Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, women in this country do 80% of the caregiving, and the majority of Canadians doing part-time work are women. The majority of people who are self-employed are men. There are self-employed women, of course, no question, but again there is a disparity in the incomes there.
Therefore, what is very important, if we are looking at this with a gender lens, in order to ensure that women are covered is to lower the threshold, because the 600-hour threshold is too high. None of the part-time workers, most of whom are women, can access the program or get any benefits such as parental leave or sick leave, all of this. They do not get the parental leave and compassionate leave, so they cannot access it.
There are a lot of part-time workers in this country, and more so in this economy. They are paying EI premiums because they are obliged to, but they do not get benefits out of it. They all have children. They all have caregiving for members of the family who are ill, and so on. If we would lower that to 360 hours, as we on this side of the House have been saying for some time, it would include those people and it would certainly make the system much more equitable.