Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I must say that you have a weird argument to defend. One day, I attended the hearing for a case of an employee who had been charged with the crime of stealing money from his employer. This employee alleged, before the court, that he had made good use of the money since he had invested it in the education of his children. The judge heard the case, but concluded that this constituted theft all the same. I would imagine that this is the same thing here. We are talking about misuse here.
I do understand your answers, this morning. This is the way that the legislation has been written and you do not have any choice. You want to implement a mechanism to ensure that the fund is managed appropriately and independently from the Consolidated Revenue Fund. You are saying that the fund will no longer be dependent on the government. The problem does not lie in the way that it was managed, but rather in the way that the money was used. It seems to me that we are witnessing the same scenario for the following reasons. First of all, I do not understand why we did not turn this over to the premium management board, for example. This board exists, has already been mandated—and it is keeping this mandate—of looking after the administration to ensure that premiums are in keeping with the regulations. Do we agree on that?
However, the board is now responsible for administering premiums. What does the board have to do with that? The minister stated clearly, and you did so yourself this morning: we have to manage the fund to ensure that there are adequate premiums so that we can fulfill our responsibilities to the unemployed. This decision was made by the minister. It's surprising to note, however, that this management applies only, with respect to lower premiums, when there are surpluses. The minister said this in a speech, and I quote:
The board will also be responsible for managing a new bank account, independent from that reserved for the government's general revenues, whereby any surplus in employment insurance premiums for a given year will be kept and invested so that premium rates will be reduced for the following years. The Government of Canada made a commitment to provide $2 billion in order to create a real cash reserve, which will be administered by the board. Naturally, the Government of Canada and the Employment Insurance Commission of Canada will continue to be fully responsible to carrying out the program and making employment insurance payments, and they will continue to define eligibility and benefit levels.
How can we not conclude that, from now on, the plan will not be improved?