Mr. Speaker, the hon. member raises an important question about the application of the UI surplus.
The UI fund is set up over the period of the business cycle to be self-financing. In those periods when there is a recession or a heavy draw on the UI fund, the government finances the UI system, as we had to do during the late eighties and early nineties in the previous government when the fund went into a deficit of close to $11 billion.
We are now simply paying off that deficit, but the government had to finance it through its own borrowing during that period of time. When the economy improves, as it is now doing under this administration, we begin to build up a surplus-