Human Resources Committee on Oct. 27th, 2009

[Yvon Godin, NDP, Acadie—Bathurst, NB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Last week, a witness talked about long-tenured workers. Since they had gone to community college every year, they were on training, and would automatically be ineligible. Will those people be treated the same as those who are on maternity or parental leave? Will they be put in the same category, or will they be put in a training category? So the answer is that apprentices who are long-tenured workers have to meet the same requirements as everyone else, contrary to what the union was saying last week.

[Louis Beauséjour]

Yes.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Go ahead, Mr. Lessard.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

My colleague's question is a very important one, because this can lead to confusion. They have to meet the same requirements as those set out in Bill C-50. So they do not get any preferential treatment.

[Louis Beauséjour]

No, there is no preferential treatment. The only thing that needs to be clarified is that when calculating the number of regular EI weeks that an individual has accumulated in the last 5 years, the weeks of approved training are not included in the 35 weeks, in much the same way that special benefits do not count either.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Okay. There is another layer to that question. Apprentices often experience periods of unemployment. If I understand correctly, they will not be treated more favourably vis-à-vis the 30% threshold. That was why the union said that apprentices were more likely to experience periods of unemployment. Many of them will not be able to meet the 30% maximum premium requirement for a certain number of years.

[Louis Beauséjour]

All of the requirements of a long-tenured worker are the same for everyone who is eligible for additional benefits. That is not changing. There is no special treatment for any kind of unemployed worker. We simply want to clarify what is taken into consideration when the number of regular benefit weeks received by unemployed workers is calculated.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Chair, on another issue, I think it would be good to ask questions right away as it may speed things up in dealing with the other clauses later.

When an unemployed worker applies for EI, they come with their Record of Employment, which gives the officer the claimant's employment period. From that information, you are also able to see the employment insurance periods that the person has used in the past. Based on the criteria set out in Bill C-50, you need more than 7 out of 10 years or 8 out of 11 years, and so forth.

Based on the fact that we know the period when eligibility will start, January 4, have you considered what will happen in terms of the number of unemployed workers currently collecting benefits? Could you give us the result in terms of that number today and say how many will be eligible at 5, 6 or 7 weeks, based on your data?

[Louis Beauséjour]

I do not have that data with me right now. I am not sure whether that is something that is possible at this time.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Everything is computerized, I would think.

[Louis Beauséjour]

Yes.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

I am not trying to be a thorn in your side with my next question, but the fact that we do not have those results is quite fascinating to me. We have been asking for them for a month now. I would think that with the new technologies and given the fact that we have all that data, we should have those results in order to make an informed decision on the clauses before us.

[Louis Beauséjour]

To get that information, we have to implement the entire process; our system has to be ready to provide benefits to eligible individuals when the legislation is passed by Parliament. We had to change systems to be able to do that, which takes some time.

The information in our database on the premiums paid by individuals is an integral part of our benefits delivery system. There are pretty big changes that need to be implemented in order to be ready to provide benefits to Canadians when the bill is approved. The computerized component will be ready on November 8, I believe.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

In the same vein, we have a decision to make about whether to adopt the bill or not.

I want to really understand how it is that from the moment data as basic as what I just described is entered in the system, we are not able to say how many unemployed workers will be affected at each level, although we can say that it covers 190,000 unemployed workers.

I am not trying to be a thorn in your side.

[Louis Beauséjour]

No.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

We have been asking you for a month now, and yet we do not know how you came up with the figure of 190,000 unemployed workers.

[Louis Beauséjour]

I believe we sent a response as to how we arrived at 190,000. I do not know whether it was distributed to the committee members.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

No, we do not have that. Does someone have it here?

[Louis Beauséjour]

We used data that goes back to 2006, as we explained. We then extrapolated the implications using the unemployment rate.

We also have other information. We sent letters to people who met the criteria set out in our career transition assistance initiative. At that time, the only criterion was the contribution to the EI system during 7 out of 10 years. We already had in our databases the information for the 10 years before their claim. And so we were able to determine the number of people who had paid into the system for 7 out of 10 years and thus met the criterion. But we did not have the data for years 10 to 15. We obtained that information later, and that is why we cannot provide a breakdown by level for all of the other years.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Mr. Lessard, the information came in this afternoon. We're just asking the clerk to hand that information out to you right now, so it'll be distributed momentarily. Thank you very much.

What I want to do is go to clause-by-clause consideration. If there are no more questions, I'll just start.

Mr. Lessard.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Mr. Chair, is there a way to get that information and to have 15 minutes to look at the document? It is pretty odd not to get the information until after the bill has been adopted.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

What I will do is give you five minutes to have a look at it.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Five minutes? It depends on what the document says, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

It's a very short document. It's two or three pages long.

[Yves Lessard, Bloc, Chambly—Borduas, QC]

Let's have at least 15 minutes.