The $54 billion surplus that's sitting in the EI account has interest charged to it every year. This bill does nothing to change that. It still sits there as a separate account integrated with the public accounts. Minister Flaherty confirmed in a letter that if the EI program went into a deficit because of a recession and premiums didn't cover it, the program would still be covered by the government and by the EI account. I think that's the intent of the government.
What this bill doesn't do is make clear that the EI surplus continues to exist and should continue to be available for EI purposes. Effectively, if you do that, you leave it up to future consideration on just how we might deal with this problem. You might end up with a Supreme Court decision in a few weeks that throws this back to you. So you should reflect on it a bit.