Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate having the opportunity.
Minister, I was interested to hear you talk about the fundamentals of the fiscal situation in Canada and the strong banking situation, and I may have misheard, but I thought you said now is not the time to rest on the Liberals' laurels.
I agree with you. One of the things you are doing, though, is creating this EI tax increase. One of the reasons that concerns me is that although the date you picked for your selective statistics on employment was at the very trough of full-time employment, if we look at the beginning of the recession, Canada still has over half a million fewer full-time jobs than we had before the recession, and that's with a million more Canadians in the country, many of whom are also looking for work. We are down in terms of full-time jobs compared with where we were in August 2008, and yet this EI tax increase will put an extra burden of $1.2 billion, just in 2012, and $1.8 billion....
When the temporary hiring credit, which was the first in your list of positives, is only $165 million, do you not see this as a job-killing, payroll tax increase that you're putting into your budget?