Madam Speaker, the government is very concerned with the situation of unemployed Canadians and wants to help them to make ends meet while they are between jobs and then to get back into the workforce.
My colleague on the opposite side of the House starts off tonight with his statement that there are $13 billion in the fund and that is enough to finance 1998-99. He fails to mention that the recently announced reduction in the premium rate of 15 cents from $2.70 to $2.55 will save workers and employers $1.1 billion a year.
He also fails to mention that the EI fund has been in deficit seven out of the last ten years. During those years average taxpayers in Canada paid out EI benefits through their taxes, in other words from the general revenues. Average taxpayers in Canada shared their ability to pay into the general revenue fund through taxes with those who were less fortunate and found themselves unemployed.
Now that the EI fund is in surplus, it sounds as if the member opposite does not want that fund shared with other Canadian taxpayers who may have priorities other than benefits to EI recipients. That is why we took on the difficult task of modernizing a 25 year old system which no longer met the needs of today's work environment.
We believe that getting Canadians back to work is the only real long term solution to high unemployment. That is why we shifted the focus from reliance on benefits to active re-employment measures, for example, the 31,000 jobs that have been created in areas of high unemployment because of the transitional job fund. Thousands of other Canadians are benefiting from the $2 billion we reinvested in active employment measures. We believe that helping people to help themselves is the key to their success.
The recent analysis of EI coverage clearly concludes that—