Mr. Speaker, I thank the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance for his speech. I also want to congratulate him because I think that is one of the few speeches we will hear from the Conservative benches that is mainly on the content of Bill C-43.
We noted both at second reading and at report stage of this bill that most of the members prefer to talk about anything but the content.
I very much enjoy sitting on the Standing Committee on Finance with the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance because we have some interesting debates there. We also have a chance to talk about the various aspects of the bill, and we supported certain aspects because we considered them to be good measures. Nonetheless, if we look at the bill as a whole, there are still a number of aspects that are extremely problematic.
One of the most controversial aspects of Bill C-43 is the premium holiday that is being given to small business through the employment insurance fund, a holiday that comes with no guarantee of creating jobs.
The only testimony we heard about this came from the Parliamentary Budget Officer, who talked about the creation of 800 jobs. The only organization that denounces these numbers and claims that this measure will create more jobs is the one that will benefit from this measure. What is more, the government included this measure in the bill without any impact analysis by the Department of Finance.
How can the parliamentary secretary justify the fact that the government does not properly analyze the impact of these measures?