Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to the text that my hon. colleague just read to the House.
I must say, I have a hard time believing him when he says that employment insurance is always there for those who need it, when all the figures prove otherwise, and worse still, when many of the workers in this country are excluded from those figures and statistics, because they are no longer even part of the employment insurance system.
My question relates to that remark. I am sure everyone remembers that a few years ago, the former finance minister, Mr. Flaherty, urged large corporations to put the extra money they were saving as a result of tax breaks into the economy in order to create jobs.
Here is my question: is the employment insurance fund really the fund that should be used to pay for job creation measures? Consider the Conservative government's proposal for example. The Conservatives want to spend $550 million to create 600 jobs, according to the Parliamentary Budget Officer. That $550 million will of course come from EI premium reductions. It seems to me that a real job creation program should be funded by general revenues and not by taxing workers twice.