Yes, and I just want to touch on this a little bit. I think this is what people don't understand, that when you're talking about getting on the bus for $2 or $3 to go to work and come back home, there's a difference when you're living in a rural area. You have to get in a car. You have to buy the second car, pay for the insurance, pay for the gas--at the price of gas today--to get to work, for minimum wage. Because many of those jobs at those call centres.... We have those call centres in Bathurst, at eight bucks an hour. Anybody who goes to work there needs a car because we live in a rural area.
I don't want to lose much time on it, but I think you understand. If you go around and check what's happening in the field, that's what's happening. And that's why people say, “If I go to work, does it make sense that it costs me money to go to work instead of making money?” That's the difference. People go to work and say that at the end of the day it costs them more money to go to work than they make. That's where the problem is.
The other one is about the fishery. The message that this country has to send to other countries is that we will not sell out our sovereignty. It could come to the point.... They're talking about the fishery now. What will be next? If they say that it's a subsidy to the fishermen, that means they'll say business has EI and that's a subsidy too, so then we'll have to cut EI all across, on every job. If they open that door....
That's why we said NAFTA has to be reopened and renegotiated. It's the same thing with the WTO. We have to stand up for Canada. We have to stand up for our people, and if that's what free trade is all about, to big business...and I say that again, that the WTO is all big business saying that's the way they want it, if you want to do business with their country. As a sovereign country we have to say no, that's where the buck stops--because it's not a subsidy; it's a payment for wages that you're losing because you're not working, and there's a difference between that and a subsidy. It's not a subsidy.
With EI, what Canada has to say in Geneva is that it's off the table. This is an insurance that people pay into for when they lose their jobs, and it's off the table. If they start to talk about EI, I think they'll be skating on very thin ice.