Madam Speaker, we never changed our mind. In fact, we have always thought that the way the federal government works is bad for Quebec. It grabs more and more money, but never seems able to give it back.
Indeed, this weekend, the member for St. Hyacinthe said that the fiscal balance should not occur by pieces; it should occur globally. The federal government must give back to the provinces what is rightfully theirs. The Liberals have complicated things. Do they believe that if there was an independent employment insurance fund, it would be more complicated? It would be less complicated. They would not be able to take money from the fund instead of providing benefits to workers.
When I toured Quebec about the guaranteed income supplement, I received a nice letter from Jane Stewart, who was the minister at the time. She wrote me that she had given all she could, that she had improved the information in order to be able to give more, that she had given us all that we had asked for, but that there was only one thing that she could not give us: it was retroactivity.
Do we need a department to offer retroactivity? No, we need honesty. All they have to do is admit that that money is not theirs. It is not by establishing a department, by making the administration bigger, that we will have money to offer retroactivity. We do not need a department to offer retroactivity. And Mrs. Stewart's letter proves it. It is the same thing with employment insurance.
Since my time is up, I will conclude by saying that, in terms of employment insurance, it is not true that we need a department to improve the system; we only need to take it out of the hands of the Liberals.