Thank you, Madame Minna.
As I said in my opening comments, even the most generous interpretation of who is affected by this legislation leaves two-thirds of those who have lost their jobs and who are in this category unaddressed and does not address anybody who lost their job in the fall. So it doesn't matter how you slice and dice it, if this is a good measure, it should be extended to the people who are in that category who lost their jobs last fall, too, or the majority of those who are in that category now.
What is happening is that men who are losing $30-an-hour jobs and are having a very difficult time finding even $15-an-hour jobs are finding that their spouses are willing and able to take temporary—and I underline temporary—jobs at $15 an hour or self-employment. As in every other recession, women are filling the breach. This has happened in the recession of the 1980s and the recession of the 1990s. So women are not getting the benefit of the unemployment insurance benefits, and they're not also getting the benefit of strong jobs in the labour market, but they are willing to support their families' finances.
The problem is that this is now the new structure of the labour market, with more temporary jobs and more lower-paid jobs. Even if you have a job, there's huge downward pressure on your wages, your pension, and your benefits, if you can hang on to that job. This is not a sustainable industrial strategy, and it is not a sustainable strategy for maintaining what's already a fragile recovery.
So part of the answer, yes, is to extend the reach of what income support can do but also to maintain a very careful eye on how the jobs that are being created are coming into place, because this is going to go on for an awfully long time.