Madam Speaker, I would urge that the parliamentary secretary not reduce this to pure partisanship. This issue requires all parliamentarians to work to ensure that this issue is addressed because poverty and particularly poverty affecting children is something that all parliamentarians should take very seriously.
My question for the parliamentary secretary relates to the employment insurance fund. The fact is that EI premiums are a regressive tax on the poorest of Canadians. Somebody making $39,000 per year in Canada pays the same amount of EI premiums as somebody making $300,000 per year. It is grossly unfair in that regard.
The changes made by this government to EI benefits has hurt significantly. The draconian changes have savaged benefits for instance for seasonal workers. In my riding 4,580 people qualified for EI in 1994. That was reduced to 3,130 in 1997.
I want to read from correspondence received from one of my constituents. I want the parliamentary secretary to hear this so that he has some awareness of how his government's changes in employment insurance have affected people living in rural Canada and the rural poor. This is one letter I received:
How do you expect people to live on $200 per month for food, clothes, fuel, lights. Try to run a vehicle when the nearest town is 40 miles away. The government has never fought for seasonal workers. Seasonal workers need fairer treatment. How do you think small businesses, stores, farms can deal without crop pickers, without road work, without forestry workers, without strawberry pickers and planters, blueberry rakers, what about landscapers and roofers?
The changes made have impacted significantly, particularly rural Canada, and have created a sense of poverty that is egregious and unacceptable in our country. It is time we stand up and take off our ideological blinders in the House. It is time to do what is right and either reduce the EI premiums such that more Canadians can go back to work or take that fund for what it was designed, a fund to benefit those people who paid into it. It is absolutely grossly unfair that the EI fund which was designed to benefit the poorest of Canadians is being taken now by this government to pad its books to look better for the finance minister's records. It is no good to have a country that is in the black when Canadians are in the red.