Thanks, Mr. Chair.
One of the things I want to point out, of course, is that the changes that have been made over the last 12 years to this legislation, to the EI legislation, by the previous Liberal government were some of the few good moves they actually made in their 13 years. Before Paul Martin became a shopaholic and went on a spending spree, these were good moves that they were making. Of course, the EI program was used, as Mr. Godin mentioned, as a slush fund, and there was a significant surplus year after year that was used to fund Liberals' special interests and their pet projects and things like that. Of course, we made some important changes to the legislation to make sure that doesn't happen again, to bring things into balance.
I think the key word, of course, is “balance” here, and thankfully right now we have a government that understands that and takes a look at a big picture instead of individual silos. The system as it stands right now with the changes we've made is a workable system.
I want to just take a look at the numbers. I'm looking at the numbers Mr. James prepared for us here, and the one that jumps out at me is the one where you take the combined Liberal–Bloc–NDP approach to the bill--table 4--that would cost an addition $2 billion per year if it were implemented. That's per year. That's not a $1 billion or $2 billion hit; that's $2 billion per year more than it would cost otherwise, and of course that's money that is paid into the fund by workers and by employers.
Mr. James, I have a quick question for you. Could you tell me how many workers actually pay into EI across the country?