Mr. Speaker, the debate around Bill C-50 should be framed in the context that the Liberals used the EI program as a cash cow. First they changed the rules so that hardly anybody qualified anymore, and then they raked in billions and billions of dollars, $54 billion, and used it for other purposes.
In fact when the Liberals gutted the EI system so that it was virtually dysfunctional, it caused a loss in my own riding of Winnipeg Centre of $20 million a year in federal money that used to flow into my riding but no longer did. Twenty million dollars a year is the size of a payroll of a plant with 4,000 employees. It was devastating to an already poor riding, so I am listening with some disbelief as the Liberals speak against putting $1 billion of EI money into the pockets of unemployed workers when it was they themselves who were the architects of this dysfunctional system. They robbed the EI fund of $50 billion. That is what is difficult for me to understand.
There is another point that we have to keep in context. The Liberals paid down the deficit on the backs of unemployed workers, which was shameful, and it is hypocritical now for them to be speaking against putting some money back into workers' pockets.
My question for my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake is this. Will he not concede that even though it is virtuous to put $1 billion back into the pockets of unemployed workers, that it is not the government's money?
The EI fund is made up of the contributions of employers and employees. There is no federal money in the EI fund, so while we will support Bill C-50, we want to acknowledge that it is the workers' money that is being held in trust by the EI fund which is rightfully going back into the workers' pockets now that they need it if they are unemployed.