Mr. Speaker, a good government always takes lessons, to try to achieve the best results for Canadians.
I have a question for my friend across the way. The Conservatives came out with this EI raiding plan. They are going to raid the EI fund again, which Canadians have seen, a fund that workers and employers pay into, not the government, to use it for their scheme, which gives a $200 incentive to hire somebody and a $2,200 incentive to fire somebody. If that is the Conservatives' math on how to create jobs, that is interesting.
Then the Liberals popped up with the motion we have today, which they cost out at $225 million—follow the math here—but if the plan actually does what the Liberals hope it does and creates the number of jobs they claim, it would actually end up costing $1.5 billion. We have seen this before. Math is difficult, and we know we have to go through it very slowly.
Here is my question for my friend. There was a proposal in the last election to create a small business hiring tax credit. We made this in conjunction, as he says, with the small business community, which very much liked it, and it tied tax relief to the creation of a job. I know that may be a radical proposal for some in this place, but New Democrats believe that in order to get something, one should give something, and the giving is the creating of that job, which we all want.
This was something the Conservatives picked up, adopted, and put into budgets for two consecutive years, and the Canadian Federation of Independent Business loved the idea. Small businesses loved the idea. I imagine those in the member's riding of Cariboo—Prince George did as well.
Why, for heaven's sake, would the government take a program that works and creates jobs, particularly jobs for younger Canadians, with the implicit connection to this tax break and, instead, cut it? It killed the program entirely and then created a program that dips into the EI fund yet again after billions have been raided to create a program that does not have any link at all to creating jobs, which is going to cost some hundreds of millions of dollars to the taxpayer.
Why, for heaven's sake, would the government take a program that works, kill it, and instead, replace it with a program that, at best, is a wish and a prayer to create the kind of economy we want?