Madam Speaker, I want to take a moment to correct a few things that the member has said repeatedly, even though he should know better, since he was once the minister of employment and social development. This same information has also been repeated by the former MLA for Calgary—Foothills, and even by the Conservatives in the previous Parliament.
When the member says that we want to reduce the eligibility threshold to 360 hours, he knows very well that that number of hours is about nine weeks. Those nine weeks would give workers access to EI for 21 weeks, not for the rest of the year, as the member has been claiming since last year.
What is more, he seems to be suggesting that unemployed workers are going to abuse the system by working for just two short months and then collecting EI. He must know that, if an employee leaves her job voluntarily, she is not eligible for EI. If an employee is fired due to incompetence, he is not eligible for EI. There is a lot of misinformation here. I wanted to take a moment to “correct the record”, as the Prime Minister often says.