Mr. Speaker, there is no mystery about how much damage was done by the massive changes that were introduced by the Employment Insurance Act in 1995-96. There is no mystery about whether the damage was real because the province of Nova Scotia went from never having elected a New Democrat in the history of that province on the Nova Scotia mainland, to actually electing four New Democrats in the metro area in Halifax alone and two more in Cape Breton. Why? It is not because we all suddenly appeared with all the answers. More than any other single thing it was because of the damage that was done to the lives of people because of the massive changes to employment insurance. They were hitting people, affecting people and people were demanding that there be repairs done.
The Liberals never brought about the improvements that were needed after getting that loud message in 1997. Now 11 years later the changes still have not been made. The numbers of hours required to qualify are still excessively high for people in various seasonal industries, for example.
As if it is not an indignity enough to pay and pay into the employment insurance fund, the effect of that on the lives of people, the effect for parents of young children is that they are forced into living in dire poverty.
The other effect which is very real for Atlantic Canadians and for people from the north, is that it is a forced outmigration program when we do not have an adequate stabilizing unemployment insurance system. We are losing a lot of our workers to other parts of Canada because that is the only way they can feed their families. Of course that causes a further erosion of the economic base of our community.