Thank you.
What we don't often understand or look at is how various portions of the budget will interact with each other. For example, when you change the OAS and you then change the employment insurance, you're going to see that older people who are over 65 are probably going to be doing part-time and temporary work; they're not going to be able to qualify for a pension, nor are they going to be able to qualify for EI, if they aren't employed. We may be pushing a lot of people in specific kinds of groups into positions of poverty and relying on social assistance, and the provinces, which probably will not be able to cope with that as well.
We're seeing a great many measures in this budget that have not been looked at beforehand; that is, the implications of what it will mean for people have not been looked at beforehand.
I was speaking specifically of employment insurance and what it will mean for women, because that hasn't been discussed very much. Obviously it has a big effect on seasonal work. A lot of the work that women do is seasonal, but even more significant is that a lot of it is temporary. A great deal of our labour force has been structured on the notion that people are available for temporary work.