Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Sault Ste. Marie for not only pointing out the staggering hypocrisy of the language in this particular motion but also for making the point that the Liberals are trying to have us believe some revisionist version of what went on. They are criticizing these cuts, which the NDP was the first to condemn, I believe. The Liberals would have us believe that theirs was a kinder, gentler government, when in actual fact the evidence will show that the former Liberal government was the most right-wing conservative government in the history of Canada. It was known for cutting, hacking and slashing every social program by which we define ourselves as Canadians, in the most ruthless and cruel way that can be imagined.
My colleague made the point quite well, I think, that some cuts simply do not heal, that these cuts hurt people. Some cuts still have not healed. In my riding, the poorest riding in Canada, we feel the effects still of the Liberal economic policy that used the EI system as a cash cow.
I want to ask my colleague if the same is true in his riding. The cutbacks to EI by the Liberal government alone took $20.8 million a year out of just my riding of Winnipeg Centre. That is like the payrolls of two huge industries, two huge pulp and paper mills, moving out of one's riding. That is what it is equal to. Members can imagine what that would do to an already vulnerable low income neighbourhood like mine. Does the hon. member's riding still bear the vestiges of the Liberal legacy of ruthless cutbacks and slashing of budgets?