Madam Speaker, with a potential recession in the offing, Canadian workers are exposed to the risk of job loss, but we do not have an adequate employment insurance system to ensure they can pay their bills while they look for work. We should have a system that has a higher income replacement rate. We should have a low universal qualifying hours threshold for employment insurance, and we should have a minimum benefit, but the Liberals chose to do away with those things in September and have yet to present their plan for a new EI system.
We also know they are planning to assign 25 billion dollars' worth of CERB debt to the EI account, putting undue pressure on EI premium payers, whether they are workers or small business owners, to carry CERB debt that properly belongs on the general ledger.
These are things the government has to deal with as a matter of priority, and we are calling on it to present its plan to Parliament now so that we are not having to deal with the new legislation during a crisis.