived beyond my means? No. I've just simply lived.”

In the Miramichi region of New Brunswick, 3,100 people were thrown out of work between August 2008 and August 2009, a 30 percent decrease in the employment rate.

Food banks in the Miramichi are seeing a rapid rise in the need for their services.

The number of residents declaring bankruptcy is increasing.

Many will be forced on social assistance after their EI runs out.

For many years, the Canadian Labour Congress has sounded the alarm about the crisis that was unfolding in our manufacturing and forestry industries.

Long before the financial tsunami hit full-force last September, communities across this country were being devastated by an industrial crisis years in the making.

At one time, Miramichi had one of the largest pulp and paper mills in Canada that employed over 1,000 people.

Today, the largest employer in town is the Regional Hospital.

Unemployed workers in Sault Ste Marie are facing delays in getting EI benefits.

As one Steelworker told us, “we're talking about people here. People who can't eat, can't pay bills, and it's totally unacceptable that the people have been off work for three months with nothing because your employer forgot to tick a box.”

In Campbell River, British Columbia the Elk Falls pulp mill shut down its kraft production in July 2008, and with it, 440 jobs disappeared.

A high Canadian dollar and US subsidies were cited as the reasons.

The regional disparity in hours needed to work to qualify for EI is stark.

Mitch, on layoff in Campbell River said, “I think they need to be more fair in all the regions. Like just north of here you don't need as many hours. They're working for the same company, but they don't need the same hours we need. They get longer benefits, and it doesn't take them as long.”

Even in areas where the full force of the crisis is less visible, the effects are no less real.

In Saskatchewan, the resource revenues mask an uneasy truth.

Aboriginal and First Nations communities in the area say, “Economic crisis? The recession? Our communities would welcome moving up from abject poverty and neglect to the status of a Recession”.

These are the faces of the unemployed in Canada.

These are the stories of people who are looking to Parliamentarians for leadership and help.

The economic devastation is affecting communities in ways you cannot imagine.

In Oshawa, Simcoe Hall Settlement House has watched the number of people through its food bank increase about 20% a month.

A skilled tradesperson, a plumber, using the food bank said, “never in a million years did I ever dream that I would be coming to a food bank to feed my family.”

The Canadian Labour Congress has been on record many times before this committee on what’s needed to fix EI so it works for those it was intended to help.

• a uniform 360-hour EI entrance requirement in all regions;
• longer benefits of at least 50 weeks in all regions so that fewer unemployed workers exhaust their claims – particularly in times of economic recession.
• higher weekly benefits based on the best 12 weeks of earnings before a layoff and a replacement rate of 60% of insured earnings.

The current EI program leaves far too many Canadians, especially women, lower wage earners and insecure workers out in the cold.

We are asking you to pass this Bill quickly so that those people it is meant to help – long tenured workers who have not accessed EI much in the past – get what they need now.

But we are saying you also have unfinished business and there’s more work to be done.

I want to remind the members of this Committee that since the financial meltdown brought our economy to a grind, the House of Commons has barely been in session to address the urgent needs of Canadians.

In the four months following the start of the economic meltdown in September 2008 – this Parliament sat for just two weeks.

Parliament was dissolved September 9, 2008 for an early and unnecessary election and did not reconvene until November 18.

That session was prorogued just two weeks later and did not come back until January 26 this year.

I also want to remind the members of this Committee that workers and employers have paid over $55 billion more into the EI system in premiums during the last decade than was paid out in benefits.

The huge surplus was spent by successive governments on everything but the unemployed.

If the piggy bank had not been robbed, there would be enough money for unemployed workers today.

Workers paid those premiums in the belief that EI was their protection against a rainy day.

That rainy day is here.

And it is raining hard.

Thank you for listening. I’m now turning this over to Rosalie Washington, to tell her story.