Madam Speaker, the fact of the matter is that in many cases they do not have the ability to plan their move to self-employment. It is basically thrust on them.
There are people who are able to set up and plan their affairs in such a way as to get into a self-employed situation through working for a company, learning how that company operates, and basically looking ahead six months to a year and then saying that their goal is to become self-employed by that time.
However, many others just simply find that they have no jobs and are forced into self-employment overnight. They are forced with the decision of trying to stay afloat and basically become a business person. We know that statistically businesses just do not last in a major fashion beyond five years.
I do not know what the figure is exactly but a very high number of businesses fail within the first five years and very few businesses survive past the five year mark.
By the way, that is why franchises have become such a popular item and a popular approach for people to take because the franchising concept, while it has a lot of negatives in some ways, has proven to be successful. If one signs in on a franchise, one can probably enhance one's chances by perhaps 100% in being successful for a much longer period.
In terms of the employment insurance route, my colleague talked about having full EI benefits available and that we should look to that in the future. This bill is a very good first step, but perhaps in the future, next year, the government might look at developing the system a little further, perhaps to allow self-employed people access to the full system under certain circumstances.
I think that would be the way to look at it long-term.