Mr. Speaker, I have had the privilege of working in one capacity or another with the member for Sault Ste. Marie for almost 20 years. In fact, on June 6 he will be coming up to his 20th anniversary in public service.
In all of those years, I can honestly say that I have never met a better advocate for trying to create an anti-poverty strategy, first in Ontario and now, of course, in the federal House. Knowing that record and knowing that deep personal commitment, I can only imagine how deeply disappointed the member for Sault Ste. Marie must be with this federal budget.
I will just focus on one part of it and that is the $57 billion theft from the EI fund. For so many Canadians, EI is the very last defence, the very last hope, the very last income support that keeps them from falling into poverty. We know that 880,000 Canadians are about to run out of EI and the government is not helping those Canadians, even though they lost their jobs through no fault of their own.
It is not because the government does not have the money. There was a $57 billion surplus in the EI fund and yet the government does not allocate a dime of that money to helping people who are losing their jobs. It is the workers' money. It was contributed by them and their employers. It is not the government's money.
I wonder if the member could comment about what an integral part of any poverty prevention strategy an effective EI program is in this country?