Mr. Speaker, yesterday, Malcolm Brown, assistant deputy minister for the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, told the Subcommittee on the Employment Insurance Funds that lowering the qualifying threshold for the employment insurance program to 360 hours, for everyone, would only cost $390 million.
Does the minister realize that, instead of reducing the EI contribution rate by three cents, he could have allowed thousands of workers to have access to employment insurance benefits at a similar cost? Why did he deliberately make the wrong choice?