Mr. Speaker, I am always stunned to see how naive the NDP can be. It regularly buys into the Conservative rhetoric for populist reasons. That may be the one thing that the NDP and the Conservative Party have in common: they base their arguments or their strategies on populism.
Our research department had nothing to do with it. The figures were validated. It was the former chief actuary for EI, Mr. Bédard, who did the calculations. Self-employed workers in Quebec will have to pay $1.36, as opposed to $1.73 for their Canadian counterparts. That is a difference of just 43¢, but self employed workers in Quebec already pay 88¢ for every $100 of insurable earnings for parental leave. Therefore, self-employed workers in Quebec will pay $2.22.
First, this is extremely expensive considering what the real coverage is. We are not comparing this to the private sector. That has absolutely nothing to do with it. We are comparing this to how much it is costing the government to offer this new coverage and how much self-employed workers should be paying. Actually, they should be paying 43¢ for that coverage.
Second, Mr. Bédard told us that by 2014 the EI fund will have a $100 million deficit on the Canadian side and a $70 million surplus on the Quebec side. This means that self-employed workers in Quebec will pay for their counterparts in English Canada at a rate that I think is totally disproportionate.
We support the principle of solidarity within a society, but not at the expense of fairness and justice. This bill is unfair to the self-employed workers of Quebec.