Mr. Speaker, first of all, they will not get this help now; second, the only real assistance that could be provided would be through a pilot project; finally, we have proposed much more concrete measures for accessibility to employment insurance.
POWA is the program that can best meet the needs of long-tenured workers who today are unemployed. They would not receive assistance for just one additional year, or six months, or five to ten weeks; the assistance would continue until they reached retirement age. That is what they truly need. Not half measures, false measures or smoke and mirrors, but real measures like the ones we have always asked for.