Food. My friend from York South-Weston is here. Anything can happen now.
The member for Medicine Hat talked about the unemployment insurance program. Certainly I would be the first to agree that there is a need for change. I want to scrutinize some of the suggestions he made. One that caught my attention I will come back to in a moment. But let me make a basic point about the unemployment insurance system.
It is not a bogy. It is a system that has served this country very well. Let us not, to use a cliché, throw out the baby with the bath water. This is a system that has served this country very well.
The issue I want to come back to is the one of the variable entrance requirements. I say to the member kindly that if we were to extrapolate and take to its logical conclusion his point that one ought not to have a different entrance requirement depending on where one lives in this country, he is also espousing that all automobile insurance plans ought to be identical and that there ought not to be any variability in the type of coverage that is needed by different individuals.
Of course he does not believe that. I ask him to examine a little more closely his thesis that where one lives in the country makes no difference.
I submit that it makes a whole lot of difference. For example, it makes a difference in the ability of one to work in construction activity. I would suggest that it would have been much more difficult three days ago to do construction activity when it was -30 degrees in Ottawa than in Newfoundland where it was 12 degrees above that day.