Mr. Speaker, the situation for years and years has been, and everyone who is familiar with what is going on is aware, that week in week out, month in month out, young people and women in every part of Canada have had to go to work for 13 and 14 hours. Not only did they not qualify for unemployment insurance but also they did not get access to any of the programs that were designed to support people in the workplace.
What we have done is to respond to a request from people who understand how the system was exploited. We have gone to an hours based system. We believe that women and young people will benefit from the system.
As I indicated to my learned friend, we have foreseen that there will be changes and there will be impacts arising out of this new legislation that may not be helpful. That is why we are going to have a monitoring process in place, to ensure that the changes are fair and equitable and that employers and employees both respect the objectives of the new legislation which is to provide first hourly coverage for young people and women, people who in the past oddly enough were not working overtime, they could not get 15 hours a week.