Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I agree that it was not a point of order: I am still in Canada and I have freedom of speech.
We heard about the changes that were made. Just now, the Liberal Party asked some questions. I do not know whether my colleague Mr. Lessard feels that I am now entitled to ask questions too, but I remember hearing, for example, that this did not help people in Nova Scotia because it takes 700 hours to be entitled to employment insurance benefits. The Employment Insurance Act should be amended, but let us not forget that the bill was introduced by the Liberals in 1996. If there are people in Nova Scotia today who do not qualify for employment insurance because of the required 700 hours, it is because of the employment insurance reform that was done in 1996. At that time, there was an economic crisis and all the fishers in the Atlantic provinces lost their jobs; at the same time, the employment insurance fund was robbed like never before. To be precise, $57 billion were taken from the employment insurance fund and transferred to general revenue.
Mr. Georgetti, as the president of more than 2 million workers in Canada, could you tell us once more how damaging that reform was? Are you asking all political parties to support this bill despite the fact that it does not make all the changes that the workers need? It was the workers who contributed to employment insurance, it is insurance for the workers. It belongs to the employers and to the workers; it is not so that the government can fill its coffers and say how well it is managing the budget. The workers are the ones who need this fund during a time of economic crisis or when they lose their jobs, not the government.