Madam Speaker, through you to the member for Edmonton Southwest, that is where we have an ideological difference.
I am speaking now as someone who has the experience of living in a city like Toronto, where we have about 650,000 people unemployed. It is the worst unemployment in the country right now and it is something we as a city are not used to. We have never had a crisis of confidence like the one we are going through right now.
Part of my reason for going to this NEED program was that a couple of my constituents reminded me about their success in being on the program.
We are so desperate to get people back to work right now, I am afraid that if we only come up with 30 per cent of a person's wage, I am not sure that would be enough to mobilize the 650,000 small businesses in my province that we really depend on. That is the case not just in my province, but all across the country.
Maybe I am being a little too generous on this, but I believe that the dignity of a person working is very important. We are already disbursing close to $20,000 when they are sitting at home doing nothing. Maybe we could make this a national exercise and maybe only have it in operation for about six months, not forever. Maybe we could have a couple of million signs sent to every small business person in Canada saying: "Jobs Canada, six-month period, here is where it is. You must take advantage of it in that six month period to get people back to work again or the opportunity lapses".
If we could build in the kind of protections the hon. member is talking about we would be able to meet both our objectives.