Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
You have admitted that the $54 billion were used in a way that did not respect the principles of the employment insurance fund. As a minister, you can note that the reasoning you use to justify not returning this money to the fund is the same as the reasoning served up by the Liberals in their day.
No one can justify the fact of appropriating money that does not belong to them by stating that they are using it for other purposes. Your party agreed with us on this point. Nevertheless, you are now serving up the same argument. The fact that the money was used for other purposes does not, in our opinion, justify the fact that $54 billion was diverted . I believe that you will agree with us.
You said that we cannot put the $54 billion back into the fund, because it would put our budget balance in jeopardy. Let me remind you that you fully agreed with the opposition—the Liberals were in power at the time—to restore this money to the fund and to consider that the money was lent to the government by workers and employers, in the same way as loans are contracted on the financial market to respect Canada's financial commitments.
I also want to remind you that in Bill C-280, we proposed the very same thing as was recommended by the committee in its third recommendation, which was to spread the reimbursement of the $46 billion—which was the amount at the time—over a 32-year period at the rate of one and a half billion dollars per year.
Mr. Minister, are you ready to heed this recommendation and consider that the diverted funds were a loan that must be paid back to the fund within a reasonable timeframe, as required by the government's financial commitments?