Thank you very much for the question.
You were talking about EI in the second part of your question. I'm going to ask for more input on this, but we got a cost of about $7 billion from the Office of the Superintendent of Financial Institutions. That was a one-time past service.... We're not talking about retroactivity.
The other was a $110 million annual increase in operating costs that would result from Bill C-201.
The point about EI is a great one. The fact is that between 2,700 and 3,000 members every year from 2006 to 2009 collected EI for maternity or paternity leave. In those four years 11,300 people retired from the Canadian Forces with pensions; and 9,800 retired without pensions and are eligible for EI.
So if we diverted all the EI premiums to pay for Bill C-201, the thousands and thousands of people who are eligible for and/or collecting EI due to their service to the Canadian Forces would be cut off. That would not be fair.
The other salient point is that in 2008-09, the total EI contributions from the regular force and the reserve force totalled $56.5 million, which is only about half of what the annual costs for Bill C-201 would be. So it doesn't add up that way either.
I'll turn to my colleague Monsieur Mercier for any further amplification, particularly on the $7 billion figure.