Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for raising those very salient points and adding to my presentation by expanding on an area that I would very much like to add to my comments.
It is true that my inner city riding of Winnipeg Centre is the third poorest riding in all of Canada, by whatever statistical measurement is used. When dealing with chronic long term poverty, one of the predictable consequences is perhaps not more crime, because I do not want to say that poor people commit more crimes, but poor people are more likely to be victims of or exposed to crime. Therefore, it is very much a top of mind issue for the people I represent.
As for the contributing factors to the fact that mine is the third poorest riding in the country, one can be directly blamed on the cutbacks to the EI program in the late 1990s. We did a study and a survey right across the country. In my riding of Winnipeg Centre alone, the cutbacks to EI resulted in $20.8 million per year being sucked right out of my riding, pulled out, extracted and ripped out.
This is a riding that was already low income and suffering the consequences of poverty. Taking that $20.8 million every year out of my riding alone pushed more people from being low income marginal families into families in dire poverty. I thank the member for making that connection.
As for the EI fund alone, with its $20.8 million a year, let us imagine a company with a payroll of $20.8 million a year wanting to move into a riding. We would pave the streets with gold to welcome that company because that would mean 2,000 well-paid jobs. The government pulled that out of my riding just by those changes to EI alone. The impact is shameful. I know of other ridings in eastern Canada, for instance in Newfoundland, where the impact is $50 million or $60 million per year in single ridings, according to that same survey.