I also paid close attention to your comments on EI reform. I found them very interesting. One of my constituents has cancer. Under the EI program, the most she could get, in other words, 55% of her income, was $440 a month. After 15 weeks of EI, she had to turn to last resort assistance.
You said that, given the surplus in the EI fund, the government could have increased the EI wage replacement rate from 55% to 68%, or raised the number of weeks available for that individual with cancer. That would've allowed her to access EI benefits a lot longer.
The government is balancing the budget on the backs of those that very money is intended for, people without jobs. And the price of that balanced budget is people's misery, people who are either sick or jobless.
Could the government have done more?