Mr. Atkinson, you're absolutely right. I happened to be around here when the bad times you're talking about really railed heavily. I use to rail against the government at the time. But the fact of the matter is that the general taxpayer was backstopping EI expenditures--income supplements, income substitutions--because of the high unemployment rate. I've seen that part, and I welcomed it. In fact, at the time, the argument was that we should do more.
Now, I've heard you and others say that we should equalize the premiums amount. To someone else's ears, that sounds as if you want to reduce the expenditures of employers, and I agree that should always be an objective. But the reduction of employers' contribution to a fund when you're eliminating the 1.4 ratio to 1:1 suggests to me that you're looking for--as other, less kind souls than I am might suggest--a further corporate tax cut at the expense of others who are not....
You've got the employers. There are at least 1,000 small businesses--