Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
First of all, I would like to thank you for taking the trouble to come here to make your presentation. One thing seems clear from what you have been saying this morning: when people are in difficult situations, it seems that the system makes things worse and then they are actually ground down further. I would ask you to comment on this, if you care to.
However, I would like to come back to the comments made by Ms. Payne earlier this morning, on what I call seasonal work.
In my province, New Brunswick, we face this issue regarding seasonal work, perhaps not in the fishery, but definitely in the forestry industry. When we examine the issue of seasonal work, we often find that many people in this country do not understand that, if we lose the seasonal workers, we will have to replace them. But with whom?
Let me explain what I mean. Often, these jobs may last 14, 16, 18 or 20 weeks—sometimes more, sometimes less. We certainly do not deal with the problem by offering these people training for work in other industries or other provinces. All we do is exacerbate the problem to some extent.
Obviously, these people are not going to work in the fishery in downtown Toronto. And they're not going to grow the spruce used to make two-by-fours in Montreal. So we have to be realistic, but I think that many Canadians still do not understand the real problem.
Actually, it is not an employment insurance problem we have in rural regions, but rather an employment problem. If we had industries that could provide work 12 months of the year, there would be no problem, because people want to work. However, that does not mean we should be doing everything we can to try to retrain seasonal workers and send them off elsewhere. That would make the problem two or three times worse the following season.
I would like to hear what Ms. Payne or others have to say about this.