Madam Speaker, the employment insurance system is about supporting individuals who have an attachment to the labour force and who need temporary assistance before getting back into the workforce.
Despite the member's claims that he has made in the past and again tonight, the fact is that we do not want individuals moving from EI to social assistance. We want them to move from EI into the workforce.
Let us set the record straight. Since March 1997 social assistance case loads have declined in all provinces. In the member's province of Quebec the most recent figures show 436,200 households were on social assistance, the lowest number of cases since January 1993.
The fact is that a portion of social assistance recipients has always been persons who either did not qualify or who exhausted their EI benefits. Contrary to the hon. member's statement, our last EI reform was precisely about trying to help these unemployed individuals back into the workforce.
The employment insurance reform brought forth by the government included a number of bold new measures to modernize the system and to ensure it could better help Canadians face the challenges of our changing economy and help them find and keep jobs.
Rather than making Canadians dependent on passive income support for as long as possible as the member and his party would like, we choose to invest EI dollars in new measures to help Canadians return to work as quickly as possible.
What is so innovative is that we have broadened eligibility for these employment measures so that all Canadians who received EI or UI in the last three years can benefit from them as can people who collected maternity or parental benefits during the last five years.
To further build on this innovation, the Government of Canada has negotiated labour market development agreements with nearly all provincial and territorial governments for the delivery of these active measures.
The Government of Quebec will receive $2.7 billion over five years—