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September 23rd, 2014

Liberals to Conservatives: Stop raiding the EI fund, like we did while in government

Today in debate on their incorrectly costed EI proposal, Liberal finance critic Scott Brison said:

“The Conservatives are hurting the Canadian economy by cutting infrastructure investments and keeping EI taxes artificially high just to pad their books to try to achieve a political surplus on the eve of an election.” – House of Commons, September 23, 2014

Its déjà vu all over again. Let’s examine the Liberal record.

  • In the three years running up to the 2000 General Election, Liberals took in more than $20 billion in excess EI revenues – money paid for by workers and business through premiums, misspent on political trinkets ahead of an election.
  • Before the 2004 federal election, they stripped another $16.3 billion out of the EI fund and put it into general revenues to pay for things like no strings attached corporate tax cuts.
  • Liberals raided the fund for another $3.5 billion, before they were finally voted out of office in 2006. Of course Conservatives took over where the Liberals left off and skimmed another $7 billion from EI premiums paid for by workers and employers.

Hypocrisy, bad math and spending money that isn’t theirs – that’s the Liberal/Conservative record on EI.

Canadian workers and businesses deserve better.