Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the member's contribution to the case that we are making, which is that this particular initiative falls short of meeting the goals and objectives that we could have achieved with this massive spending.
The one thing I will comment on is the EI system. We squandered the fiscal capacity to have a healthy and robust EI system when they took the $57 billion surplus from the EI system. By legislation, they ripped that money right out of there. Now that we are in an economic crisis where we need EI, the cupboard is bare.
Again, they had no right to take that money. That money was employer and employee contributions. Not one penny of that was federal government money and yet they took it and misused it for other applications.