Madam Speaker, when the Liberal government agreed to bundle small weeks to have more acceptable weeks, it agreed to do it in only 29 regions where the unemployment rates were the highest.
If the unemployment rate is 10.5% in one area and 9.4% in the neighbouring one, this does not mean poverty and hardship do not exist there.
I would ask my distinguished colleague whether he would support a motion asking the government to extend the program to every region in Canada where small weeks could be bundled to have more acceptable weeks so that a former miner at the BC Mine, Louis-Philippe Roy, is not penalized for having been of service by acting as a pallbearer for the funeral parlour.