Mr. Chair, if the minister believes that unnecessarily high payroll premiums are a job killer and we have long-term unemployment in Canada, twice that of 2008—in fact around 130,000 Canadians have been unemployed for over a year today, compared to 60,000-some back in 2008—why is the minister waiting until 2017 to reduce EI premiums? Why will he not cut EI premiums next year?
In the House of Commons on May 14th, 2014. See this statement in context.