Mr. Speaker, I could not agree more with the hon. member. If one is forced to pay into something one should have a reasonable expectation of collecting what was promised.
The example I used before was of people with mandatory fire insurance on their homes. They have to pay into it. They have no choice. Yet if their houses burn down there is less than a 40% chance of being able to collect. They would think they had been cheated, that they had been robbed. That is fundamentally wrong.
The hon. member pointed out some kind of geographical discrimination in a sense. There are other inequities in the program which are just as glaring. For instance, an unemployed woman has less than a 25% chance of being able to collect employment insurance because women are more likely to be in part time work, and part time workers are disproportionately affected.
A youth under 25 years of age, and the young people listening today should be aware of this, has less than a 15% chance of collecting any benefits, even though it is mandatory to pay into the program. The hon. member is right. It ceases to become an insurance program. It is really another tax on the paycheque.