Mr. Speaker, I would like to pick up on my colleague's excellent point about the employment insurance program. The reason I emphasize the word “insurance” is that it is meant to be a program which establishes some sort of back up, some sort of insurance policy for workers and businesses.
The idea is that, at its foundation, businesses and people working for those businesses contribute to an insurance fund. Why would anyone take out insurance under any type of notion or policy other than to provide assistance in time of need?
The forestry sector, in particular, but there are others, manufacturing sector across Canada in Quebec and Ontario and other places, is in need of assistance right now. Everyone, from I think all four corners of the House, has recognized time and again that the EI program needed fixing. There were problems with it.
Rather than actually fix it, what has the government done? It has gone in the opposite direction taking more than $50 billion out of the program that was intended for insurance, that was put aside for insurance, and the government in this bill is crafting a law to rob that money from the workers and employers who put the money in, in the first place.
It would be like a family taking out a certain level of home insurance, $1,000 let us say, and the government fixing the law and saying that it would pay $100 of the actual insurance and the other $900 the government would take away for other purposes.
I would ask my hon. colleague, when workers, communities and employers look for this assistance, what type of response are they going to get from the government? What kind of answer are those families and workers going to get from this government?