The National Council of Unemployed Workers (NCUW) calls on the government and the opposition to correct the blind spots in the budget implementation bill regarding new temporary Employment Insurance (EI) measures, that will replace the previous measures announced in September 2020.
“Our analysis of the bill allowed us to detect two major blind spots in these measures: for the calculation of the benefit rate, it is a return to what it was before, with a variable denominator fixed by the regional unemployment rate. The same goes for the benefit period that will be in many cases too short for many workers. These blind spots could have been avoided by simply renewing the temporary measures setting a denominator at 14 and a universal benefit period of 50 weeks,” said Pierre Céré, spokesperson for the NCUW. “Because of these blind spots, the government does not help all regions in the same way. It will even penalize some of them, while the pandemic is affecting the whole country. There is an opportunity now to avoid more suffering and more anxiety for unemployed workers.”
In addition, the NCUW is also calling on the government to standardize the amount of the Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) at $500. “The current is that the last 8 weeks of a current claimant or the first 8 weeks of a new claimant, will be reduced to $300 per week: the time for parliamentary partisan games can wait, but not the needs of the unemployed workers!” continued Pierre Céré.
“Once these blind spots are corrected, it will be time to tackle the main problem, once and for all, and reform the EI program. The budget implementation bill confirms, among other things, the return to the status quo in September 2022, that is to say, to a failing and ailing EI program. The government must re-engage in the path of reform by using the temporary measures as a starting point”.