Mr. Speaker, I find the intervention quite incredible because I have never had a Reform member give me time to speak. If that is a practice of the House, it is an interesting practice, but I have some issues that I want to bring forward and I believe I have 15 minutes to bring them forward. Now I am being asked to cut my time to 10 minutes and to give part of my time to the opposition.
Quite frankly, they have spoken all day. They have had all kinds of speakers up. If they have omitted something, I am not going to relinquish my time in order to give them extra time.
Let us look at where we are with our EI reforms. We have modernized the system and we have made it far more fair to everyone. In reality the thrust in this country has to be to create more jobs, to do things to get people to work and not to focus on unemployment totally. We must focus on job creation because that runs hand in hand with EI.
EI premiums have been talked about a tremendous amount today. But let us look at the other programs the government has put in place to support business and to help business down the line.
The new hires program very clearly makes an issue out of what is happening in this country. We have actually given businesses who are going to hire youth between the ages of 18 and 24 a premium year off so they will not have to pay those extra premiums.
We have made benefits available to women who are among the largest number of part time workers in this country and we have extended the plan to 68% of the people who were not eligible for benefits before. We have extended our programs. We have tried to do everything we can to give the worker the best opportunity.
Quite frankly, when we look at programs for youth and the programs that we have put in place to help them, they were not the people who got major support from EI programs, but we are certainly doing what we can to get jobs for the young people of this country.
We have done what we can to make sure that women, who form the major part of the part time workforce in this country, will benefit from the opportunities in the EI program.
We are building a fund which will make certain that there will be stability for those people who will need stability when they are laid off. We have downsizing, company changes and an EI support fund that is in a positive economic position that will be able to help those people in the future.
We have made certain we are not going to take small business down a trail of pumping up its rates when there is a turnaround in the economy. These are the kinds of measures the finance minister and the government have taken to make certain there is stability, a level playing field for everybody and fairness for all those in the system. The fairness issue is extremely important.