Mr. Speaker, there were a number of different options on the table and obviously one was to eliminate the waiting period. We have tried to affect the most amount of people as possible.
We heard that a number of people have been working in these industries for many years and have always paid into the system but never collected. Now that the economy has turned around on them they have not been able to collect some of these benefits for the length of time that they feel might be helpful.
We are hopeful that the economy will turn around. If we could add extra weeks for the people who have been paying into EI for many years, then they would have the opportunity to find work or hope for the economy to turn around so they could go back to the places they had been working before.