Mr. Speaker, the issue of how any surplus in the EI fund should be used is really pretty straightforward. The federal government pays nothing into the EI program. It is all made up of contributions by employers and employees. It is our money, and income maintenance, frankly, is what the designated use of the EI fund was.
When the member says the NDP would squander it by giving that money to workers, let me say that first, it is their money, and second, the Liberals already squandered it by spending it on whatever they felt like. They had no right to do that. They had no right to use that money for anything other than what the act states, and that is for income maintenance and labour market training. That is why we pay into the fund. It was the expectation, and a reasonable expectation, on the part of workers that they would qualify for some kind of income maintenance should they become unemployed.