Mr. Speaker, the previous speaker is always talking about fewer people being on unemployment insurance. He always interprets this as being bad news because in his riding there seems to be fewer people on it and therefore fewer benefits. He interprets that to mean there are fewer dollars being spent in the economy of his constituency.
Take a piece of news and the NDP will make it bad news. As a Liberal, I prefer to make it good news.
There are fewer people on employment insurance, that is true. However, does anyone think that maybe that has something to do with the fact that there is a lower unemployment rate in the country and more people are working? I think that is good news. It is good news that more people are working and have actual salaries and wages to spend in the constituencies and they are not dependent on employment insurance.
The member speaks as if employment insurance is the only industry in his riding and that the benefits are the salaries his people are making. Nothing could be further from the truth.
He also accuses the government and the administration of this department as having quotas to try to catch people. Nothing could be further from the truth in that case as well.
It is obvious he does not know a great deal about the skills of management. Every manager has to make a prediction about the coming year. He has to predict how many workers he is going to need, what kind of production they are going to have, et cetera. That is good management. This government is trying to follow that model.
The officials within the HRDC department who are charged with the very serious responsibility of identifying fraud are also asked to predict. That does not mean they are trying to reach that number. It simply means that they are managing and taking care of the assets of Canadians as best they can and catching people who are fraudulently using the system.