Thank you, Chair.
I'd like to congratulate Madame Deschamps for getting this bill as far as it has gone so far. There's a lot of good stuff in this bill.
Employment insurance is a huge issue to large parts of the country. It's big where I come from in Atlantic Canada. You've mentioned your own riding and, in general, the province of Quebec and areas of high employment. I'm not sure it's an issue that's understood by people who aren't directly affected—people whose communities aren't directly affected by high unemployment and by seasonal work—but it's a very important issue.
Much of the bill I like. I like the elimination of the two-week waiting period. In fact, quite often when people lose a job through no fault of their own, they end up waiting a lot longer before they get their first cheque, and I think it's a bit of an insult to have to wait the two weeks.
I support the five-week covering of what we call the “black hole”.
We have some amendments that we're going to put forward, especially in terms of new entrants and the number of hours required, but I do believe it's time to do some reforms in employment insurance.
There were reforms in the 1990s. Back then, in fact, we had a deficit on EI for many years, until a strong economy led to a surplus, although there is no EI surplus; it's not a carry-forward amount of money, but a notional surplus. Premiums have gone down, but I think it's time to recognize that we need to do something on the other end, so I congratulate you on that.
I will ask the obvious question: what is the cost of this bill to the treasury?