Bill C-605 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (protecting the Employment Insurance Operating Account)

This bill is from the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session, which ended in August 2015.

Sponsor

Introduced as a private member’s bill. (These don’t often become law.)

Status

Outside the Order of Precedence (a private member's bill that hasn't yet won the draw that determines which private member's bills can be debated), as of May 29, 2014
(This bill did not become law.)

Summary

This is from the published bill.

This enactment amends the Employment Insurance Act to oblige the Minister, if he or she seeks to close the Employment Insurance Operating Account, to first obtain the unanimous consent of the members of the Canada Employment Insurance Commission before he or she introduces a legislative initiative in the form of a bill for this purpose. It also requires that any amount paid out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund and charged to the Account be paid for the specified purposes only and that any amount credited to the Account be used only for the purposes of the Act.

Elsewhere

All sorts of information on this bill is available at LEGISinfo, an excellent resource from the Library of Parliament. You can also read the full text of the bill.

Employment Insurance ActRoutine Proceedings

May 29th, 2014 / 10:05 a.m.

NDP

Robert Chisholm NDP Dartmouth—Cole Harbour, NS

moved for leave to introduce Bill C-605, An Act to amend the Employment Insurance Act (protecting the Employment Insurance Operating Account).

Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased to stand in the House today to introduce my bill on the protection of the employment insurance operating account. I want to thank my colleague, the member for Trois-Rivières, for seconding the motion. The bill essentially builds a fence around the account to protect the premiums paid into the EI account by workers and employers. It safeguards the account so that contributions can only be used for the purposes of the Employment Insurance Act. Why is that important? It is important because Liberal and Conservative governments have taken off with $57 billion of contributions made by workers and businesses to ensure that the fund was there when workers were unemployed and needed it. It has been desperately painful.

As a result of changes that the Liberals and the Conservatives have made to employment insurance, the use and eligibility has now dropped to an all-time low under the current government, whereby only 37% of EI applicants are eligible for benefits. I am pleased to be able to introduce the bill. I believe it will go some considerable distance to show workers and employers that this place has some faith in their ability to make sure that the fund is there when workers need it.

(Motions deemed adopted, bill read the first time and printed)