Mr. Speaker, good question. “Which is?” I could not have planted a better question than that.
Quite frankly, it is a very simple program, an EI program that would in fact generate tens of thousands of jobs in every region of our country. It is an EI premium break for every new hire that a small business takes on.
Again, independent sources outside of the Liberal Party and outside of the Liberal caucus have acknowledged that it is in fact a program that would make a difference and that thousands of jobs would be created as a direct result if the government incorporated the Liberal plan.
I am disappointed that the government did not recognize that, but I am not overly surprised. We see it in committee, where Liberals will often bring amendments to improve legislation and the government will turn them down, even if it means going to the Senate, where Conservatives will amend it in the way Liberals tried to amend it in committee. The Conservatives did not want to be embarrassed in House of Commons committees, so they had to let the Senate clean up their mess.
We shared a very good idea. Who would have benefited from the EI premium break? It would have been Canadians as a whole. As I said, tens of thousands of jobs would have been created in every region of our country had the government taken and followed the lead that was demonstrated by the leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.
Let us talk about infrastructure. Infrastructure is important to our economy and to our social fabric. Where is the government on infrastructure? It has gone missing. Conservatives talk about committing billions of dollars to infrastructure programs, but it is over 10 or 20 years. In reality today, it is an 85% cut at a time when we should be investing in infrastructure. It is an actual 85% cut, year over year, in terms of expenditures.
Members can think of the impact that is going to have on virtually every community in every region of our country once again. It is a big mistake. The Conservatives have the audacity to say that they are committed to infrastructure when nothing could be further from the truth.
Then we have trade. Again, we hear a lot of discussion about trade going back and forth. It is interesting. The Conservatives came up with the European trade agreement. The Liberal caucus has always been very supportive of the idea and the principle of trade. We have consistently been there to support that idea.
In fact, it was the Liberal Party that handed the current government a multi-billion dollar trade surplus.