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Rae said the Tory tactics will only increase the demand for social assistance.

Rae’s claim is “absolutely not true,” Harper said.

“Employment insurance is there for people who have lost their jobs, for people who need these benefits. Our actions and the actions of our employees are there to ensure the EI fund is being used the way it is supposed to be used.”

Montreal newspaper Le Devoirpublished government documents on Monday that showed the annual “target” of $485,000 for EI investigators, which Human Resources Minister Diane Finley said is different than a quota.

NDP leader Tom Mulcair has called the use of EI house calls and quotas a political game that creates a presumption of guilt.

“We’ve had our quota of the lying by the minister responsible for this file,” he said at a Tuesday morning news conference.

“We want Harper and his thugs to stop attacking the jobless.”

Harper said in the House on Wednesday there is performance pay for some managers in all public service departments.

“The Prime Minister has just confirmed what we have been saying for three days; that is, employees get incentive-based pay,” Rae said in response.

“It is based on the money they get from unemployed Canadians.”

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley has vigorously denied that the fraud targets amount to quotas.

“Service Canada does not have quotas that would carry negative consequences for staff who fail to meet them,” Finley said in an email message on Wednesday. “They do however have performance targets to help protect the benefits of the unemployed from fraud.”