I would like to point out that my colleague from Acadie—Bathurst, Yvon Godin, introduced a bill for a standard 360-hour threshold. The private member's bill is making its way through the process. Right now, the bill with the best chance of passing is this one. I have a suggestion. Maybe you could ask your economists to look into it. We will actually be inviting you to comment specifically on this issue soon, and we will need your perspective.
I agreed with what Ms. Vézina said about communicating vessels when she described the connection between cuts to employment insurance and the number of people in poverty. This is not just about the fact that $57 billion was stolen from the employment insurance fund. A lot of people say that that money was put into the general revenue fund, so it stayed within government. But that false. A $60 billion space was freed up to give tax breaks to the richest companies, and the cuts were supported by both the Conservatives and the Liberals. By definition, a company that does not make a profit has nothing to gain from tax breaks because it does not pay income tax. However, it still contributes to the employment insurance fund. Even if it loses money, it still contributes for all of its employees. That money is supposed to be for a specific purpose. Someone said theft, and that is exactly what it was.
Mr. Dowie and Ms. Meikle, I would like to talk about the general role of universities and the role of McGill University in Quebec. You have already received your first two Nobel prizes of the week, the Nobel prize for medicine on Monday and the Nobel for physics yesterday. Now it is Wednesday. This has been a good week for McGill. I have not seen today's results yet because I was not on line.
Can you tell me a bit about McGill's role as a Quebec institution?