Mr. Speaker, I rise in the House today to speak in opposition to Bill C-50 and in favour of the amendments presented today in this House, especially those concerning employment insurance.
I would like to take a moment to talk about the work done by the hon. member for Acadie—Bathurst, as he has been working very hard ever since coming to the House on June 2, 1997. Today is the anniversary of that date. Since then, he has worked relentlessly for an employment insurance system that protects workers across the country. It is important to commend his work.
The question is, what do the Conservatives propose to do in Bill C-50?
We talked earlier today about the immigration provisions. That portion of the bill should be entitled the indentured servitude act. It essentially would bring foreign workers into Canada who would have no rights.
These provisions we are talking about now are the legalized theft provisions of Bill C-50. Let us go back a few years. We had the Liberals stealing from the unemployment insurance budget and basically taking billions of dollars of money from unemployment insurance.
That money could have gone to the unemployed workers, of which there are so many, an increasing number in this country. I will come back to that in a moment.
The Conservatives, of course, do not like this. They do not like being connected to criminal acts, but this is legalizing a theft that occurred under the Liberal regime and that the Conservatives have perpetuated. There is no doubt about this.
Essentially--