Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend has summarized a number of obvious concerns regarding the budget. She referred to one aspect that I do not have time to address and that is the whole issue of employment insurance benefits.
I think it is well known by all members and most Canadians that one of the reasons the government has a surplus in order to provide some of these initiatives is as a result of taking a lot of money out of the EI fund. That is really an insurance fund; it ought not to be a source of government revenues. It is also fair for her to say that it is acknowledged that the level of benefits is inadequate.
It was interesting to note on doing an analysis the other day that a few years ago 75% of people who lost their jobs and had paid into the EI fund actually were able to collect some benefits. That has gone down now to about 34% on average across Canada. Interestingly enough this 34% is the same level as that in the great state of Arkansas, the state which is held as probably one of the crummiest states in which to live in terms of social policy. We have now reduced our social program called EI or unemployment insurance down to one of the lowest levels of the United States, which is what a lot of people feared would occur. We thought we would now see some obvious recognition of this imbalance.
I simply want to say in response to my friend that when we went into this budget, the social playing field if I can call it that, was very much tilted, out of whack. The gap between those who have and those who have not was increasing. This was an opportunity to level the playing field in social policy, to make it a little bit more even so that a child growing up in one part of Canada under certain circumstances would have a similar opportunity as a child growing up in another part of Canada. In other words, level the playing field so people have an equal opportunity to become the productive citizens they wish to be.
Was that playing field improved, or was it tilted even further? It was actually tilted even further. The gap was made even worse as a result of this budget, which is why I started off my speech by saying that I found it to be a rather disgusting budget presentation, when we consider what could have been done and what was done.