Madam Speaker, here we go for seven minutes more in terms of this lesson on employment insurance.
Let me ask a question for the folks at home. If the finance minister kept up his practice of taking $7 billion a year more than he gives back, what would that amount to by the turn of the century? It would be $26 billion. The finance minister plans to take $26 billion more than what he is giving back in employment insurance.
That is a big slush fund. That is exactly what it is, unfortunately, because it is going into the general revenue fund. We will never see it coming back. A lot of students will never be able to draw on it whatsoever. A lot of self-employed people will never be able to draw on it.
With the amount of money the government is taking out of the province of Alberta with its younger demographic and its lower unemployment rates because of the Alberta advantage, there is no way we will ever see that amount of money coming back. It just will not happen. Let us face it.
What will this actually amount to? The average taxpayer is paying $420 per year more than what he or she is getting out of the EI fund. In Alberta, as I said, it was as much as $786 a year. For every Canadian, if we average it out across the board, it is $420 the average Canadian is paying above and beyond what he or she is be able to collect in terms of programs, benefits, training or anything under this plan. Shame on the finance minister for these types of numbers.
One basic law of economics is that if we tax something we get less of it. Thus taxing jobs means we will get less jobs and therefore will have higher unemployment.
If the finance minister admits, as he did previously when he was sitting on this side of the House, that payroll taxes are a cancer on job creation, he must know—he certainly did back then unless he has forgotten—that by cutting the payroll tax he will be helping to create jobs. Once again I say that for every point we are able to decrease payroll taxes we create more than 44,000 jobs.
If we go ahead and we figure out what has happened with the Canada pension plan, that being more than a four percentage point increase, and if we look at what we have in employment insurance where it is taking nearly a full point above and beyond what it should, that is five points right there that the Liberal government has put on job creation. It has taken 200,000 jobs at the very minimum out of the Canadian economy.
How can we argue with all the opposition parties and the unions? The Canadian Federation of Independent Business is arguing on behalf of job creators, the companies. Economists across the board and even government bureaucrats are saying that these types of things should be addressed. How can we possibly ignore that?
The only person who could ignore it is the finance minister who forgot his previous promises in previous statements and went ahead and took this money, along with the lowest interest rates in 40 years, and used it as an excuse to balance the budget. He still allowed corporate welfare, money going to people overseas to fund dictators and some outrageous programs in the country. How could he do that? I do not know how he justifies it?
I would like to bring home a little story from Alberta. It is pertinent in this case. Premier Ralph Klein of my province said that Canadian workers should be given a break and that the $5.7 billion EI surplus should be used to lower premiums. He got some agreement on that. It was not just the premier who was saying it. The representative of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Dan McLennan, said:
Certainly, we feel that the federal government could do a better job with EI—
It is not just Bob White with the Canada Labour Congress. Dan McLennan with the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees is agreeing that the federal government could do a better job.
Let me run through the list one more time: Bob White of the Canada Labour Congress, Dan McLennan of the Alberta Union of Provincial Employees, Premier MacLellan, Premier Klein, Premier Harris, the economists I have been quoting, all opposition parties, the finance minister when he was in opposition, and actual people within the government bureaucracy. I do not know how the government can possibly justify any of these things. It does not make any sense.
I will open it up now to allow some of my friends across the way to come forward with good questions as I know they will.