Mr. Speaker, I will sum it up in one word: lucrative. That is the word that the minister responsible for employment insurance used to describe employment insurance benefits, despite the fact that 60% of Canadians who work are not eligible for those benefits. That tightening of the rules gave rise to the $54 billion surplus, in particular, and the fact that we were going through good economic times.
Now that there is a downturn, we have to take care of people and come up with rules that work coast to coast. There are provinces, and B.C. is an example, where if one has a truck, and that truck is the only way of getting to a job, and that person runs out of employment insurance, the truck will have to be sold before welfare can be obtained. That is the kind of grave economic crisis that short-sighted and narrow-minded people, like the Conservative-Liberal axis, are imposing on Canadians, and that is why it is a good thing that the NDP is here to stand up for everyone.