As I said in my initial remarks, we certainly argued in favour of bringing employment insurance premiums into line with costs, all the way through that period. On the other hand, we were arguing about the importance of reductions in other tax rates as well. EI premiums act as a tax on the creation of jobs. Capital taxes, corporate income taxes, act as a tax on the investment in productivity and new machinery and equipment and so on.
The fact is, again, that we look at it from a more holistic kind of perspective there. Whatever we thought of the decisions that were made at the time, those decisions were made that the government allocated the money that flowed through EI into general revenue in the manner it saw fit at the time. Those decisions are made; those decisions are past.
I think the main concern right now is how we make sure the EI system works properly moving forward. Setting up the segregated account is the right thing to do. The one concern I think both of us share here in the transition to the segregated account is whether we are doing enough to make sure there's sufficient backstop that we're not going to get into a situation within the first couple of years of setting up this account...because, face it, we are in a period where there are signs of economic weakness, certainly in the United States, and worries about whether that may spill over the border here. So we're setting up this account at a time that may be towards the end of a long cycle of growth. Are we doing enough to make sure it has that rate stability through its first business cycle?