Professor Mintz, in your second point, with respect to EI, you think that the transfer to the fund is a good idea, and then you talk about the potential of experience rating.
As I understand it, a lot of companies and essentially their employees.... I guess the entire system functions on the assumption that EI premiums will be paid but not be drawn by the vast majority of workers. And yet wouldn't your suggestion of experience rating exacerbate that problem? Because the companies that lay off employees, say the forestry sector or currently the manufacturing sector, are the ones that hire and lay off and hire and lay off—GM being a classic example. Presumably their experience rating would be higher and therefore their premiums rating would be higher, whereas the banks—to pick on them again—such as the Bank of Nova Scotia, continuously hire and very seldom lay off employees or draw on the EI system.
Wouldn't that effectively create a more expensive system for seasonal and more marginal industries and therefore almost be a disincentive for those companies to get back into manufacturing or forestry, as the case may be?