Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the decent question. It brings the debate to a much higher level than when being asked about some extraneous issue that Canadians do not really care about.
I would gladly work with the member opposite in strengthening the employment insurance program. I was the critic when I first came to Parliament in 1993 and it is vitally important that we have a strong employment insurance plan. That would be something that would come down in the budget, so please allow us to present a budget and have input into that.
As far as the member's comments on social programs, I agree that we need strong social programs and we have done much to strengthen them. One of the best things we can do to strengthen social programs is to have a strong economy so we can fund them. If we do not have a strong economy to fund social programs, they will be ineffective. In fact, we will have more poverty and more problems if we do not have a strong economy.
The stimulus package that is being proposed by the coalition opposite has a lot of top notch economists in the country concerned. Don Drummond of the Toronto Dominion Bank said, “That would be a disaster that would launch into a structural deficit. Canada's economy is one of the few in the world in which the domestic side of the economy is still growing. No one can point to Canada and say 'you are the cause of this international problem'. I've seen a lot more failures of short-term stimulus than successes. A lot of them just don't work”.
Also, the Scotiabank chief economist, Warren Jestin, stated:
...the Canadian economy already has stimulus built into the books.
He admits that we already have a stimulus built in the books. He goes on to state:
The GST cut and reductions to corporate and business taxes taken last fall...will...have a greater effect on the economy than a short-term stimulus.
Unlike the U.S., which has tried ad hoc measures such as giving people cheques ... we were following a much more rigorous process.