Madam Speaker, that is a good illustration of why debate is so essential in the House. The member raised a great point, and I will tell the House why. The EI legislation, as I mentioned in my speech, gets amended from time to time and the reason is that it allows that social fabric to expand itself and to allow more people to create a standard of living, not just for them, but for their children as well.
With respect to child care, there are provisions within EI to help aid this? Personally, outside of that, there should be a child care provision in and of itself for affordable universal child care. However, that is a whole other issue that I do not have time to get into. Nonetheless, I wish the government would take a look at that element in a more substantial way. The Canadian Forces could also look at that as well using the general system of child care.
She makes a very good point about sick benefits but we seem to be tweaking this all the way along. What I fear is that we keep playing catch-up with the EI system. Something drastic has happened. Something has reached the critical mass by which we need to address and then make changes. We will debate them and then make changes.
It almost seems like we have lost foresight in the EI system. My biggest complaint about the government is that it does not possess the foresight in the EI system to see this coming down the road. It is always given short shrift and it is reactive. Whether intentioned that way or not, I will give the Conservatives the benefit of the doubt, but we need to be far more flexible in how we deal with something like the EI system to handle, not just child care and parental leave, but also things like post-traumatic stress disorders and those types of illnesses.