Madam Speaker, that is a huge question, and I have only about a minute to respond.
With respect to the employment insurance program, the government should have launched a pilot project, not introduced a bill. We are in the middle of an economic crisis, so it would have been much easier to get immediate consensus for a pilot project, and then to have gone ahead with the necessary funding. Instead, the government chose to introduce a bill, which takes time. The Conservatives also turned down the Bloc Québécois' offer to send the bill to committee right away. We could have heard from witnesses about the impact of Bill C-50. They would have told us about how the program left them out.
Instead, here we are asking questions in the House and never getting good answers even though the minister thinks she is giving people answers. They say that 190,000 workers will have access to these benefits, but we looked at the numbers, and we do not understand how 190,000 workers are supposed to benefit. For that to happen, 85% of claimants would have to reach the end of their benefit period, but only some 25% do. Most people will not be eligible for the five to 20 additional weeks because they never reach the end of their benefit period.
Once again, the Conservative government is failing to meet the expectations of thousands of Canadian workers, both in Quebec and elsewhere, who are unemployed today and dealing with poverty as a result.
The government refused to eliminate the two-week waiting period. People who lose their jobs have to go without income for two weeks. Instead, the Conservatives brought in measures that do not kick in until the end of the benefit period. Why? Because periodically unemployed workers never reach the end of the benefit period. They stop collecting benefits before that. They will therefore never be entitled to the extra weeks of benefits. The government is just trying to save money with these measures.