Mr. Speaker, I would say it is both. Maybe they both had something to do with ousting the Liberal member from the Acadian peninsula, with throwing him out and replacing him with an NDP member. Sometimes, I refer to myself as the new NDP member in New Brunswick, because our party is a novelty in that province, at the federal level.
The Liberals were ousted from the riding of Acadie—Bathurst, and in fact right across the Atlantic region. Earlier our friend from Gander—Grand Falls talked about the situation up until 1993, but he did not keep going because his party came to office that year. The reason the Liberals were ousted is that after the mess left by the Conservatives, they too left us a mess, after making promises to Canadians when they formed the opposition. They said they would save employment insurance, which would be a disaster for the Atlantic provinces. That is what the Liberals said. When they came into power, they did the same as the Conservatives. They even went further.
With the changes to employment insurance, they went even further than that. Now people can no longer connect two fishing seasons, because of the problems with the fisheries. What they call that now, down home, is “the black hole”.
I will tell you how July's changes to employment insurance work, in case you did not know. I will educate you a little, if my predecessor has not.
In May and June, we catch crab. In July and August, there is nothing to fish for, where we are. Then the herring fishery starts around August 28, or after the fête des Acadiens on August 15. So our people suffer. They have no employment insurance in July and August, because they have not had the chance to accumulate enough weeks with the crab fishing to be able to get employment insurance.
The Liberal government is ignoring this problem completely, washing its hands of the whole problem, letting our people suffer, and this is totally unacceptable. That is why the people of Acadie—Bathurst showed Doug Young the door on June 2.