Mr. Speaker, if the Minister of Finance wants to talk statistics, that is what Statistics Canada is there for. We can see that, for 20 per cent of poorest families, the income is more or less unchanged, and that for the richest families it has risen, while for the middle class it continues to decrease. This is what the Statistics Canada figures show.
I think that the Prime Minister still has a chance to help those who are becoming more and more familiar with poverty, and he can do before certain measures of the new Employment Insurance Act are implemented.
My question is for the Prime Minister.
Could he not suspend implementation of employment insurance reform measures which end up impoverishing the unemployed by taking billions of dollars away from them in order to wipe the deficit slate of the Minister of Finance clean?