Mr. Speaker, I am interested in my hon. colleague's statements in the House. I have been listening with absolute fascination to the Conservative Party's new mantra that it is suddenly concerned with the unemployed and that we have to do all this for the unemployed.
This is a government that ridiculed the notion that Canada was coming into hard times even as the U.S. economy was collapsing. The Prime Minister was telling senior citizens and pensioners to pick up some quick bargains when the stock market was collapsing.
Just two months ago, we heard the finance minister say that we were not in a recession, that we would not be in a recession and that we would not be in debt. Now we are $30 billion in deficit, and the Conservatives are trying to manipulate public opinion in saying that this $30 billion is economic stimulus, when really half of it is paying for last year's mistakes. They are paying for a structural deficit that they have created.
The fundamental issue in my region, where people are losing their jobs, is the issue of employment insurance. A plan for employment insurance has been put forward again and again, yet of the 130,000 people who are losing their jobs, not one will be more eligible for EI because of what the government is doing, which means that maybe half of them will not get EI at all.
I would like to ask the member about the failure of the government to come forward with a clear and reasonable plan for EI to help us through an economic recession.