I have a question for Ms. Regehr. I know that John Richards, who is a former NDP MLA, I believe, from Saskatchewan, and he is now a member on the board of your organization, did a report recently called Reducing Poverty: What has Worked and What Should Come Next.
Thinking about federal responsibility, he refers to the EI program and the Chrétien government steps, and he states:
Changes to the program increased work requirements and penalized frequent users. One result of reform has been a decline in the percent of the unemployed receiving EI benefits, from roughly 80 percent in the late 1980s to 40 percent a decade later.
Then he goes on a bit later, in that same section, to say:
...changes in EI eligibility and benefits were among the shifting incentives that contributed to the rise in the Canadian employment rate and consequent decline in aggregate Canadian poverty rate.
I'm wondering if you agree with that thinking.