Mr. Speaker, I absolutely believe that it is our role as parliamentarians here to protect the integrity of the EI fund. Those people who were watching not just the debate this afternoon but who perhaps tuned in a little earlier during question period will have seen us take on the Conservative government about the way it has treated two pilot programs with respect to EI. One is to stop all help for seasonal workers. The other is to make it more difficult for people on EI to make a bit of extra money while they are on claim. That was the working while on claim pilot project. We have been going hard after those issues, because they impact literally thousands of Canadians.
The member is quite right in saying that it is up to us to hold the government to account for those changes and that it is up to us to maintain the integrity of the system. That is why we exposed the fact that both successive Liberal and Conservative governments have stolen $54 billion out of the EI fund to pay for corporate tax cuts, to pay for debt reduction. It was not their money. That money was there to help unemployed Canadians.
Members can imagine the program expansion that could have been funded with $54 billion. Instead, it went to corporate tax cuts. What did we learn from Mark Carney, the Governor of the Bank of Canada? We learned that businesses are not even investing that money to create jobs. They are hoarding that money, and he called it “dead money”.
That is why we need a strong official opposition like the one we have under the member for Outremont to challenge the government on its handling of this very important EI system.