Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine for his comments. He hit many of the major points.
He was wrong about one, though. He said that the pressure on the working while on claim program forced the Conservatives to fix the program. What it forced them to do is to put up a face and let on that they fixed the program. There is no fix there. People are still being disparaged and pretty much bullied into opting into the new program. However, the member made some very clear and concise points.
As to the comment that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of National Defence made, that they can take a job at Tim Hortons, a lot of people are feeding their families on those Tim Hortons jobs in the region that my colleague represents and in the region I represent. It is not students in those jobs and there are not a lot of job openings at Tim Hortons.
People are being hurt by the changes the government made. The Conservatives want to throw a cloak around it, saying that anyone who receives EI is a bad person. Would it not have made more sense just to hire more compliance officers? There are abuses in the system. Let us root out those abusers rather than treating everybody like criminals.