Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Acadie—Bathurst for the public service that he has done for Canadians today by sounding the alarm, as it were, and notifying Canadians that a crime is about to take place, if not literally then certainly figuratively and practically, that we are about to get robbed.
It is now 12:35 in the afternoon and by 3 o'clock a crime will be about to take place. Somebody should call the cops and get them in here to witness this because hidden within the budget are two landmines that do not belong there. The first one is the immigration fiasco that the government has snuck into the budget bill. The second one is the manifestation of perhaps the greatest theft in Canadian history: $55 billion of surplus in the EI fund, paid in by employees and employers, not by the government, will be taken and used for whatever spending priorities it sees fit.
The current government, and the previous government, seem to have a misunderstanding about whose money it is. Marcel Massé was the previous president of the Treasury Board. I will ask my colleague to compare these two things. The former Liberal president of the Treasury Board, when there was a $30 billion surplus in the public service employees pension plan, by legislation, by the power vested in them, they stole that money from those pension fund beneficiaries just the same as the current government will steal the EI money. Does he not see a parallel there, that those guys do not seem to understand that it is not their money?