Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Ladies and gentlemen, members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance, thank you for inviting me to appear before the committee.

I represent the National Council of Unemployed Workers. You will understand that the word "unemployment" is not a word or a fact we are afraid of. In our economy, unemployment is a fact of life in the labour market.

Today is my birthday. I am 65 years old, and I have been involved in the unemployed workers movement for 45 years, since 1979, in fact. In appearing before you today, I have only one wish: that at the end of this discussion period, you keep in mind the importance of a social measure like employment insurance, which is an important part of the social edifice of Canada itself, a social program that falls squarely within the political and constitutional powers of Canada.

In the 45 years I have been involved, I have seen and understood what has been done to this program, how it has been damaged, starting in the 1990s, how entire segments of the existing social protections were dropped, how it has been downgraded. Its name was even changed in 1996 by replacing the word "unemployment" with "employment". We are no longer insured against unemployment, we are insured for finding a job—which is just a figure of speech.

There are some who see this program as just a column of figures. We see human beings, working men and women. As I speak, there are more than a million active employment insurance claimants from coast to coast. In the last year, starting on April 1, 2023, over 3 million claims were processed and 2.5 million people received benefits under the scheme. Canada's labour force consists of about 21 million people. These unemployment rates, despite the fluctuations, nonetheless remain low. In Quebec, we have become the Canadian champions when it comes to low unemployment rates. In fact, we account for only 17% of the benefits paid to active Canadian claimants.

I am not here to ask or beg for anything. I am here to try to show you a vision, a vision of a social program that is important in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Canadian families, a program that is important for hundreds of thousands if not millions of working men and women who are going through periods of unemployment, whether short or long, depending on the job situation.

The present government formally committed to undertaking a comprehensive reform of the employment insurance scheme, to modernizing it and to bringing it into the 21st century. Between 2021 and 2022, we participated in countless consultation sessions. The reform was to take effect in the summer of 2022, before it was pushed back, more than once. We believed in it until last year's budget was announced. There was nothing in that budget, not one measure relating to the protections provided by employment insurance, a big fat nothing.

In the November 2023 economic statement, four additional weeks were added to the five already provided in a pilot project for seasonal workers in 13 administrative regions of Canada. That was it. That measure will end on September 7. Once again, it is just a temporary measure.

My message is this: We need meaningful or impactful measures to help working people during periods of unemployment. We need solutions to real problems, the problems of seasonal workers and of parents, especially women, who lose their jobs while on parental or maternity leave and find themselves with no protection. Family caregiver benefits for adults, which are only 15 weeks, have to be increased. General eligibility for the scheme has to be improved, for example by making the penalties for terminations of employment for reasons considered to be invalid more flexible. There is much to be done.

When I finish speaking, it will be up to you, the MPs on this committee, to go back to your respective caucuses in anticipation of the budget. It will be up to you to put the subject on the table. After all, you must know how important it is, since there are people going to your constituency offices to ask for help because of problems relating to employment insurance.

Don't wait until the next crisis. It will come, that is for sure. Always remember that we are talking about working people when we talk about columns of employment insurance figures, that we are talking about working men and women, about human beings.

Thank you for your attention.

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