Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the member's comments. He was critical of the government's performance on the economy. He was factually incorrect in what he has said, quite dramatically. If he does not believe it, he should look at the recent statistics in The Economist . It compared Canada to the other nations of the world in economic performance, and as I said before, we lead the OECD countries.
It is interesting that comments were made previously by one of the hon. member's colleagues who was critical of my riding in that there is less use of EI. Yes, there is less use of EI because more people are employed. They are not using EI because they are getting jobs and that is the key.
As a government, we made a number of changes, as the member knows full well, including reducing the minimum hours of work needed. We also made sure that the benefits were paid on the best 14 weeks of 52, not on the average of 26 weeks.
We have also put in place measures to train people to get the skills required to get the jobs that we are trying to attract here. We want to make sure we have an EI system that is sustainable in the future for the people who need it.
We need an economy that balances good microeconomic capabilities with good macroeconomic decisions. That is the balance we need to have. When we have that, we have an economy that provides jobs so people do not need EI.
Let us address the question at hand. In the member's area, a number of people work in the fisheries industry and are seasonal employees. On the west coast, we have the same challenges too. Would it not make more sense for us to put a greater investment into skills development? We have done that. That would enable those fisheries workers to gain larger employment in such areas as the inshore fisheries, on-land fish farming and fish farming in certain areas that are not environmentally destructive. This has been done very effectively in places like Norway, Iceland and certain parts of Chile. I am not talking about the Far East, where things have been done very badly.
I ask the hon. member to go back to his constituents and come up with a plan for the government to redirect some of the moneys that are being allocated for skills training to enable his seasonal workers to gain long term stable employment in the areas I mentioned.