Mr. Speaker, the hon. member for Kitchener—Conestoga was correct when he said that the leader of the Liberal Party was not here in 1993. What he neglected to say was that he too was not here at that time, but I was here, so let me remind him what happened.
We went through something called program review, and we did not do it on the backs of transfers. Some 67,000 to 70,000 public service positions were phased out. The budgets and salaries of members of Parliament were frozen. The list went on.
The member talked about jobs. I agree with him in that the Conservatives have duplicated our campaign of jobs, jobs, jobs.
Employers told us in 1993 to reduce employment insurance premiums and they would create the jobs. We did that; they responded.
Today, how is his government going to create jobs when the EI premiums are due to go up, as the member for Mississauga South said, to almost $20 billion? How is it going to do that by taxing these jobs?