Mr. Speaker, I think the member is speaking from the heart because he shares the frustration that many Canadians feel. That is the government has no right to lay claim to the surplus and to use it for any purpose if it does not even contribute to the plan. All the government does is administer the plan.
Maybe it would be justifiable for it to charge some administrative fee for managing the program, but surely it does not have the right to take $750 million a month that should have gone to income maintenance for unemployed workers, and use it for anything it wants. It is literally for anything the government wants because it goes into general revenue.
What the government chose to do with the surplus is really galling, and I would ask the hon. member to try to imagine the optics of this. It took the surplus from unemployed workers, arguably the most vulnerable people in the country, people who have lost their jobs, and squandered it on tax cuts for the wealthy. The government chose to invest $100 billion of our money in tax cuts. It is like a perverted form of Robin Hood, to rob from the poor to give to the rich.