Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the hon. member for his speech.
I would like to come back to something he said, which I have a hard time believing. He said that the Conservatives' EI premium holiday was announced without any consultation. I have a hard time believing that the government would have announced such a costly measure—we are talking $550 million here—without any consultation or a study conducted by the Department of Finance itself.
Is that really what I heard? Did the Department of Finance propose a $550-million tax measure without basing it on an internally conducted impact assessment? Did I understand that correctly?