Mr. Speaker, I think that the hon. member glossed over a wonderful opportunity. He is from Kenora. Kenora is an area which at the best of times has difficulties with employment and it is facing unique and specific challenges right now. I would have thought that the member would be a little more upset about the government's approach to employment insurance. This was a wonderful opportunity to actually address that issue, as every economic prognosticator is saying that more and more people are becoming unemployed.
It appears that the government chose a solution which nobody was asking for, namely to load the rear end of the time available, when in fact pretty well everyone was asking the government to shrink the two-week waiting period. Just because one is unemployed does not mean the bills stop. That two week period was an opportunity missed by the government, or it could have brought in some sort of uniform set of hours across the country, because whether one is unemployed in Kenora, Toronto or Miramichi, one is still unemployed.
I wonder whether the hon. member has approached the Minister of Finance and asked him why he missed this opportunity. This could have been a time to actually reform EI in a way that is fair not only to the workers in Kenora but to the workers right across the country.