I'd love to say to you that in the studies we've done over the last number of years, things have gotten better for workers. They haven't. The percentages are still shamefully low in terms of who can access benefits, and obviously for women and for workers of colour, aboriginal workers, workers with disabilities, any of those people who might have any hope to qualify, it's even worse. In some locations, you can see the percentages for women being able to access as low as about 16%.
I just think, again, when we're looking at this bill, we're talking about the question of access, which should be the right of everybody, to have fair and equal access, and some question of the level of benefits.
I have to comment as well, very briefly, that I spent 17 years as a social worker in the province of Saskatchewan, and I too am very offended by the notion that the unemployed and the poor just want to be that way. People don't choose poverty. They don't choose to be unemployed. I think it's quite ironic that we have this system that says that to make the poor work harder, you pay them less, and to make the rich work harder, you pay them more.