Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup for the questions.
The first questions put were: Where are the amendments? What are they going to look like? I am a bit astonished, at this point, that anybody would not know what these amendments are going to be. I have a hard time distinguishing between the bill that is going to be and the bill that is in terms of my speaking on it. We have talked about these amendments so much. We have to fix the gap. We have to fix the divisor. We have to fix the intensity rule. I do not know how much clearer I can be.
As the member is a member on the committee, I think he knows exactly what I am speaking about. We will have an enjoyable three weeks attending to these things.
As far as confidence in whether or not these changes are going to be made, the member will recall how much resistance there was to two-tiered UI in the green book during the social security review. It is gone. The member will recall how much resistance there was to experience rating which is having one's premiums based on the likelihood of one drawing unemployment insurance. I am sure the member for Kamouraska-Rivière-du-Loup realizes how bad it would be for his region and my region if that were to happen, notwithstanding the fact that the Reform critic on HRD is quoted in a New Brunswick paper this morning as saying that is exactly what we should be doing, restoring this back to original insurance principles, which I can only say would be absolutely devastating to Atlantic Canada, period.
We are going to be delivering the programs that create jobs in the communities to the communities. In my case, there is a human resource development office in Fredericton that will be making the decisions. I am sure that taking these decisions out of Ottawa and larger centres and giving them to the communities is exactly the kind of progress we want. It was suggested during the social security review that we need to bring more flexibility into the system.
A significant number of times during the social security review people came before us and said: "The biggest problem with the program is that you have to be getting income benefits in order to get employment benefits". We have changed that. Now people will be eligible for employment benefits even if they are not drawing income benefits. That is another reason why we cannot support this motion.