Mr. Speaker, I would ask the member to look at the big picture. I do not know where he has been and whether he has listened to what has been happening in the House or not.
On the one hand he wants to stand up for the unemployed workers, but his party voted against extending EI benefits 5 to 20 weeks to approximately 190,000 people. I am wondering how he feels that standing up in the House and voting against it might be helpful to those who are unemployed.
I am not sure why the Liberals would vote against it except for the fact that they were looking at self-interest and, I gather, wanting an election that no Canadians wanted to have. The unemployed certainly did not want to have one. How he can stand up in the House and speak about that is certainly a wonder.
There is another part that concerns me. He talked about the $13 billion that might be spent on EI. The Liberals wanted to spend more than that with their 45-day work year, where one could work two months a year and get EI. It would cost some $4 billion. I wonder how he is going to pay for that. His leader already intimated that by raising taxes. He said that he is going to have to do that, but he has come out with even more promises of spending. I wonder how he is going to do that.
That is not what the biggest issue is. The biggest issue is the fact that, while the Liberals were in office, they reduced benefits to the unemployed and increased premiums, and collected approximately $50 billion from the workers, the employers and employees. Did they give that to the employers and employees? No, they did not. That should still be in the account if they had not spent it.
What did they do? They spent the money. They spent it on pet political projects that the Liberal Party wanted. The $50 billion is gone. If we tried to find it, the money is spent. It was spent by the Liberal Party and he has the fortitude to get up today to ask if we need to increase taxes. They are the party that taxes and spends. If they had the power, they would tax more and spend more.
We have reduced taxes into the billions of dollars to help the employed, the employers, and average Canadians get by. We have done that and we have ensured that they have more money in their pockets. We froze EI premiums, so that they do not have to be paid at this time by employers and employees. We have done a number of things that are very targeted. We extended benefits by five weeks across the country, helping approximately 350,000 Canadians.
We have extended the work-sharing program, helping about 165,000 Canadians maintain their jobs. That is something that has been very well received. There is a sharing where we pay EI and they work for part of the week. We put in a program to help long-tenured workers, those who have worked hard, paid into the system, and paid their premiums now finding themselves unfortunately without work. They are not able to find a job and have exhausted their EI benefits. We have extended to them 5 to 20 additional weeks.
What did this member and his party do? They voted against it. When it was in committee, we tried to persuade them to support this measure. If they allow other measures, they should support this measure. What did they do? They voted against each and every clause that was proposed in that bill and said no. They said no to 190,000 Canadians and were not unabashed about it. What was their logic? Did they have any reason? They did not. They were seeking an election. They were hoping that their leader would cause an election.
I hope now that those aspirations are dampened and that they will see their way to support Bill C-50 when it comes to the House next week and actually help Canadians. However, most importantly, we do not want to see the tax and spend days that we saw in the past. We do not want to see billions of dollars used for pet political projects.