It's our view that ownership of the program appropriately rests with the federal government, with input from business and labour. So the EI Commission should be playing a role. And it's also our view that there should be a separate financial account for the EI program.
We have a sort of weird hybrid here, actually, because the new EI fund isn't going to be run by those responsible for the program, and it has a very narrow mandate. When you read this bill, you see we have page after page about nominating committees, and there's a real worry it's going to be a very busy, bureaucratic, potentially expensive structure.
I'm told by officials, and I think this is the case, that having chosen that legal form of a crown corporation, then there's a whole lot of things that follow from it that you have to do. Why is it set up as a crown corporation? It's so that it remains integrated with the public accounts.
I'll conclude by saying that the key point is a separate fund so that funds collected for EI purposes go to EI purposes. But I don't believe we need this huge bureaucratic structure to manage it.