Mr. Speaker, I guess I would maintain that I do not think any employment insurance program can substitute for a job. Most people want to have a job. That is their number one criteria. I suggest that the moves the Liberal government is taking to correct the fundamentals are not good enough to allow that to happen.
For the last 30 years we have had chronic unemployment in the range of 5% to about 12%. That is going to vary. I am suggesting, and the analogy I was making, that up until about 1970 the business cycles of Canada and the United States could be charted on a graph. We could look at the two of them in good and bad times. The economic indicators were always the same. We could put them together.
It was the same with employment insurance and the unemployment rate. However, starting in the 1970s we had a divergence because we expanded the employment insurance program to become more of a social program. I do not think that was the right method because we built in a penalty for Canadian business.
I agree with the member from Winnipeg that there are many shortcomings in the employment insurance program. He raised the example of a person who has to pay into the program but cannot collect benefits. Canadian farmers are in that category as are lots of people. It should be one way or the other. If a person is not going to get benefits from the plan, he or she should be exempt from it.
Overtaxing workers and employers to build up large surplus funds for general revenue for the government to squander away on its priorities is not good enough. We need to have a true insurance program where we have dedicated revenue, not where it is going into the general revenue for governments to fritter away.