Thank you, Mr. Chair.
It is good to see Mr. Lessard. I was previously on this committee, and certainly he has promoted older workers and dealt with the EI fund on numerous occasions. Although he may have the right sentiments, there is no question that when you are looking at the kinds of dollars he raises in this motion, that is something that would require budgetary considerations and that certainly should be looked at by Finance. We are not talking small dollars. He is talking $1.5 billion and $60 million and $1.44 billion. Those kinds of considerations should go to the finance committee through budgeting and Treasury Board and so on.
As you well know, Mr. Chair, our government has created a $1 billion community development trust fund to deal with issues like that. But again, it's contingent upon the budget and budgetary measures. There is an investment of $72.5 million in targeted initiatives for older workers and also $127.5 million for long-term competitiveness initiatives in the forestry industry. So there are a number of initiatives and variations of that.
When we talk of that degree of dollars, and specifically—and I think I agree with Mr. Savage—that a motion similar to this is being looked at by what I would consider the appropriate committee, that's where it should go. In my view, in this committee this motion should be opposed or set aside for future consideration for those reasons.