Mr. Speaker, the government has been a little bit reckless in its appropriation of funds related to workers.
I want to move the debate to the repercussions. It is very important to recognize the connection between employment insurance and child poverty. We know that women workers in our country face many difficulties. They often represent transitional employment. They often represent occupations that do not have full time employment and because of that, they often do not qualify for this system despite the fact they pay into it. At the end of the day, when it is supposed to be there for them, they do not benefit from it. That has to stop.
The fact of the matter is that less than 40% of women can actually collect from a system that they are forced to pay into. That is not acceptable and it has to change. This is a simple, modest, and practical way of dealing with that situation that is also going to assist child poverty. It will also assist communities because that money will be used to pay for groceries, rent, and the cost of heating homes. In Ontario, for example, our electricity rate is going up despite promises that it would not. The workers in my community of Windsor West have a higher unemployment rate because of the transitional employment there. They could benefit from this modest improvement.
It is really important to recognize that this country does not have a national employment strategy. When workers lose their jobs, they are left on their own. They have very little support any more in terms of having the practical assistance to ensure that we move to new types of technology and training. The government is not involved in that. It has left it up to people to do that. It requires money to go back to school. It requires maybe a mortgage to be paid or helping kids go to school. These are modest improvements to ensure that integrity is going to be there for them.
It is amazing that at the peak of this program, there was a $750 million per month surplus that the government was raking in off the backs of workers. Once again, this is not the government's money. This comes from people's paycheques, so that they can have something if they lose their job. Workers do not mind paying even if they never collect as long as they know it is going to be there.
Imagine our house or car insurance where we would only get a rate of return of 40% after paying into it, that there would be only a 40% chance if we had an accident or our house burned down. It is unacceptable. This type of fraud has to stop. The money is there. In the budget, the government just passed another $5 billion corporate tax cut. It comes off the backs of working people and it is not going back to the workers where it should be.
I invite all hon. members to answer their constituents on this and explain why corporations, when they have record profits and earnings, need an additional $5 billion in corporate tax cuts. Ordinary Canadians should be receiving the same benefits they have had in the past with a decent and modest improvement to our system.