I just want to make a comment.
Mr. Savage was saying that we, the Conservatives, haven't made poverty a priority and this employment insurance fund is just something of our own agenda. I think the study of poverty should be first and foremost, and we can perhaps make this part of that study. But I don't see them really working hand in hand, because what I understood the poverty study to be is to help people get out of poverty. That usually is something about affordable housing or about jobs—creating jobs, not finding ways to get people on unemployment or finding different ways to change the unemployment act. I thought we were going to work on trying to see what we can do to assist people to get a good job and good, affordable housing.
So I'm not sure why we would ever think poverty wouldn't be first and foremost, and that's what we should be studying. Then, on the employment insurance, first of all, let's see the framework. It is not going to be quite as Mr. Godin had dreamt about. It's going to be a managed board that's going to oversee a fund that can never become surpluses for other governments to raid and to spend as they wish.
First and foremost, I would hate to see this poverty study go like the employability study. I think it went on far too long. We do have other pieces of legislation that we'll probably have to study in the meantime.
Mr. Martin has waited patiently for this poverty study. We've already made suggestions on witnesses, and so on. Can we put that first and foremost, make it a priority and set a deadline for it to finish, and then put the EI fund second, as Mr. Lake has suggested? Perhaps we can find out a little bit about the framework of the fund before we start making suggestions that it's going to become part of our poverty study.