Mr. Yussuf, Mr. Jackson, good morning, and welcome.
I'm going to speak in English because I know it will go faster for both of you.
The Liberals and Conservatives took $57 billion out of the employment insurance fund and gave it to Canada's richest corporations. When they took the $57 billion out of EI, a lot of people said, “Well, who cares if they put it into general revenue? It's still government money.” In fact, every single company and every single employee is obliged to pay into EI, whether that company is making money or losing money or breaking even. All of that money that was purpose-built for the specific events we're going through now, an exceptional case where we have 1.7 million unemployed in Canada, was given in the form of a $60 billion tax decrease by the Conservatives, backed by the Liberals. In fact, the Liberals said they would have cut corporate taxes even more.
So we have this massive transfer. A company like EnCana benefited to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars by those tax reductions, whereas a company in the forestry or manufacturing sector that had not made a profit and had therefore not paid taxes got nothing of those tax returns.
Isn't that the base cause of the problem we're in right now in the EI fund as the Conservatives, despite their promises not to tax more, are about to whack companies and employees with a $19 billion new tax to refund the EI program that they stole and gave to Canada's richest corporations?