Mr. Speaker, I do not have a lot of personal information on the specific job the hon. member raised in his question. I do know that some industries use the EI system in order to maintain a skilled workforce for when the work is there. If we value those industries we need to find a mechanism by which they will not all wander away and move to Alberta. Frankly, we would not have any carpenters left in Manitoba if we did not have some way of giving them income maintenance for the period of time when there is no work. Unless companies want to retrain a whole new workforce every time the economy picks up, they try to retain the employees they have.
I apologize for the fact that I am not personally familiar with the issue raised by the member. I would be happy to see if I could find more information and get back to him.