Madam Speaker, I agree completely with the Liberal member.
As I mentioned a little earlier, my region of Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean is a beautiful region and tourism is very important there. As my Liberal colleague mentioned, every year, the tourism industry needs workers to keep the regional economy going.
What poses a problem is the fact that these people, who periodically need to turn to employment insurance, will be penalized outside of the tourist season. They will be forced to accept a job outside the riding or the region, otherwise their EI benefits will be cut off. This will put people in a very difficult position, because they may be forced to leave the seasonal tourism industry.
Indeed, the regional tourism industry is very strong, in both winter and summer, but as we all know, two different companies will not hire the same people. Once again, we see that the Conservative budget was poorly conceived and that the government is abandoning the regions.
Clearly the height of hypocrisy, the Conservatives' slogan during the election campaign was “our region in power”.