Madam Speaker, it is amazing to hear a Liberal backbencher talk about poverty when it was his government that gutted the EI system and caused a lot of the problems in this country today.
The fact is that people want to work. Fishermen in the coastal communities and farmers on the prairies want to work. When they could not work they had to rely on the EI system, an EI system that is failing well over 65% of the people in this country. It is not just lone parents and families that break up which are suffering, there are many families with a husband and wife who find it difficult to make ends meet today.
I would like the member to respond to the fact that it was this government's drastic cuts to EI, to satisfy its fiscal objectives and banking needs, which created a huge social deficit in which parented families are greatly suffering as well.