Mr. Speaker, when the Auditor General reviewed, on two occasions since I have been in the House, the use of the employment insurance fund, the Auditor General's criticism was in two basic areas.
One was that there was not an exact accounting out of the fund for the reimbursement back into job training, skills development and related activities. It was an accounting aspect that the Auditor General was putting her finger on. The second thing as I recall was the charge that the government, as a result of that, was taking money and putting it into general revenues and then spending it on a variety of unrelated activities.
I may be wrong but it is my belief that the government is now acting with respect to the recommendations that were made. If the $45 billion had been accounted for according to accounting procedures in terms of what amount of that money actually went into employment development and to regional programs that would attempt to deal with regional employment issues, in fact it would have accounted for a great deal of that money.
To answer the other question with respect to reimbursing the fund, I think that what we want to do is get actual value in accounting terms for the money that is being taken in from employers and employees and accounting for that as we reinvest in Canadians. In fact that is the objective of the bill.