Of course, Mr. Speaker, you are the one who issues their paycheques. You are forcing these students to pay into employment insurance, yet because they are part time they will never be able to collect on the money they have paid in.
If for some reason they were to leave this job or you were to let them go, they would never be able to collect on the money you are taking from them. It is not insurance; it is a tax. For these students who are helping us in the Chamber today, you are levying a tax on them. There is no ability for them to collect it.
Parliamentary pages are like hundreds of thousands of other students across the country who pay into employment insurance under the guise that it is insurance, and yet if they lost their jobs or wanted to collect back on it they never could.
This does not just apply to students. It applies to more than just part time students. The government is hoodwinking people like hairdressers, the self-employed, and all sorts of people who are paying into EI but who have no ability to prospect of drawing on it because of the way it is structured.
I will call it what it deserves to be called. It is not an Employment Insurance Act. It is an employment tax. That is exactly what you are doing to these students, Mr. Speaker, and it is exactly what your government does to millions of people across the country when it levies this tax.
Real things to create jobs, real initiatives other than tax cuts, are something my party and I support. To give an example of how nasty this tax is, how pernicious this tax is that you put upon these pages and others in the country, the government right now has approximately $35 billion in the EI fund. It is a huge surplus.
The fund's chief actuarial officer says a $15 billion surplus is all that is required. Therefore more than $20 billion is being hoarded by your government, Mr. Speaker, from people like these pages right here—