Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll start off with the gentleman from the construction industry.
Thank you for mentioning a few things. Thank you for mentioning about productivity. If we want to improve our standard of living, or at least maintain it, we need to improve productivity and we need to undertake that.
Thank you for talking about the multiplier. I think people with regard to our infrastructure investments tend to forget that for every dollar of infrastructure you get a bang of about $1.50. That's something that's important, especially in today's environment of, say, a 1% annual growth rate, interest rates at record lows; call it flight to safety. Now is the time to proceed with a robust infrastructure pipeline and do it over a multi-year period.
The one thing you talked about that did strike a chord was EI. About two weeks ago, the C.D. Howe Institute put out a report that said 7% of unemployed Canadians in 2008 were deemed long-term unemployed. Today that number has doubled, call it 14%, 15%, so EI needs to play a role in this discussion in terms of avoiding an increase in the rate of long-term unemployed.
You mentioned something about EI deliverability. Could you succinctly comment on what you meant by that and how that would apply?