Madam Speaker, I do not think the government member is on very solid ground when he tries to lecture the Liberals about deficits and debt. At the end of the Mulroney period, when there was a huge increase in the debt, it was followed by the Mulroney years, which put us into as big a debt as was there under the Liberal years. He is not on good ground there.
The government member has certainly come a long way when it comes to the issue of EI, from the days of the old Reform Party, when it basically operated on the basis of a pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps mentality, to the point where we now have a party looking at bringing in a $1 billion improvement to the EI program. I think we should be applauding that. Rather than complaining, the Liberal Party should be coming up with some amendments for the committee to try to make the bill even better than what it is right now.
Could the government member tell the House why his party voted against the New Democratic bill, Bill C-279, which would have removed severance pay from the calculation of EI benefits, especially since the Conservatives' own report recommended that severance pay should not be treated as earnings?