I want to try to answer your question. Government after government in Ottawa has talked about cutting taxes. Well, there are other ways of taxing us. The money in the employment insurance fund is being used for what tax money could be used for. Let's stop trying to cut taxes and taking money out of the employment insurance fund. That is what the present government is doing and what other governments have done in the past. Saying that you're going to cut taxes always works in elections; so they took the money out of the fund next door. If we used tax money for social programs or labour force training, we would stop looting the employment insurance fund. If the employment insurance fund were used only for unemployment, and taxes were used to do what the government is supposed to do with our taxes, we would not be here shouting and listening to all this nonsense.
A little earlier, I understood something. When I watch question period on television, I wonder why people are shouting. I have seen why now. I have refrained from shouting, I don't want to be saying just anything. We have been on this case forever. They dip into the fund instead of doing what they should be doing with taxes, and they tell people they are going to cut their taxes. I understand! They have money coming out their ears, thanks to the fund! The $54.1 billion, that is $54,000 million dollars. When we change how we describe the figure, it catches one's attention, doesn't it?
We agree completely with having maternity leave, child care centres, etc., we want them. But once they start being paid for out of a fund from which money has been knowing siphoned off to pay for programs, we say there is a problem. it is understandable that it would be used for labour force training, but workers' primary concern is eating. You can't listen on an empty stomach. It's all very well to train the unemployed, but when they have nothing to put on the table for their family, there is a problem.
I understand that there is a "Canadian" vision of the problem. Nobody wants to increase employment insurance benefits in eastern Canada when there is a shortage of workers in the west. People can't travel back and forth between Newfoundland and Edmonton every day, they have to stop and eat. People do not move around like that.
There is a country called Canada, about which I do not particularly care, but that is another story. This is a "Canadian" vision of the problem. When there is a labour shortage in British Columbia, for Whistler, or in Edmonton or elsewhere, it would be completely ridiculous to increase employment insurance premiums for people in Newfoundland or Nova Scotia or New Brunswick or eastern Quebec. That has been understood, but is it acceptable to say that we are going to cut taxes because there are pots of money in the employment insurance fund and we are going to go blithely dipping into it? The Conservative Party is not the only one that has done this. The others have done it too. When we talk about the government, we mean the government.
We are saying that the employment insurance fund has to be used for the unemployed, and has to be used to maintain and support the economy because people are unemployed. We do not object to tax money being used for what they want to use the money in the fund for. We do not fiercely object to labour force training when the government in Ottawa has money coming out its ears. That would be ill-advised. That may be why nothing is being said. Money is being taken out of the fund because taxes are being cut instead of maintaining tax levels and ensuring that the employment insurance fund is used for what it was created for in the 1940s: we did not want to go through what we went through during the great economic crisis of the 1930s. That is why it was created!
Stop telling us whatever sounds good. We are paying attention, and our fathers did before us. Don't come here and tell us whatever sounds good to try to protect the government, which has dirtied its hands in the fund by paying for its programs out of the fund because it didn't want to raise taxes. It wanted to cut taxes instead to make the voters happy. That is what happened. Let's not be telling each other tales here this morning. I'm not 26 years old, I'm 62.