Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the minister that involves telling us what the projections are as to the number of self-employed people who would participate in the program and whether he has any charts, studies and projections that would give us some of those numbers.
The way the system is set up right now, people have to pay into the system for at least a year before they can collect. Then if they do collect any benefits under the program, they have to stay in the program for the full length of time the business is in existence. If we were to have a situation where a person planned on making one claim over a period of 20 years, it is unlikely the person would sign onto the program.
I get the impression that it is a self-financing program, but then there is an indication that if the demand is not high enough, it may not be self-financing. On that basis, there would be a cross-subsidization from the other parts of the program.
Could the minister fill us in a bit about the projections for the program, how many people he sees would get into it and would it be self-financing from the beginning?