Mr. Speaker, certainly we have to look at those things and see if there is something that can be made better.
I was surprised when I went to the departmental briefing to find out that this is about 50 to 60 people a year and half a million dollars in cost. It is not a big bill. I am not an expert on parliamentary procedure, but I have to wonder whether it is something that could have been done some other way. I do not think anybody is going to oppose that.
I do want to say that we have tried to work with the government on things that we agree on. It brought forward a bill for the self-employed before Christmas. I always indicated that I had no problem with EI for the self-employed. I have advocated for that, but there were some issues with the bill itself. What is the rate in Quebec versus the rest of Canada? Where is the money going to come from? Is the EI fund going to have to backstop it?
At the end of the day, we were all asked to support the bill in order to get it through before Christmas so it could take effect. I did that. I worked with the parliamentary secretary. He knows that, but there were questions about it. This House passed a motion from the Bloc the very last night that we sat before Christmas so that we could monitor that, because there are always things that come up that maybe the government does not think are a problem, but we get into committee and we find out that they are.
I do not know exactly what might come up on this bill, but I hope the government is open to it. If we are going to go through this whole process for a bill that is only going to cost the treasury something in the range of $600,000, perhaps there is a way that it could assist more Canadians who need that help as well.