Mr. Speaker, we should have minimum requirements or certain criteria such as number of hours worked in order to be able to qualify for employment insurance. At times, we need to be able to be somewhat flexible. We need to recognize that there is a difference between economic activities in, for example, the province of Alberta and some other provinces.
Sometimes one province might be in more of an economic boom while another province might be more stagnant. We need to recognize those differences across Canada and support all of our workers no matter where they live. The best way to do that is by recognizing those regional differences which means maybe having different criteria for different regions. The purpose of doing that is to ensure that we are providing a program that is viable for all regions of Canada.
We need to have that sort of flexibility. At times when the economy is doing even worse, in a recession for example, we might want to relax the criteria for the entire country. In 2009, that is what the Liberal leader espoused, to reduce the criteria because of the economic times. There needs to be some flexibility and for the most part Canadians would recognize that and appreciate it.