Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to welcome and thank all the witnesses.
I would like to make a first remark and ask the Canadian Council on Social Development a question. First of all, I very much appreciated your presentation because I believe it refers to the major problems currently being experienced in Quebec and Canada, that is to say the harmful effects of the recession.
In your first proposal, you talk about promoting access to employment insurance. I'm particularly proud to see that you're proposing that measure, and not only because it's a recommendation that the Bloc Québécois has been advancing for a long time. It's important to increase access to employment insurance. The committee was in Quebec City yesterday, and we heard the representatives of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux, the CSN, remind us that nearly half of people who lose their jobs currently do not have access to employment insurance. We knew that already, but it's still surprising to hear it and to see that this has become a problem of such scope.
You also named a number of sectors, in particular the forest sector in Quebec, where the situation is very tough and many workers in the regions are not receiving employment insurance. It's completely disastrous.
I'm very pleased to see you support this kind of measure. In fact, you're a major observer of Canada as a whole. You have many members across Canada and you are in a position to observe all these problems. These are the real problems we're currently facing.
I imagine you're also aware that, when you suggest that government increase access, you're told that that's too costly. However, in the past 15 years, the government, both the current Conservatives and the Liberals, have drawn $57 billion from the Employment Insurance Fund to pay down the deficit, an amount that came from the workers.
Are you aware of those facts?