Mr. Speaker, the government is proposing to grow out of the fiscal deficit. Scott Clark, the former deputy finance minister, said that there was no advanced economy, ever, that has grown out of a deficit.
The Parliamentary Budget Officer has gone even further and has said that there is a structural deficit and that we cannot grow out of it. So there is a problem.
It comes down to trust and, if we want to talk about trust, maybe we want to think about income trusts and the broken promise: how they taxed income trusts when they said that they would not; how they broke the law on fixed election dates; how they bought an election by reducing the GST when they could not afford to reduce it; having a 200-page binder to make Parliament dysfunctional; the Afghan papers; and the list goes on.
There is, however, a social deficit. I know the member is very concerned about jobs, as are all the opposition parties, but not the government. EI benefits will run out for 500,000 people over the next short while and, at the same time, the government will be introducing about $13 billion in increases of EI premiums, job-killing premiums that will hurt not only businesses but also employees.
I wonder if the member wants to amplify on the need to protect Canadian workers.