Madam Speaker, the House has a great deal of respect for the opinions and the justifications for supporting this bill that both the member for Sault Ste. Marie and the member for Welland have put forward.
I wonder if I could characterize the situation as being in a profound way like the proverbial joke, if it could be a joke, that the operation was a success, but the patient died.
Is it not clear that if there is a sarcastic and cynical attitude toward the approach of 360 hours on qualification for EI that has been suggested as the right approach to dealing with seasonal and regional disparities, with workers on low fixed incomes, with dealing with the issues of the thousands of people who will go on welfare because we do not have the right approach, are we not falling into that cynical approach where it was quoted, and I say this with respect to one of the members from the government side, we are suppressing job creation with this 45-day work year, we are undermining the deep rooted Canadian values for hard work?
We agree with those, but by supporting this are we going to encourage the government away from the right solution, the very solution that we share in common? How can we avoid that if that is the kind of cynicism that exists on the other side?