Madam Speaker, softwood lumber is a very important issue for the whole country and particularly for rural Canada. There are all kinds of small communities being hit very hard with layoffs in the softwood lumber industry. Again the government has not been very aggressive with the United States in terms of fighting the duties that the Americans are imposing. We should look at a national government program to help the workers who are laid off and to help some of the small companies that are laying off people.
There should be changes to the unemployment insurance plan whereby more people would be eligible to qualify for EI benefits. We should make sure that the qualification period is easier to obtain, that there is a longer qualification period. There was a time when a majority of workers qualified for EI. Now a lot of them do not. These are the changes that have to be made. The EI fund now has a surplus of approximately $43 billion. The member for Vancouver East has pointed out that a lot of the money going into EI comes from low income people. These are the very same people who do not qualify for unemployment insurance assistance.
What we need is a program to protect the workers, to make sure that if they cannot keep their jobs in the softwood lumber industry they get the training and skills needed to find employment elsewhere. There is a whole package in terms of education and training that we need to be pursuing in this country.