Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the NDP bringing up the issues of EI and indeed unemployment. As I mentioned in previous comments, our country now has the lowest unemployment rate that it has had in some 30 years and the highest economic performance of all the OECD countries.
The member brings up a vexing problem. All of us want to ensure that unemployed people get jobs, for a job is the best social program of all. We also want to make sure the program is sufficiently attractive, so that when people lose their jobs through no fault of their own they will be taken care of but can also go back to work as soon as they are able. Next, we also want to make sure they have the skills and training to do that.
On the other side of this equation, as the member knows very well if he looks at the performance and experience of a lot of the socialist countries in northern Europe, if we make social programs such as EI too attractive, what we can unfortunately do is encourage unemployment and inefficiencies within economies.
There is a balance that we are trying to strike. On the one hand, we are trying to make sure that people are treated fairly and are taken care of when they lose their jobs through no fault of their own. On the other hand, we do not want to engender a systemic problem within employment insurance that actually causes the exact problem we want to avoid, that is, unemployment.
Indeed, when the Liberal Party came into government in 1993 there was a $5.884 billion deficit in the EI account. Over the last few years there have been surpluses and there has been some criticism about that. There are events taking place right now in the world, particularly south of the border with U.S. deficit spending, that are going to have dramatic impacts upon our country. We have to deal with that.
Does my colleague not think the changes the government has put in place, including a reduction in the minimum hours and in the amount of moneys that have been paid by employees and employers, are a fair balance? Does he not think they ensure that we have a viable EI system, that it is there for the public and the investments we have made in skills training are useful, but on the other hand we are not making a system that is going to encourage or engender inefficiencies within our economy and encourage unemployment?