Thank you, Madam Chair.
With the passion we all bring to the subject, we often deviate from the focus of the conversation, and I do feel I need to have a quick deviation just to respond to a few things that have been said, but of course we'll ultimately focus in on what the goals are.
I think everyone here has the same goal in this country, and that is that people can be engaged in the type of work they want, regardless of gender, and that they can make choices around part-time versus full-time. I'm very proud to have a son in nursing and a daughter in business, and here we are with many women politicians. That is an important value. I don't think there is anyone who disagrees with that sort of vision and value for our country.
Where we end up with some struggles is around the best way we can get to that and perhaps what role EI plays within that. I truly do think that is a bit of an issue.
I do quickly need to suggest that we have often, within this conversation, headed into the conversation around child care, absolutely related to maternity benefits. But please, I represent a rural riding, and when we talk about universal child care as being the answer, let's not forget—I mean, I have so many people. First of all, it's a provincial responsibility. The provinces have additional money to make decisions. And I can't tell you how many people.... It might not sound like a lot of money, but the appreciation of my rural and remote people, who have family farms and young people on family farms.... So we can't forget that we can't take an urban-centric model to our goals around early childhood development and child care.
We have this current system, and Professor Lightman, I did sort of take a little bit of objection to your comments about our government's insensitivity. This system was actually designed before our government, so to suggest that the Conservative government is responsible for a very unfair system is not quite accurate. I just want to put that on the record.
We have made a number of good changes, but we have balance, and is a government better to spend tax money creating the jobs we want people to have and stimulating the economy? The employment insurance system is supposed to be revenue-neutral. The changes we made in terms of looking at self-employed maternity benefits, in terms of five weeks, are going to cost money, and it's going to cost the people who are already working and the employers. Let's say we took all your suggestions and said yes, we want to do this for people. I don't think anyone has really looked at that bigger impact. If we are all of a sudden charging employers and employees more for something that is supposed to be neutral, I think that is going to have a huge impact. Are we going to be putting businesses out of jobs and actually losing more opportunity?
I'll just throw that open.
Thank you.