Thank you, Mr. Larouche.
I would like to talk about Part II of the Employment Insurance Act, and in that respect the Liberals have little reason to pat themselves on the back, except insofar as they took $50 billion out of the Employment Insurance Fund to pay down the debt and achieve a zero deficit.
It's true that Ontario is the only province not to have an agreement under Part II. Maybe that is because there are 105 Liberal MPs from Ontario and they didn't want to give the money to the province and allow it to hand out the goodies on its own.
When that happened back home in New Brunswick, we told the federal government that because training is a provincial responsibility, it had no business getting involved. The province asked the government to give it the money under Part II of the Employment Insurance Act, so that it could determine the terms and conditions for training.
Initially, we received $67 million in the first year, which was moved up to $78 million, and then to $93 million. The amount is now some $105 million.
Now it's true that it wasn't written in black and white, or green, red or orange — which is a great colour — but we could not appeal to the province, whereas under the Employment Insurance Act, we were able to do that. In other words, we couldn't challenge its decisions.
Initially, literacy courses were accessible to people with Grade 7, because we wanted to raise their level of education. In our area, for example, people would quit school and begin working in the fish processing plants when they were still young. At one point, there was no more fish in the sea, and the work dried up. So, people had to be retrained and upgrade their skills. However, the province had decided that henceforth, that training would no longer be available to people with Grade 7 or Grade 8; it would only be given to people with a Grade 10 education.
Everyone was stunned. We couldn't ask for more money because the federal government was saying it had already given us $105 million and that we would have to figure it out on our own: we asked for it, and we got it!
I think that is sort of what you're saying, Mr. Hubert. I'd like to hear more from you on that.