Mr. Speaker, I thank the hon. member for his kind words. I have been nominated in the riding of Rivière-du-Loup–Montmagny, which includes the regional county municipalities of Kamouraska, Rivière-du-Loup, Montmagny and L'Islet. This new riding includes half of my current riding and half of a neighbouring riding which, until now, had been represented by a Liberal member. I think that, in the next election, a Bloc Quebecois member will be elected. I hope to be the one.
As for the hon. member's question on the employment insurance fund, I will provide a concrete example. If employers and workers contributed to the program and assumed 100% of its funding, this would ensure that central labour bodies, workers and employer federations would decide together what is the appropriate rate of contribution.
Groups representing seasonal workers could say, “We want to improve our program. Are we able, collectively, to make this kind of choice?” Something similar was done in the past, for example when public servants became eligible to the employment insurance program. It was a kind of solidarity movement, in that these people said, “We have permanent jobs, but we want to help redistribute wealth in our society. Is there a way to ensure that what we are contributing is used to help regional economies and seasonal industries?” This is the type of situation that led to the employment insurance fund.
The problem is that someone changed the rules about ten years ago. It is the current Liberal government which decided that it would keep the surplus generated in the fund, even though it does not contribute to the employment insurance program.
If we had a self-sustaining fund, there would be a meeting where the new fund would take over from the old. At the first meeting, the federal government would sit at one end of the table and say that it accepted the transfer to a self-sustaining fund. At the next meeting, employers and employees would be the only people present, because the federal government would no longer have a place at this meeting, it having been recognized that those who finance the system should be in charge of it.
That is what we want in order to avoid a recurrence of the pillage, the theft of $45 billion. On people's cheque stubs it says “employment insurance premiums” and not “payroll tax”, or “government funding” or “debt repayment”. It says employment insurance, meaning that workers, when they lose their jobs, will have an adequate income while waiting for the next job.
The self-sustaining EI fund was suggested by the Bloc Quebecois and has been supported by all the opposition parties in this House. It was part of the unanimous recommendations of the Standing Committee on Human Resource Development. The only person who dissented was the current Prime Minister, who was finance minister at the time, because this fund was a cash cow for paying down Canada's deficit. It is unacceptable for the current government to make the least organized people in our society pay down the deficit.