It’s very simple. You see I’m not wearing a tie. I call them “tie-wearing fraud artists”. This is the legalization of theft. I’m even going to go a little further in my comments. The Supreme Court actually ruled that the government was entitled to use the money, but the Supreme Court didn’t give the money to the government. The Supreme Court ruled that there should be a connection between the use of the funds and the employment insurance plan. Abolishing the employment insurance account breaks that relationship.
If the government were serious, which I doubt, it would ask the Supreme Court to rule immediately on this issue. If it doesn’t do that, we are going to do it. But the problem is this: if we do it, it will take 12 years before a decision is rendered. The government has already gone directly to the Supreme Court in the case of same-sex marriage. We are asking the government to do the same thing in this case.
In addition, Mr. Paillé, the budget documents are false, utterly inaccurate. We’re talking about a surplus of $600 million for 2008-2009: that is contrary to the 2009 evaluation and control report, which has just been prepared, and that refers to a deficit of $879 million for the 2008-2009 fiscal year.
We’re talking about expenses and so on. If we check the budget documents, we realize that the administrative expenses, that is to say the $2 billion a year in administrative expenses, aren’t included in the expenses. So when we refer to a deficit of $5 billion or $5.8 billion, that’s not true. You have to add the other $2 billion.