Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his question. It is all the more interesting because yesterday we were able to obtain more information at the Subcommittee on the Employment Insurance Funds. Mr. Malcom Brown, assistant deputy minister of the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development, stated that reducing the qualifying period for the employment insurance program to 360 hours for everyone would cost only $390 million, the same cost as a reduction of 3¢ in premiums. It is a choice that should have been made.
With all the workers in our constituencies coping with the gap, with the growing poverty that we see, we all know that this money would have been well used to meet essential needs if it had been put back into our regional economies.
That would have made it possible to reduce the required number of hours to 360. It would have opened access to employment insurance for another 90,000 people. It would have been wonderful for workers and it would have given a big boost to our economy.