Mr. Speaker, my colleague's questions are indeed good ones.
In response to his first question, yes, it is a budget that tends to sprinkle money across the country, going to favourite pet projects that often will reward friends of the government, and it is attached only to the government's priorities for Canadians.
I do not think if Canadians were asked if the spending priorities of the government were in line with theirs, there would be much of a consistency in their answer and the government's response in this budget. Unfortunately, Liberal governments, when they do finally get into a position where they have surplus funds, do not tend to take the right decisions that will affect the majority of Canadians across the country long term.
This government is not proactive. It does not come up with great plans that lead the country into the future, with a 5, 10 and 15 year plans that look down the road as to what might happen for the country. Instead, it is a very reactive government that continues to react to crisis. It goes from crisis to crisis, finally being forced to take action on some huge issues, not building up any kind of confidence within Canadians with any kind of proactive plan for many things. That concerns me greatly.
In terms of the EI fund, we know that this has gone on for years. Even though the government boasts of having lowered EI premiums, it continues to take far too much out of the pockets of Canadian taxpayers by way of these kinds of taxes. It does not give Canadians back in return what they deserve.
In my own riding at a time when the EI fund was boasting of billions of dollars of surpluses, HRDC did not renew contracts to organizations in my community that had previously done retraining and counselling of laid off workers. In my mind the spending of EI funds should be used for workers. That is the workers' money and it should be spent on workers. It should not sit someplace in a government fund which is too easily raided by the government to balance its budgets or to go into some kind of general revenue to be put to a pet project for the government.
That is scandalous and it is wrong but the government continues to do it and workers are paying the price.