Human Resources committee  In fact the board really has no power to run EI. All they can do is set the rate, invest the money, come up with a balance sheet at the end of the year, and determine whether they made money or lost money.

Human Resources committee  Exactly.

Human Resources committee  That was at least part of the pitch I made to this committee when those amendments went through. In the whole business of self-funding of EI, you pay the cost in your taxes or you pay the cost in a payroll premium. When the cost of life insurance goes up or you get a little older

Human Resources committee  If you'll permit me, I'd like to comment. Across this country the construction unions maintain a training infrastructure with $600 million, and every year we spend $200 million on training. That is all private money. The closest the Government of Canada has ever come to helping

Human Resources committee  Let me answer all three of your questions. The current system, which contains, I believe, 50-some zones and 50-some different qualifications, where someone living almost across the street has a different qualifying period, makes no sense to me. It needs to be fixed. On the se

Human Resources committee  We spend a lot of time and a lot of resources in trying to recruit young people. They say that if you're trying to recruit someone into the trades in high school, you are five or six years too late. You should be starting in grade 5, grade 6. We're actually trying to get some pro

Human Resources committee  Yes, sir.

Human Resources committee  With our current membership, roughly half a million members on any given day, we represent 8% of the workforce in Canada. So if you look around, I think your number was 190,000 people who will benefit from this, and based on that 8%, on any given day about 13,000 of our members w

Human Resources committee  I believe that EI should be self-funding wherever possible. I also believe that the current legislative regime makes it difficult for that to be achieved, given the strictures there are on the finance board to raise enough revenue. I forget exactly the number, but they can only c

Human Resources committee  I would like it to cover seasonal workers, fishermen, construction workers, people who work in day care. I would like it to cover everybody who buys insurance, that contract of indemnity against a foreseeable event. If you pay, you should collect.

Human Resources committee  My take? Under the previous Liberal government there were some incentives to apprentices; we welcomed those. The first set of incentives that the current government put out for apprenticeship, we welcomed those. The second set, the apprenticeship completion grants, we welcome tho

Human Resources committee  If you look at our business, the business of construction, we have people who will be on a claim, but then they'll go to work. When they go to work, frequently they work 10 or 12 hours a day, 7 days a week, until the job is done, and they move on to the next job. Generally speaki

Human Resources committee  Yes. They pay it back, and they pay it back at the highest rate. If you look at the extended benefit for some of those people, they're not going to be able to even get the extended benefit if they're unfortunate enough to run through their claim, simply because they've had regul

Human Resources committee  We made quite detailed submissions in respect of the new funding board. We were opposed to it in a number of respects, one of which concerns the people who are on the board. Probably no one there will ever be unemployed or ever know what it's like to have to file for pogey. We th

Human Resources committee  Well, that's its statutory mandate. They have to balance the books. If they run out of money they can go and borrow from the people of Canada. If they don't have enough they can throttle the cost of the payroll tax slightly, within bounds. We thought that wasn't adequate.