Mr. Speaker, the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain is absolutely right. It is quite the paradox. A $9 billion surplus was accumulated and set aside. A $45 billion surplus was taken from the employment insurance fund to pay down the debt. As the hon. member was saying, this surplus came from premiums paid by those who earn up to $39,000. In other words, those who earn more than $39,000 pay EI premiums up to $39,000 and that is all.
People who have the means should have to pay more to the employment insurance plan if it is to be a fair plan. People who earn $18,000, $25,000 or $30,000 certainly should not have to pay down the country's debt. This debt should have been paid down through budget cuts, not by increasing departmental spending by 30% or 40% over the past 10 years.
As the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain was saying, it is the small contributors who had to pay down the debt by contributing to the EI fund. There is worse to come. My colleague from Saint-Maurice—Champlain has been working on this very important case for many years and he knows that in addition to having stolen $45 billion from the public, the government has stolen millions, even billions, from the Guaranteed Income Supplement by denying senior citizens money to which they were entitled.
To make his budgets look good, for the Prime Minister—the former finance minister—to be able to go around saying that the books are balanced, this government penalized senior citizens by denying them the Guaranteed Income Supplement. It paid down the debt with surplus EI premiums. Today, it comes here rather boastful and expects gratitude, but it is the most disadvantaged in our society who have paid and left us in a better financial situation.
We think this is unbelievable and unacceptable. We will keep saying so to make sure that in the future this money will go to those who are entitled to it and who have contributed fair and square. We are talking about the disadvantaged, poor families, people like Magalie Lebrun who decided to have children and start a family, and people who came before us and are now retired.