Mr. Speaker, I guess it is a bit of a compliment. The term “middle class” was not part of the New Democratic vocabulary until the leader of the Liberal Party indicated that it was going to be a major theme going into the 2015 election. Flattery is a compliment. The NDP is most welcome to use the term as much as it likes.
We have consistently argued that it is important that we focus our attention on Canada's middle class. In fact, if we go back to 1993, the unemployment rate was 14%. It took Liberal governments to reduce that 14% to 6.5%, in 2006, which is when we left office.
One of the reasons we got that reduction was that we had a very bold initiative, which we have proposed once again, and that is the EI premium reduction, which would generate tens of thousands of jobs in every region of the country.
Why does the NDP, which says it supports the middle class, not support an EI premium reduction so that we could employ tens of thousands more Canadians from every region of this country?