Mr. Speaker, I certainly appreciate the government's response.
Unsurprisingly, there was a mention of some EI measures in the budget. I would make the point that the budget document itself projects that employment insurance benefits will be held below employment insurance premium revenues for four out of the next five years. I believe there is room to do more. I think one of the obvious ways to do more is to include Saskatchewan's oil patch in this temporary extension of EI benefits.
Another one of the points we heard is that Saskatchewan remains below the national average in terms of the overall unemployment rate, which is fair enough, but this temporary extension of benefits was not about an extension for those regions that had the highest unemployment rates. The duration of benefits already varies based on the regional unemployment rate.
The stated objective was to provide additional help to regions that had seen a particularly large increase in unemployment, and southern Saskatchewan—