Mr. Speaker, I will start by saying that if the Liberal Party had kept to condemning the Conservatives' plan during its opposition day, we would have gone along. However, I have serious problems with the Liberals putting forward their own plan, which makes no sense economically. This has been mentioned a number of times. I would like to point out two things. I would like to hear what my colleague has to say about these two main criticisms.
First, they say that the plan put forward would create 176,000 net jobs, but based on the trend in recent years, creating 176,000 net new jobs would require $1.5 million. Considering only the average premiums paid by employers currently, this plan would cost from $1.1 billion to $1.2 billion, while they say it would only cost us $225 million.
Then, economists, such as Kevin Milligan, said that this measure would create only one additional job per eight other jobs that would have been created anyway. They would give companies a premium holiday, while eight jobs out of nine would be jobs that would have been created anyway. It is simply a gift at an extremely high cost that will in no way be constructive.
I would like to know how my colleague can justify the economic plan proposed that, to my mind, makes no sense at all.