Thanks. I particularly like the question because this announcement was made recently.
To put it in context, I met with a number of people who are on employment insurance and had been offered part-time work, and I met with the employers who had often offered it to them. These EI claimants said they couldn't afford to go to work for the employers. Yes, they would like to do it, but it cost them to work because the system is set up in such a way that someone who is on EI could earn, by taking part-time work, the greater of $75 or 40% of their claim. After that, they had to turn back from their EI, dollar for dollar, every dollar they earned working on a job. It just didn't pay. It didn't make sense to work beyond that $75 or 40% cap.
So people who wanted to work were basically told their work was worth nothing, and employers couldn't get the help they needed. So a few weeks ago we introduced this change, which takes effect in August, that says if they can find part-time work, we're going to let them benefit from that. They're still on EI but they'll now be allowed to keep 50 cents of every dollar they earned, and that's for part-time work. That's a good thing.
First, the worker and his or her family are better off, but second, we know that quite often somebody gets a part-time job and that leads to full-time work, and then that person is off EI, they are collecting full wages, and that's even better. So you go from EI to working part-time when you can keep your EI plus, to working full-time in many cases.
With the skills and labour shortages we're experiencing across the country, and that we're expecting to see grow significantly, this is a good way to make sure that work always pays, that people are always better off putting forth the effort they really want to.